Dead Water
By
Nenad Mitrovich
"Watch out! Pull the brakes!" the train driver shouted. His name was Ratko. He helped the other man stand up from his kneeling position. Together, they yanked the brake levers with all their strength. The heavy 600-horsepower diesel-hydraulic locomotive roared, lurching forward and throwing them against the control panel. Ratko’s forehead slammed into the side window, shattering the glass. Blood oozed down from the gash. Behind them, the metal clutches of sixteen wagons filled with copper concentrate clanked and rumbled in protest.
"For fuck’s sake, Mladen, not so hard!"
"Ahh, Ratko… what was that?" the younger man asked, his face draining of color.
"Another one of them. Those crazy motherfuckers!"
Mladen understood at once. Ratko meant the men—those aimless wanderers who strolled the railway tracks as if nothing could hurt them. They were the nightmare of every Serbian Railways employee. No train driver was ever spared from eventually running into one. So far, in his three years on the job, Mladen had been lucky. No incidents. No blood.
"There’s a first time for everything, boy. A bloody first time," Ratko had told him three months ago, winking suggestively.
"Do you think it was… a man?" Mladen's voice trembled. His body ached, but nothing seemed broken. Behind them, the last wagons groaned to a stop. His vision was blurred. Through the cracked window, he could just make out the yellowish, barren slopes of the copper mine operated by RTB Bor on the left. On the right stretched the thorny thicket—abandoned farms, shy groves, and a few scattered houses. A dark gorge cut through the landscape, once carved by the Bor River.
"Yeah, it most certainly was," Ratko said. "There’s nothing left of him now. Don’t worry—not even for a meat pie."
He pushed open the rickety control room door. Mladen moved slowly, dazed and unsure. The older driver liked working with the aloof boy—his big eyes, thick messy hair, and quiet demeanor set him apart from the vulgar herd back at the station.
"Oh, no… tell me I didn’t kill a man. Did I?" Mladen cried.
"It’ll be a miracle if we didn’t derail and spill that black shit we’re hauling! You know how much a single kilo of copper concentrate costs? We’ve got a thousand tons back there! Damn it!"
Ratko seemed more concerned about the cargo than the man they might have killed.
"No, no… aghhh…" Mladen groaned, panic rising in his throat. The weight of what had just happened crushed down on him.
Their shift had barely begun—they’d left Bor-Cargo station half an hour ago, en route to Zaječar. Now they were stranded in the middle of an industrial wasteland.
And they were both drunk.
Regulations required an investigation after any incident—blood tests, breath tests, full psych evaluations. And the police would show up. It was inevitable.
"I’m screwed!" he shouted.
"Come on, don’t be such a crybaby. Get over here and help me."
"I… I can’t…" His legs buckled. He could barely stay on his feet.
"Hey, hey, matey… are you okay?" Ratko asked, noticing how close the younger man was to breaking down. "Come on, it’s no big deal. These things happen, you know."
He stepped closer and brushed Mladen’s cheek with the back of his hand. He’d gotten savagely drunk that morning, eager to start the shift, eager to get out on the tracks—just the two of them. Like before.
He knew Mladen wanted that too. The boy didn’t fit in at the station—too gentle, too soft. Too soft in the right spots, Ratko would say.
Mladen blinked, suddenly aware.
"You’re hurt!" he gasped, staring at Ratko’s bloodied forehead. His green eyes were flecked with gold, wide with shock.
"It’s nothing," Ratko muttered, wiping the blood away with the back of his hand.
"How can you be so calm? We killed a man. We need to call dispatch immediately!"
"Stop. Don’t rush. You’re not thinking straight."
Ratko grabbed him by the arm. "Let’s take a look first."
"Did you see anything?" Mladen asked as they stepped outside. "Did you see him… the man we hit?"
July’s heat slammed into them like a wall. The air shimmered around the locomotive, blurring the outlines of distant trees.
"Just a glimpse. Some ragged old bastard," Ratko said, already moving down the tracks.
That word--ragged—offered Mladen a strange sense of relief. Somehow it made the victim less real. Less his fault.
"There. Can you see it?" Ratko called, standing some twenty meters ahead.
Between two rocks, pieces of a small vehicle lay shattered. Mladen recognized the remains of a three-wheeled motorcycle with a wire crate attached—used by the poor to haul groceries or recyclables. A torn bag lay nearby, spilling dark gray powder onto the ground.
He knelt to examine it. Ashes? What the hell?
"He was driving that thing on the tracks. Then we ran him over," Mladen said quietly.
“That’s right, kiddo." Ratko gripped his shoulder. "It’s his fault. Don’t you see? His remains are over there. But I gotta warn you—it’s not a pretty sight."
It was too late. Mladen was already moving toward it.
#
The remains of the man were crushed beneath the left wheels of the third wagon. A sour, acrid stench rose from the mangled metal. What was left of him—or what Mladen assumed had once been a man—resembled a burst sack of overcooked meat and cinders. The face had turned a sickly dark blue, the eyes bulging grotesquely from their sockets under the pressure of the impact. It smelled of feces.
The man had a long, matted beard, wore a tattered old suit, and around his neck hung heavy metal chains. Judging by the color, they looked like copper.
Ragged man, Mladen thought—right before his stomach turned inside out and he vomited up the remnants of his lunch, along with the undigested sips of brandy.
He recalled the clusters of crumbling housing blocks near Bor station, where Roma and other destitute people lived. Ragged men. It was likely this one had been another scavenger—one of the many “collectors of secondary raw materials” who scraped a living by stealing copper from RTB Bor. There were hundreds like him.
The police won’t care much about one less of them, he thought with a flicker of shame. Will they?
But regardless of the man’s social status, it wouldn’t save them from the railway inspection.
“Here you go. Clean yourself up,” Ratko said, handing him a tissue.
“Everything’s clear now. We ran over a man. We have to inform the authorities,” Mladen replied, heading back toward the locomotive, reaching for the walkie-talkie.
“Stop!”
That sharp, authoritative voice froze him in place. He’d heard it before—and it did strange things to him. His skin prickled. His blood surged, not just from fear. There was something in the tone—commanding, older—that stirred something primal and confusing inside him.
“Think about what you’re doing. Think what it will do to us. We’ve been drinking. There’s alcohol in our blood.” Ratko laid out the argument that had already been running laps in Mladen’s mind.
In truth, Ratko was far more intoxicated than he was. Mladen had only downed a single glass of brandy and half a beer—just enough to blend in and not look weak in front of the boys.
“Fuck me, Ratko… what else can we do?” Mladen cried.
It was the first time Ratko had heard him swear. There was a defiant edge in the boy’s eyes, undercut by panic. It stirred his hunger.
“I know what we can do. I’ve figured it out. Do you trust me? Say you trust me!” Ratko stepped forward—but stumbled, falling onto Mladen. Their lips met. They clung to each other, desperate and electric, two conspirators bound by blood and silence.
“There’s a place nearby. We’ll take him there. No one has to know.”
Mladen glanced around. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing—only thickets, rusted fences, and a blank, indifferent sky.
“See? There’s no one. Nothing. Come on. You get the locomotive ready. I’ll get him out from under the wheels.”
“Ratko, are you sure?”
“Just do as I say. It’ll be fine.”
They freed the corpse. Ratko grabbed it by the legs, Mladen by the arms.
“Ratko… I can’t do this…” Mladen whimpered.
“You can… ugh… You must.”
They dragged the crumpled body to the right, through dense thickets and prickly underbrush. The path sloped downward, spiraling into shadow.
“Where the hell are we going?” Mladen hissed. A strange odor crept up from below—not exactly unpleasant, but earthy and beast-like. He prayed they weren’t headed toward the source.
“There’s something like a swamp down there,” Ratko said. “It’s hidden from the rail by trees. There’s a patch of quicksand in front of it. The locals—the Vlachs—call it lok morće. Deadland.”
Mladen paused. Ratko nearly lost his grip on the body.
“How do you know about this place? I don’t like it.”
“For fuck’s sake, Mladen! It doesn’t matter how I know. We don’t have time. The train can’t stay idle too long!”
They pressed on, dragging the shriveled, eyeless rag of a man like a sack of spoiled potatoes. The trees thickened, gnarled and oppressive.
“Ratko… what about the ashes?” Mladen asked.
“What?”
“The ashes. The man was carrying a whole sack of them. Why?”
“Dunno. Some Vlach thing.”
But that answer meant nothing. Mladen was growing certain they hadn’t just hit a thief—this man had been heading to something. A gathering. A ritual.
“A little farther. Behind that boulder,” Ratko said, nodding toward a pile of earth where crooked poles stuck out of the ground. Wreaths of withered flowers were strung on them. Rusty cans had been arranged in a circle, leaking some murky red liquid into the soil. They marked a boundary.
Then Mladen noticed the silence. No birds. No insects. Nothing. As if someone had flipped a switch.
“I don’t like it here, Ratko! Maybe we should go back…”
“We’re not going back,” Ratko growled. “We’ll leave him here. No one will find him.”
“Didn’t you say the Vlach villagers know about this place?”
“Yes. That’s why they avoid it. They don’t let their kids or livestock come anywhere near it. I’m telling you—once we put him in the water…”
“In the water?!” Mladen recoiled. “This isn’t right. What about his family? He’ll be missed.”
He was on the verge of collapse.
“Hey! Cut that shit! It’s not my fault he drove onto the railway! And now he’s dead. Morće. It’s not our fault!”
“…I guess not.”
That was all Ratko needed. He pushed forward. They passed into the first row of warped trees, each limb armed with vicious thorns. One of the branches lashed Ratko’s face, drawing blood.
The blood reminded him of what they’d done—and the secret they now shared.
#
If the hurried gropings, rough handjobs, and one warm, tentative blowjob didn’t count, then yes--they did it for the first time the day Mladen passed his apprenticeship exam.
It happened in a cramped, run-down apartment in Bor that Mladen was renting. Ratko, his mentor, had made a drunken joke earlier that night: “Your grades will depend on how you behave in bed.” He chuckled as he said it, but Mladen didn’t take it as a joke. He took it seriously—his stomach swirling with dread, shame, and a deep, aching hunger.
One day, during a long shift, the movie Brokeback Mountain flickered on the shared television in the train dispatcher’s office.
“Holy shit, boys, look at this!” someone hooted. “These cowboys are going hard!”
Everyone laughed—ten men from the Bor-Cargo depot, crowded around the screen like it was a freak show. The room roared until an older switch operator barked:
“Turn that shit off! I don’t wanna watch fucking faggots fucking on fucking TV!”
Ratko turned to look at Mladen. Mladen looked away, pretending to scrub a nonexistent stain off his uniform.
We’re going hard, Mladen thought.
He liked the phrase. There was something blunt, unapologetic about it. It fit.
Later, Ratko said to him:
“Don’t let them break you. Living in this primitive place is like drowning in dead water. You’ve gotta keep your head above the surface.”
Mladen remembered those words. He clung to them. He lived for the next excuse to be alone with Ratko.
Since that night—since the exam—they’d done it three more times.
The journey to the port of Bar in Montenegro, where their train unloaded copper concentrate, took almost two days. They’d do it mid-ride, during quiet stretches of track. They did it during rest stops. The company always arranged an overnight stay at a railway motel—a crumbling inn in Priboj near the Montenegrin border, teeming with bedbugs and cockroaches. Every time, they left behind the same stains on the thin motel sheets: blood, sweat, and cum.
#
They saw the first glimmers—shimmering reflections rippling across the greasy surface of the puddle. But the silence… it was unbearable. Mladen stood frozen, skin crawling with dread.
Then the stench struck. Harder, heavier. It overwhelmed them. The railwaymen staggered back, sleeves clutched over their faces, recoiling from the stink of rust, rot, and ruin. The legs of the dead man dragged limply through rust-colored puddles, lifeless and wet.
It felt like some hidden gate had opened—something ancient and wrong. A passage leading to a graveyard beneath the earth, a burial pit of diseased cattle and darker things.
“Come on. That’s enough. On three. One, two—”
“Stop! Do you hear that?” Mladen stood upright. The corpse slipped from their grip and splashed into the shallow water.
Ratko growled, “Now what?!”
“Shhh!”
He was right.
There was a sound. Not one, but many. Faint, dissonant. Every hair on Ratko’s arms stood up. The noise was unlike anything he’d ever heard—like a broken radio crackling, layered with the moans of tortured souls. It came in waves: distorted sobbing, metallic screeches, warcamp wailing—and then, disturbingly clear, a child's giggle. It all echoed through the trees and then disappeared into nonsense.
“What the hell is this?” he rasped. All the alcohol in his system evaporated like smoke, replaced by a hammering headache. An orange glow flared in his vision.
“I have to see,” said Mladen, his voice robotic and vacant, like a wind-up doll reciting its last line.
“Mladen! Where the fuck are you going? We need to get out of here!”
But somehow, the roles had reversed. Now Ratko was the one desperate to leave. Mladen pushed through the underbrush with bare hands, ignoring the blood drawn by thorns.
Then they saw it.
The Dead Water.
A foul, secluded hollow, like a blasphemous temple built in homage to chthonic gods and swamp vapors. The surface was low and sluggish, bubbling from something buried deep—a geyser or something worse.
But that wasn't the worst part.
Floating--no, suspended—above the water was the body of a child. A boy. No older than ten. Mutilated, tied. His wrists and ankles were bound with slime-slicked rope, stretched taut to the twisted trunks of trees. The boy’s body gave the illusion of levitation, as though the trees themselves held him up, unwilling to let him sink into the cursed mire.
From the gaping wounds in his gray flesh, marsh reeds had begun to sprout.
The bubbling water spoke again. Each burst of gas brought a new wave of voices and rot.
“Help me…”
The stench was unbearable—grave-mold, spoiled vegetables, something older than death.
“Please…”
Then, shadows moved on the far side of the swamp.
Figures emerged. Human… almost. Their faces were wrong—twisted, ancient, unreadable. Malicious. One stepped forward: an old woman in a headscarf, copper jewelry clinking on her chest. In her hand, she held a curved blade that shimmered dully in the twilight.
And then—something changed.
The horror stirred.
The corpse they'd just dropped began to move.
“Look!” Mladen screamed. “He’s alive! He’s—aaaagh!”
It broke him. The scream cracked something in his mind. He turned and ran, scrambling up the slope toward the tracks.
Alive? No… not alive. Not after the mutilation it had suffered. Ratko knew it instinctively—this was not life, but reanimation. Something in the water controlled it, pulled its strings like a puppet. That swamp was no place of death—it was a cradle of revival. Of corruption.
Nothing would ever be the same again. Ratko knew what came next.
Mladen would reach the locomotive. He would radio in. The police--the Blue boys—would arrive within the hour, unhurried as always. They’d find the train idling on the track, and a crime scene in the hidden hollow below. They’d do their job. They’d test the blood. They’d ask questions. They’d find Ratko’s bag.
Inside: a handful of condoms. Some toys. Tubes of Vaseline. A small collection of magazines.
The wrong kind of magazines.
And yet…
As these thoughts raced through him, Ratko’s body betrayed him.
He grew hard—so hard it hurt. A spear jutting from his shame. Stronger than ever.
But none of it would matter.
Because he would be dead before they arrived.
From behind him, a cold, slimy hand slipped up from the water and clutched his waist.
Another hand. Then another. And then, a child’s hand—soft, small, and almost tender.
A blessing.
The Dead Water would take him.
Ratko exhaled, slowly. He tried to pull his legs free from the mire, but they sank deeper.
Then came the voice, gentle and final, from behind him:
“Please… stay with me.”
Nenad Mitrovich is the published author of five novels, all written in Serbian language, published on Serbian market.
The short story "Line 54(4)" became the winner of the annual contest of the "Mirko Petrović" library in Negotin (East Serbia) in 2022.
Short story „The right to die“ became a winner on annual competition „Miodrag Borisavljević“ (Serbia) in 2024.
Short story „Belgrade butcher“ was published in US magazine „Dark harbor“ in 2025.
Short story „Samsara – The house of pain“ published in Gothic Gazette publication, Pulp cult magazine, „Withered love“ edition, in 2025.
Short story „Gospel of Ashes“ published in Laughing man house publication - Smitten Land Issue 3, themed “Televangelism horror” in 2025.
Short story “An Advertisement” published in Horrific Scribblings Magazine, in October 2025.
Website: www.nenadmitrovic.rs
email: [email protected]
By
Nenad Mitrovich
"Watch out! Pull the brakes!" the train driver shouted. His name was Ratko. He helped the other man stand up from his kneeling position. Together, they yanked the brake levers with all their strength. The heavy 600-horsepower diesel-hydraulic locomotive roared, lurching forward and throwing them against the control panel. Ratko’s forehead slammed into the side window, shattering the glass. Blood oozed down from the gash. Behind them, the metal clutches of sixteen wagons filled with copper concentrate clanked and rumbled in protest.
"For fuck’s sake, Mladen, not so hard!"
"Ahh, Ratko… what was that?" the younger man asked, his face draining of color.
"Another one of them. Those crazy motherfuckers!"
Mladen understood at once. Ratko meant the men—those aimless wanderers who strolled the railway tracks as if nothing could hurt them. They were the nightmare of every Serbian Railways employee. No train driver was ever spared from eventually running into one. So far, in his three years on the job, Mladen had been lucky. No incidents. No blood.
"There’s a first time for everything, boy. A bloody first time," Ratko had told him three months ago, winking suggestively.
"Do you think it was… a man?" Mladen's voice trembled. His body ached, but nothing seemed broken. Behind them, the last wagons groaned to a stop. His vision was blurred. Through the cracked window, he could just make out the yellowish, barren slopes of the copper mine operated by RTB Bor on the left. On the right stretched the thorny thicket—abandoned farms, shy groves, and a few scattered houses. A dark gorge cut through the landscape, once carved by the Bor River.
"Yeah, it most certainly was," Ratko said. "There’s nothing left of him now. Don’t worry—not even for a meat pie."
He pushed open the rickety control room door. Mladen moved slowly, dazed and unsure. The older driver liked working with the aloof boy—his big eyes, thick messy hair, and quiet demeanor set him apart from the vulgar herd back at the station.
"Oh, no… tell me I didn’t kill a man. Did I?" Mladen cried.
"It’ll be a miracle if we didn’t derail and spill that black shit we’re hauling! You know how much a single kilo of copper concentrate costs? We’ve got a thousand tons back there! Damn it!"
Ratko seemed more concerned about the cargo than the man they might have killed.
"No, no… aghhh…" Mladen groaned, panic rising in his throat. The weight of what had just happened crushed down on him.
Their shift had barely begun—they’d left Bor-Cargo station half an hour ago, en route to Zaječar. Now they were stranded in the middle of an industrial wasteland.
And they were both drunk.
Regulations required an investigation after any incident—blood tests, breath tests, full psych evaluations. And the police would show up. It was inevitable.
"I’m screwed!" he shouted.
"Come on, don’t be such a crybaby. Get over here and help me."
"I… I can’t…" His legs buckled. He could barely stay on his feet.
"Hey, hey, matey… are you okay?" Ratko asked, noticing how close the younger man was to breaking down. "Come on, it’s no big deal. These things happen, you know."
He stepped closer and brushed Mladen’s cheek with the back of his hand. He’d gotten savagely drunk that morning, eager to start the shift, eager to get out on the tracks—just the two of them. Like before.
He knew Mladen wanted that too. The boy didn’t fit in at the station—too gentle, too soft. Too soft in the right spots, Ratko would say.
Mladen blinked, suddenly aware.
"You’re hurt!" he gasped, staring at Ratko’s bloodied forehead. His green eyes were flecked with gold, wide with shock.
"It’s nothing," Ratko muttered, wiping the blood away with the back of his hand.
"How can you be so calm? We killed a man. We need to call dispatch immediately!"
"Stop. Don’t rush. You’re not thinking straight."
Ratko grabbed him by the arm. "Let’s take a look first."
"Did you see anything?" Mladen asked as they stepped outside. "Did you see him… the man we hit?"
July’s heat slammed into them like a wall. The air shimmered around the locomotive, blurring the outlines of distant trees.
"Just a glimpse. Some ragged old bastard," Ratko said, already moving down the tracks.
That word--ragged—offered Mladen a strange sense of relief. Somehow it made the victim less real. Less his fault.
"There. Can you see it?" Ratko called, standing some twenty meters ahead.
Between two rocks, pieces of a small vehicle lay shattered. Mladen recognized the remains of a three-wheeled motorcycle with a wire crate attached—used by the poor to haul groceries or recyclables. A torn bag lay nearby, spilling dark gray powder onto the ground.
He knelt to examine it. Ashes? What the hell?
"He was driving that thing on the tracks. Then we ran him over," Mladen said quietly.
“That’s right, kiddo." Ratko gripped his shoulder. "It’s his fault. Don’t you see? His remains are over there. But I gotta warn you—it’s not a pretty sight."
It was too late. Mladen was already moving toward it.
#
The remains of the man were crushed beneath the left wheels of the third wagon. A sour, acrid stench rose from the mangled metal. What was left of him—or what Mladen assumed had once been a man—resembled a burst sack of overcooked meat and cinders. The face had turned a sickly dark blue, the eyes bulging grotesquely from their sockets under the pressure of the impact. It smelled of feces.
The man had a long, matted beard, wore a tattered old suit, and around his neck hung heavy metal chains. Judging by the color, they looked like copper.
Ragged man, Mladen thought—right before his stomach turned inside out and he vomited up the remnants of his lunch, along with the undigested sips of brandy.
He recalled the clusters of crumbling housing blocks near Bor station, where Roma and other destitute people lived. Ragged men. It was likely this one had been another scavenger—one of the many “collectors of secondary raw materials” who scraped a living by stealing copper from RTB Bor. There were hundreds like him.
The police won’t care much about one less of them, he thought with a flicker of shame. Will they?
But regardless of the man’s social status, it wouldn’t save them from the railway inspection.
“Here you go. Clean yourself up,” Ratko said, handing him a tissue.
“Everything’s clear now. We ran over a man. We have to inform the authorities,” Mladen replied, heading back toward the locomotive, reaching for the walkie-talkie.
“Stop!”
That sharp, authoritative voice froze him in place. He’d heard it before—and it did strange things to him. His skin prickled. His blood surged, not just from fear. There was something in the tone—commanding, older—that stirred something primal and confusing inside him.
“Think about what you’re doing. Think what it will do to us. We’ve been drinking. There’s alcohol in our blood.” Ratko laid out the argument that had already been running laps in Mladen’s mind.
In truth, Ratko was far more intoxicated than he was. Mladen had only downed a single glass of brandy and half a beer—just enough to blend in and not look weak in front of the boys.
“Fuck me, Ratko… what else can we do?” Mladen cried.
It was the first time Ratko had heard him swear. There was a defiant edge in the boy’s eyes, undercut by panic. It stirred his hunger.
“I know what we can do. I’ve figured it out. Do you trust me? Say you trust me!” Ratko stepped forward—but stumbled, falling onto Mladen. Their lips met. They clung to each other, desperate and electric, two conspirators bound by blood and silence.
“There’s a place nearby. We’ll take him there. No one has to know.”
Mladen glanced around. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing—only thickets, rusted fences, and a blank, indifferent sky.
“See? There’s no one. Nothing. Come on. You get the locomotive ready. I’ll get him out from under the wheels.”
“Ratko, are you sure?”
“Just do as I say. It’ll be fine.”
They freed the corpse. Ratko grabbed it by the legs, Mladen by the arms.
“Ratko… I can’t do this…” Mladen whimpered.
“You can… ugh… You must.”
They dragged the crumpled body to the right, through dense thickets and prickly underbrush. The path sloped downward, spiraling into shadow.
“Where the hell are we going?” Mladen hissed. A strange odor crept up from below—not exactly unpleasant, but earthy and beast-like. He prayed they weren’t headed toward the source.
“There’s something like a swamp down there,” Ratko said. “It’s hidden from the rail by trees. There’s a patch of quicksand in front of it. The locals—the Vlachs—call it lok morće. Deadland.”
Mladen paused. Ratko nearly lost his grip on the body.
“How do you know about this place? I don’t like it.”
“For fuck’s sake, Mladen! It doesn’t matter how I know. We don’t have time. The train can’t stay idle too long!”
They pressed on, dragging the shriveled, eyeless rag of a man like a sack of spoiled potatoes. The trees thickened, gnarled and oppressive.
“Ratko… what about the ashes?” Mladen asked.
“What?”
“The ashes. The man was carrying a whole sack of them. Why?”
“Dunno. Some Vlach thing.”
But that answer meant nothing. Mladen was growing certain they hadn’t just hit a thief—this man had been heading to something. A gathering. A ritual.
“A little farther. Behind that boulder,” Ratko said, nodding toward a pile of earth where crooked poles stuck out of the ground. Wreaths of withered flowers were strung on them. Rusty cans had been arranged in a circle, leaking some murky red liquid into the soil. They marked a boundary.
Then Mladen noticed the silence. No birds. No insects. Nothing. As if someone had flipped a switch.
“I don’t like it here, Ratko! Maybe we should go back…”
“We’re not going back,” Ratko growled. “We’ll leave him here. No one will find him.”
“Didn’t you say the Vlach villagers know about this place?”
“Yes. That’s why they avoid it. They don’t let their kids or livestock come anywhere near it. I’m telling you—once we put him in the water…”
“In the water?!” Mladen recoiled. “This isn’t right. What about his family? He’ll be missed.”
He was on the verge of collapse.
“Hey! Cut that shit! It’s not my fault he drove onto the railway! And now he’s dead. Morće. It’s not our fault!”
“…I guess not.”
That was all Ratko needed. He pushed forward. They passed into the first row of warped trees, each limb armed with vicious thorns. One of the branches lashed Ratko’s face, drawing blood.
The blood reminded him of what they’d done—and the secret they now shared.
#
If the hurried gropings, rough handjobs, and one warm, tentative blowjob didn’t count, then yes--they did it for the first time the day Mladen passed his apprenticeship exam.
It happened in a cramped, run-down apartment in Bor that Mladen was renting. Ratko, his mentor, had made a drunken joke earlier that night: “Your grades will depend on how you behave in bed.” He chuckled as he said it, but Mladen didn’t take it as a joke. He took it seriously—his stomach swirling with dread, shame, and a deep, aching hunger.
One day, during a long shift, the movie Brokeback Mountain flickered on the shared television in the train dispatcher’s office.
“Holy shit, boys, look at this!” someone hooted. “These cowboys are going hard!”
Everyone laughed—ten men from the Bor-Cargo depot, crowded around the screen like it was a freak show. The room roared until an older switch operator barked:
“Turn that shit off! I don’t wanna watch fucking faggots fucking on fucking TV!”
Ratko turned to look at Mladen. Mladen looked away, pretending to scrub a nonexistent stain off his uniform.
We’re going hard, Mladen thought.
He liked the phrase. There was something blunt, unapologetic about it. It fit.
Later, Ratko said to him:
“Don’t let them break you. Living in this primitive place is like drowning in dead water. You’ve gotta keep your head above the surface.”
Mladen remembered those words. He clung to them. He lived for the next excuse to be alone with Ratko.
Since that night—since the exam—they’d done it three more times.
The journey to the port of Bar in Montenegro, where their train unloaded copper concentrate, took almost two days. They’d do it mid-ride, during quiet stretches of track. They did it during rest stops. The company always arranged an overnight stay at a railway motel—a crumbling inn in Priboj near the Montenegrin border, teeming with bedbugs and cockroaches. Every time, they left behind the same stains on the thin motel sheets: blood, sweat, and cum.
#
They saw the first glimmers—shimmering reflections rippling across the greasy surface of the puddle. But the silence… it was unbearable. Mladen stood frozen, skin crawling with dread.
Then the stench struck. Harder, heavier. It overwhelmed them. The railwaymen staggered back, sleeves clutched over their faces, recoiling from the stink of rust, rot, and ruin. The legs of the dead man dragged limply through rust-colored puddles, lifeless and wet.
It felt like some hidden gate had opened—something ancient and wrong. A passage leading to a graveyard beneath the earth, a burial pit of diseased cattle and darker things.
“Come on. That’s enough. On three. One, two—”
“Stop! Do you hear that?” Mladen stood upright. The corpse slipped from their grip and splashed into the shallow water.
Ratko growled, “Now what?!”
“Shhh!”
He was right.
There was a sound. Not one, but many. Faint, dissonant. Every hair on Ratko’s arms stood up. The noise was unlike anything he’d ever heard—like a broken radio crackling, layered with the moans of tortured souls. It came in waves: distorted sobbing, metallic screeches, warcamp wailing—and then, disturbingly clear, a child's giggle. It all echoed through the trees and then disappeared into nonsense.
“What the hell is this?” he rasped. All the alcohol in his system evaporated like smoke, replaced by a hammering headache. An orange glow flared in his vision.
“I have to see,” said Mladen, his voice robotic and vacant, like a wind-up doll reciting its last line.
“Mladen! Where the fuck are you going? We need to get out of here!”
But somehow, the roles had reversed. Now Ratko was the one desperate to leave. Mladen pushed through the underbrush with bare hands, ignoring the blood drawn by thorns.
Then they saw it.
The Dead Water.
A foul, secluded hollow, like a blasphemous temple built in homage to chthonic gods and swamp vapors. The surface was low and sluggish, bubbling from something buried deep—a geyser or something worse.
But that wasn't the worst part.
Floating--no, suspended—above the water was the body of a child. A boy. No older than ten. Mutilated, tied. His wrists and ankles were bound with slime-slicked rope, stretched taut to the twisted trunks of trees. The boy’s body gave the illusion of levitation, as though the trees themselves held him up, unwilling to let him sink into the cursed mire.
From the gaping wounds in his gray flesh, marsh reeds had begun to sprout.
The bubbling water spoke again. Each burst of gas brought a new wave of voices and rot.
“Help me…”
The stench was unbearable—grave-mold, spoiled vegetables, something older than death.
“Please…”
Then, shadows moved on the far side of the swamp.
Figures emerged. Human… almost. Their faces were wrong—twisted, ancient, unreadable. Malicious. One stepped forward: an old woman in a headscarf, copper jewelry clinking on her chest. In her hand, she held a curved blade that shimmered dully in the twilight.
And then—something changed.
The horror stirred.
The corpse they'd just dropped began to move.
“Look!” Mladen screamed. “He’s alive! He’s—aaaagh!”
It broke him. The scream cracked something in his mind. He turned and ran, scrambling up the slope toward the tracks.
Alive? No… not alive. Not after the mutilation it had suffered. Ratko knew it instinctively—this was not life, but reanimation. Something in the water controlled it, pulled its strings like a puppet. That swamp was no place of death—it was a cradle of revival. Of corruption.
Nothing would ever be the same again. Ratko knew what came next.
Mladen would reach the locomotive. He would radio in. The police--the Blue boys—would arrive within the hour, unhurried as always. They’d find the train idling on the track, and a crime scene in the hidden hollow below. They’d do their job. They’d test the blood. They’d ask questions. They’d find Ratko’s bag.
Inside: a handful of condoms. Some toys. Tubes of Vaseline. A small collection of magazines.
The wrong kind of magazines.
And yet…
As these thoughts raced through him, Ratko’s body betrayed him.
He grew hard—so hard it hurt. A spear jutting from his shame. Stronger than ever.
But none of it would matter.
Because he would be dead before they arrived.
From behind him, a cold, slimy hand slipped up from the water and clutched his waist.
Another hand. Then another. And then, a child’s hand—soft, small, and almost tender.
A blessing.
The Dead Water would take him.
Ratko exhaled, slowly. He tried to pull his legs free from the mire, but they sank deeper.
Then came the voice, gentle and final, from behind him:
“Please… stay with me.”
Nenad Mitrovich is the published author of five novels, all written in Serbian language, published on Serbian market.
The short story "Line 54(4)" became the winner of the annual contest of the "Mirko Petrović" library in Negotin (East Serbia) in 2022.
Short story „The right to die“ became a winner on annual competition „Miodrag Borisavljević“ (Serbia) in 2024.
Short story „Belgrade butcher“ was published in US magazine „Dark harbor“ in 2025.
Short story „Samsara – The house of pain“ published in Gothic Gazette publication, Pulp cult magazine, „Withered love“ edition, in 2025.
Short story „Gospel of Ashes“ published in Laughing man house publication - Smitten Land Issue 3, themed “Televangelism horror” in 2025.
Short story “An Advertisement” published in Horrific Scribblings Magazine, in October 2025.
Website: www.nenadmitrovic.rs
email: [email protected]
