Dead Water

You cut the engine and the silence that follows is absolute. No gurgle, no lap of water against the hull — nothing. You lean over the railing and stare down. The water beneath the barge is perfectly still, like black glass poured into a mold. You drop a coin. It doesn't ripple. It just disappears.

Then, through the thinning fog, you see it: a steamboat half-swallowed by the reeds, listing slightly to port. Its hull is carpeted in black moss so thick it looks like fur. The wheelhouse windows are dark and intact. Whatever stopped it here stopped it whole.