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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/camwalker22 on 2025-09-22 18:14:59+00:00.

There were four children queuing to go down the water slide.

“Wait,” I said, showing my palm to a little girl with pink goggles. A squeal burst through her lips as she waited for the red light to go green.

“Just wait there,” I repeated, watching the kid who’d gone before get spat into the pool below.

“OK, sitting up or lying on your back. Don’t go headfirst.”

The girl skipped forward and sat shaking with excitement in front of the jets that poured water down the lazy coil of the slide. Over the yawning mouth of the covered plastic chute, a sign emphasises that this slide is not–by any stretch of the imagination–for thrill-seekers.

TAKE IT EASY ON THE ZAMBEZI!

The light went green, and before I could say anything, the girl scooted herself over the lip, down the slide, and around the bend, the shrill warble of her scream making me wince.

“Next,” I said, massaging the area around my right ear.

A little boy with a streak of dried snot below both nostrils waddled forwards, and on my signal, he gripped the bar, hurled himself into the chute and flipped onto his belly.

“Turn over!” I said, but it was too late. I stood up to see him plunge into the pool in a graceless backward sprawl .The lifeguard down on poolside gave me a thumbs-up, letting me know he was uninjured and I let my gaze linger for a moment as she pulled her heel up onto the chair with two manicured hands. Turning back around, I lectured the penultimate child in the queue–a pale girl with hair so blond it was almost white.

“Don’t do that, ok? Sitting up or lying on your back only. I’m not trying to be a killjoy, I’m trying to keep you safe. That’s my job.”

The girl’s eyes never met mine. Instead, she looked into the shadows of the Zambezi, which are made thick and soupy by the colour of the plastic–an opaque brown. One day, no-doubt in a drab, grey office somewhere, a water slide designer passed over a host of bright and marvellous colours, only to choose brown. Nothing screams fun like brown, right?

“Are you ready?” I asked the pale girl, but her eyes seemed far away, like she was sleepwalking. There was no fidgeting. No giggling. No cheekiness, even. She looked duty-bound to go down the slide.

With one serene push, she entered the chute, gliding around the bend. I waited for her to pop out at the bottom, using the opportunity to look at the lifeguard again. Her tanned skin. Her air of indifference. Something about the new lifeguard was magnetic to me. Bewitching.

She met my eye. Frowned. Looked away. Glanced up again. Curled her lip in disgust.

“What?” she mouthed.

I was staring at her. Stop staring. Stop it.

“Has she–has the girl left the slide yet?” I shouted down, but the lifeguard didn’t hear me. I scanned the empty splash zone. Had the girl landed and climbed out while I’d been gawking at my colleague? Surely I hadn’t been distracted for that long.

I checked the cameras only to see a steady stream of water rushing along the bottom of the chute. The girl was nowhere to be seen.

“Can I go yet?” asked the boy who was last in line.

“Yeah, I suppose,” I said, distracted and in disbelief.

The boy went down the slide, and I tracked his progress on the cameras all the way to the bottom. He climbed out of the pool and trotted towards the changing rooms as the lifeguard climbed down from her perch. I’d half-expected him to plough into the girl on his way down, but he showed no sign of his trip on the slide being anything other than routine.

I shut down the camera feed and the water jets from the control panel. I locked the gate behind me and set about hosing plasters and hairballs into gutters by the walkway. With everything squared away, I switched off the lights, but a sound prevented me from heading out to the foyer.

A thud.

From inside the Zambezi.

“Hello?” I said, my voice echoing across the tops of folding chairs in the viewing gallery to the back wall some eighty metres distant.

All I heard was the steady dripping of a tap–a sound very much in the realm of the ordinary at the swimming pool. That thud, however, was not.

I strode along the poolside, taking care not to slip, especially because it was pitch dark–the only illumination came from fire-exit signs above doors. A grim scenario entered my mind where I’d fall, bang my head and slide unconscious into the water beneath the pool cover. Even if I came to my senses, I’d have to struggle fully clothed against its smothering weight.

“Hello? Anyone there?” I called out from the bottom of the stairs leading up to the Zambezi’s mouth.

No reply.

But that creaking thud had to be her, right? I’d seen that little girl go down the slide. I swear I had!

I unlocked the gate and climbed up, crouching at the entrance to the slide itself, listening to a faint pulsing. A quiet heaving. It was the sound of a dying man breathing through a respirator at the opposite end of a hospital corridor. Slow. Weak. Helpless.

The thought of a scared little girl somehow trapped in the slide made me step forward into its (now-dry) throat. It was a squeeze, but I could just about navigate my way around the bend. Here, I truly left the light behind. All focus now switched to what I could hear. My footsteps knocked hollow against plastic as I groped forwards, and my breathing quickened. I started sweating. A fingernail from the cold hand of claustrophobia tickled my neck. My eyes bulged in their sockets.

As I began to question what I was doing, I heard it. A voice, soft and song-like, echoed all around me.

“Have you come to rescue me?”

“Yes. Yes, I have. Where are you?”

“Why did you come?”

“Because it’s my job. Now, come on. Let’s get you out of here and back to your grown-up.”

“And you wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t your duty?”

“No, I would’ve.”

“LIAR!” shouted the voice, suddenly venomous. The slide tremored in tandem with the outburst, and I fell back onto my haunches in shock. It didn’t feel like I was talking to a little girl anymore, but when the voice spoke again, it was once more a songbird.

“I like you.”

“Th-thanks.”

“Do you like me?”

“Yes.”

“We’re friends then?”

“I suppose.”

“One of the best things about friendship is the gifts friends give each other. I love gifts.”

There was no obvious response I could conjure in that moment, but despite the pressing darkness, I felt watched. Perceived. And there was something expectant about that regard.

I reached into the pockets of my shorts and rummaged for a half-empty pack of chewing gum.

I held it out in front of me on a flat palm.

“You can have this if you like.”

The tiny packet was snatched from me and replaced with a different item.

“Thank you. And it’s freely offered? This gift?”

“Of course. Have you given me a gift too?” I said, gulping.

The voice was chewing now.

“Oh, that. Yeah. Give it to that lifeguard you want to fuck. It’s an exact replica of the yellow tulip on the front of the diary she writes in every night.”

Blushing, my hand closed around the stem, and I felt my way up to the petals. The thing in the slide with me was most definitely not a child, and nobody knew I wanted to do…that, apart from me. But that wasn’t the only thing I wanted. I’m not like other guys.

“You don’t need to breathe like a hunted thing, friend. She’s repulsed by you anyway.”

“Repulsed?”

“Most everyone is. You’re a jot above worthless.”

I thought back to the ugly look the lifeguard had given me when I’d stared at her. Was it true?

“What are you?”

“She doesn’t want to fuck you, la la la! she doesn’t want to fuck you, la la la! she doesn’t want to fuck you! FUCK YOU!” sang the voice.

“And I don’t want to fuck her. But you didn’t answer my question.”

“Oh! So what do you want to do to her? Nothing so grandiose and treacherous as love her, I hope.”

I bit my lip.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said after a moment.

“What do you believe I am? A scared little girl?”

“No. I thought you were. But now…”

The Zambezi creaked again. The source of the sound was somewhere ahead of me. A rush of warm air wafted against my face as the breathing I’d heard as I entered the slide returned.

It was louder now.

Closer.

Hungrier.

“Do you believe I’m real?” The mouth that spoke those words couldn’t have been more than an inch from the tip of my nose. Its pitch had deepened, but behind the menace I sensed a vulnerability. It was as though the thing needed my validation to exist. Smelling its hot, putrid breath and hearing the plastic groan as whatever was in the chute with me moved around, I very much believed it was real. And I almost said so. Almost.

“No. I came in here to help a little girl I thought was stuck. It seems I was mistaken, but I’m going to keep searching anyway.”

Thirty long seconds went by.

A minute.

Two.

“I’ll help you,” the voice said, and the creaking in the slide advanced towards me.

“No, no. I’ll be fine, thanks,” I squeaked as the presence barged through and past me and out the top of the slide. The air inside the chute cooled. The charge in the air dissipated. My goosebumps settled.

And then I heard a quick buzz followed by a swishing, sloshing sound.

I screamed as my feet were swept from under me and the back of my head crashed against the bottom of the chute. I felt myself sliding around and around and around until the bottom of the Zambezi was no longer flush to my back.

I was airborne for a split second, and then I was underwater for an eternity. Submerged in the …

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