Actaeon and the Fountain
Actaeon did not consider himself to be a superstitious man. If anything, he thought of
himself as brutally cynical and annoyingly practical. It is for these reasons that he knew he was
right about the fountain, and that his sense of unease was actually from some sort of palpable
energy in the air, rather than superstitious beliefs.
Actaeon had lived in the town for his entire life, and he had always found the fountain
sinister. While his peers stupidly and noisily laughed and splashed in the water in elementary
school, he would stand to the side to observe their idiocy, and find solace in his assessment that
one day he would be proven right. When his schoolmates got married near the fountain, he
didn’t mind that he wasn’t invited, because he didn’t want to be near that monstrosity. When his
grandmother wanted her ashes to be spilled into the fountain when she died, he didn’t go to the
funeral out of protest. He couldn't understand how people could stand to splash in the water and
live their lives in its periphery. Any time he walked near it, he felt like the water molecules in his
blood were repelled by the water molecules of the fountain.
The fountain was tall enough that when you stood right in front of it, you had to lean your
head all the way back, and crane your neck to properly take it all in. Its marble body was lined
with sea creature sculptures. Seahorses, dolphins, whales, mermaids. Even sea urchins and
sea cucumbers.
The fountain water gushed out of their mouths as if each sea creature was in a perpetual
state of shock. The water then poured into the basin, which was filled with desperate wishes
worth exactly one penny. Decorative marble waves swirled around the circumference of the
basin. At a quiet point in the day, maybe during the early morning or late night, the fountain was
the only thing you could hear. On busier days, the sound was obscured by the many people
rushing to work, rushing to grab a coffee, or rushing to play soccer with their friends.
Actaeon didn’t understand the reverence that the people in his town had for the fountain.
Where other people saw beauty and proof of divinity, he saw algae-stained, crumbling marble
with water that sputtered out of the sea creature’s mouths in a disturbing way.
Even with his distaste for the fountain, Actaeon found himself in front of it every day,
because his dogs loved the water, and Actaeon loved his dogs. He owned three German
Shepherds. One was large, one was beautiful, and one was strong. Whatever unease he had
about the fountain, he was willing to put it aside for his companions. He was known pretty
simply around town as the man who hated the fountain with the dogs.
One day, similar to every day, Actaeon walked his dogs in the early morning. Pink hues
mixed with blue like cotton candy as the sun rose over the sleepy town. Actaeon yawned as he
and his hounds turned the corner, the highly anticipated end of their morning walk nearing. He
could faintly hear the sounds of joyous, soothing laughter and he breathed in the morning air,
but he didn’t notice anything different. It was only when he looked at the fountain that his heart
stopped with terror.
Three girls from the high school were skinny dipping in the fountain. He saw a flash of
exposed skin before shielding his eyes. He tried to furtively pull the dogs back to the alley.
“Please. Come,” he said as loud as he dared himself to. The girls still didn't notice him.
Actaeon pulled and pulled and pulled but the dogs absolutely bested him in strength.
The dogs decided they could not wait any longer to drink their water fountain elixir, and together
they dragged Actaeon’s body to the base of the fountain, as laughter turned to screams, and the
cobblestone street peeled layers of skin off of Actaeon, and Actaeon’s head hit the basin with a
crack he could feel, a crack so deep it was as if his soul was splitting, as the girls hopped out of
the fountain and quickly put their clothes on. Blood. Actaeon closed his eyes, praying to wake
up from a dream, unsure if he should fight the darkness that was enveloping itself around his
brain, when he could feel water droplets dripping onto his face, the coolness of the fountain
water mixing with the warm blood on his face. Without looking, he could sense that one of the
girls, now clothed, was standing over him.
“He looks dead!” she called out to her other friends.
Silence, as the trio pondered this. “Serves him right!” Actaeon could hear one of them
say in the distance.
“Yeah, serves him right!” Another voice echoed the first one.
“Yeah, serves him right,” the voice in front of him decided.
He could hear her footsteps leaving, pausing, and then returning to spit on his face.
Sweat, saliva, blood, and fountain water form now form a mixture on Actaeon.
Every day, the townspeople see Acteon’s dogs happily drinking from the fountain. No
one questions where Actaeon is, and the disappearance of his foreboding loner presence is a
relief to most of the people.
