"Upside Down Wishes" by Kathryn Tennison

The upside-down, rippling face peers over the rim, gazing down at me without knowing I’m there.

“Wishing well?” says a voice, warped and muffled by the stagnant water. “I wish…I wish that I could have a different life.”

Her tears hit the surface and turn to pearls as they sink into my waiting hands. Close behind them comes a single quarter, spinning and winking, landing tails-up.

“Ugh, this is stupid,” the woman says, wiping her eyes. “It’s not like anybody’s listening.”

Moments later, she’s gone. Clutching my new treasures, I turn upside down and kick free of the gravity of this particular wishing well, out into my own watery domain. Other wishing wells open up all around me—left, right, above, below—but nobody is looking into them, so I continue on to my nest. Centuries-worth of pennies, greenish in hue, encrust the walls. Since today’s coin is a quarter, I take it inside and add it to the chandelier I’ve been painstakingly constructing.

The pearls I place in my jewelry box, for they are the rarest and most precious gifts I receive through the wells.

Well, almost the most precious.

But that one coveted gift has eluded me.

As if the bountiful universe has heard my thoughts, a distorted scream disrupts the water, and I turn toward it. I don’t want to get my hopes up; I’ve been disappointed before. Cautiously, I swim to the opening of my nest and search for the source of the scream, finally spotting the churning water in one of the wells.

I propel myself forward. At first, it’s difficult to see through the furious froth being kicked up, but there is indeed a child in the well.

The boy, maybe eight years old, writhes and screams, choking as water floods his mouth and lungs. My limitations don’t allow me to really do anything until he’s dead, but I push those limits, reaching up and removing one of the boy’s blue tennis shoes and stroking the sole of his foot. His screams become of a different kind. Now he is trying to see what’s beneath him, and in his thrashing, he’s tiring himself out.

I’m with him the whole time as we wait for an adult to appear with a flashlight and a rope, but nobody comes. As the child weakens and slips out of consciousness, I’m able to grab his ankle, pulling him through the bottom of the well and into my world.

Gently, of course. Much more gently than I was treated.

When he awakens, the boy is confused. He looks at the bed of time-softened nickels and moves his hand slowly in front of his face, then he gasps as if expecting to inhale water.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “There’s no death down here.”

Trust me, I’ve tried.

“Who are you?” he asks. It’s the one question I cannot answer.

“I’m lonely,” I say. “I’m liminal.”

“What are all those tunnels?”

“Wishing wells, like the one you came through.”

“But if they’re sticking out all over the place, which way is up?”

“There’s no up here, or down. There’s only me and my treasures.”

I run my fingers through his short, blonde hair, this precious boy, this rarest of gifts. But I must control myself.

I tell him all about my life and how sad I am here alone, only catching glimpses of the human world. While he sleeps, I return to his well and listen to his family’s fruitless search and learn that his name is Charlie. Once or twice, one of them takes a look into the well, as if hoping that Charlie will magically appear. I grin up at them, unseen.

I begin to fear that my own silent wish will never be granted, but then it happens.

“I wish for my son to come back,” says Charlie’s mother. Her quarter lands heads-up in my palm.

Charlie has grown quite fond of me, and he holds my hand as I guide him back toward the wishing well. When he sees his mother's face, he starts to wail. My grip on him tightens. This is exactly the way it happened between me and my predecessor.

“This coin,” I say, holding it up for him to see, “is your ticket home. Or at least it’s a ticket home. Do you want to go home?”

He nods, pearlescent tears rolling up into his beautiful hair.

“Remember this moment,” I say, closing the coin in my fist, heads-up. “It’ll be your only way out someday.”

I swim as close to the surface as I’m normally able to, and then I push through it, gulping in sweet, nighttime, human air. Above me, Charlie’s mother screams as I begin to climb. There’s no telling what I look like after all these years, with only coins and pearls to show me snatches of my reflection.

Dark water streams from my body and patters into the pool at the bottom of the well. Down there, beneath the surface, little Charlie is thinking it looks like being underwater in a swimming pool when it’s raining, and he doesn’t understand yet. I didn’t understand either, not for ages.
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But now, I am free. My wish has come true.

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Kathryn Tennison received her MFA in creative writing from Butler University in Indianapolis. She lives in Arkansas with her husband, two cats, and one enormous dog. When she’s not writing, she enjoys judging characters in horror movies for making decisions that she would probably make herself in the moment. Her work has been published by Bag of Bones Press, Alien Buddha Press, Hearth & Coffin, and Timber Ghost Press. Her debut novel, “Molting”, is forthcoming from Uncomfortably Dark Horror. Follow her on Instagram or Bluesky: @acaffeinatedkat.

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