The river was murky and brown, resembling a cup of tea that had been left to stand for too long. Arthur, a professional diver, had been hired to retrieve a lost wristwatch from the riverbed. The employer was a young woman in tears, who claimed the watch was the only keepsake left by her former boyfriend. Lured by the generous reward, Arthur took a deep breath and plunged into the opaque water.
Visibility was virtually zero. He had to rely entirely on his sense of touch. The mud at the bottom was viscous and freezing, sinking him slightly with every movement. After half an hour of searching through broken glass and rotting debris, his fingertips brushed against a piece of metal. It was the watch.
Just as he was about to secure it in his waterproof pouch, he placed his right hand on the riverbed for support. Instantly, the texture changed. It was not mud or stone, but a shoulder. A chill ran down his spine, and the oxygen in his lungs seemed to vanish. Turning his head stiffly, he saw a complete human silhouette half-buried in the mud, wearing a cheap transparent plastic raincoat. The hem of the coat fluttered slightly in the current, resembling a beckoning hand.
Panic seized him. Arthur kicked his legs frantically and shot to the surface like a harpooned fish. Gasping for air on the riverbank, he pointed at the water and stammered, “There’s a body… a dead body down there!”
Within minutes, the police arrived and cordoned off the area. Divers were dispatched into the murky water. Wrapped in a blanket, Arthur shivered on the bank, his mind still haunted by the cold, rigid shoulder he had touched.
Eventually, the “body” was dragged onto the shore. The crowd gasped, followed by a dead silence. There was no corpse, nor was there any smell of decay. Lying in the mud was a rubber mannequin, wearing that very plastic raincoat. Strangely enough, the lost wristwatch was still on its plastic wrist.
Baffled, the police examined the mannequin. The shop owner arrived shortly after, sweating profusely, and explained that the display model had been left outside during a storm. When asked how it had sunk, the owner scratched his head in confusion. He guessed that the strong wind might have blown some heavy building stones into the raincoat, turning it into a makeshift sandbag that dragged the mannequin to the bottom.
Arthur stared at the rubber figure in a daze. The wind, the stones, the raincoat, and the mud had conspired to create a terrifying illusion. He looked down at his trembling hands, feeling that the mud at the bottom of the river was far colder than any human heart.