The Pond

“Be VIGILANT!” The school handout screamed. “If you feel uncomfortable in a situation, GET OUT! Do NOT be afraid to call the police!” I flipped over the handout and on its back someone scribbled in red ink, “The Devil will eat you!” I crumpled the handout and stuffed it into my jean pocket.

The high school parking lot was littered with students who were grouped around their respective cars or their friend’s car. It buzzed with chatter of today’s events, future plans and gossip. Some talked about the Saturday party out by the lake, some argued whether Ms. Castro had Botox, but most proposed and deconstructed theories regarding the disappearance of Nick Wood and Michelle Sweeney.

Nick was a plump sophomore who had coarse greasy hair that was usually tied into a ponytail with an anime print ribbon. A month ago, he disappeared with no one noticing. Michelle was a freshman with long locks of sun bleached red hair that flowed onto her ever present cheerleading uniform. She disappeared a week after Nick, which was the same time people realized that Nick was missing as well. His disappearance became inextricably tied to Michelle. I thought it was sad and beautifully ironic. I pulled and tightened the grey straps of my orange backpack and began crossing the parking lot and through the gauntlet of students.

“She’s dead,” commented one of the stoners with a patchwork of adolescent stubble, “and Nick totally sliced her up because he was like totally into her, like obsessed, and she didn’t want none of that.” “No way man,” refuted another stoner who wore a black wool beanie and was lounging on the back bumper of a red Chevy Aveo. “He was totally chill, man. I think he let me borrow a pen in . . . in . . . shit . . . I think English? Yeah man, I mean Michelle was pretty fuckn’ dope, but he was . . . too . . . like a mouse . . . you know, quiet and all.” Terry, a tall and broad shouldered lacrosse player, strutted through the parking lot towards the two stoners who had congregated around his car. He yelled, “Hey asshole! Get your skinny ass off my car!” The stoner with beanie shot up from his perch. “Sorry, sorry Terry. We were, you know, just talking about Nick and Michelle,” the stoner with the beanie explained. Terry responded, “Nick? That fat kid couldn’t kill nobody, bro. It was probably some crazy homeless perv, like this guy.” Terry pointed his thick index finger at me. I stopped and silently stared at him with, what I imagined, an expression of a confused dog. “What the fuck you looking at? Hahaha.” Terry mocked.

“Nothing, I mean, sorry,” I quietly replied. Sorry for what I thought. I bowed my head down and quickly fled away, attempting to leave my embarrassment and self-loathing by Terry’s Aveo. I continued to traverse the parking lot while maintaining my gaze at the cracked asphalt and my dirty grey sneakers smudged with red paint, occasionally glancing up to get my bearings.

I passed more students loudly advocating their theories about Nick and Michelle: “It was some kind of Satanic cult suicide pact.” “There was this really creepy old Asian guy. I don’t know why but something about him.” “Drugs, brah, drugs.”

“Hey,” someone behind me shouted. “Hey!” The voice was light and slightly high pitched

“He’s a dick.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“It’s crazy they hadn’t found both of them yet.”

Emma was a skinny and awkwardly tall junior who was in nearly every class I had. Her chocolate hair was long and straight that nearly reached the middle of her back. Her thick black framed glasses parted her hair like drawn, tied curtains that revealed a thin porcelain face. Her face was pretty in a nontraditional way — her crooked nose that slightly curved right broke the symmetry of her face and made her look approachable and weirdly more attractive. The thought of holding her delicate hand and kissing her had crossed my mind, but the fantasy would pass as we teased each other like siblings.

“You want to go see that movie?” Emma asked as she matched my pace.

“No, I have to do stuff.”

“Oh c’mon. Wizards! Mischievous elves! Magic!”

“No, I really can’t.”

“Sexy naked nymphs?!”

“I really can’t.” I broke a faint smile.

“Well you heard about the controversy, right? So I guess in one scene these little goblins are sneaking around, snatching these kids so they can harvest and eat their organs.”

“So? It’s gross but what’s the controversy?”

“Duh. Because Nick and Michelle are still missing. I heard some parents want to ban the movie. Because it’s like somehow encouraging the kidnappers.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Yeah. Probably. But there’s something really weird. I understand one missing but two within like a month.”

“I guess.”

“You alright?”

“It’s nothing.”

“I can get your movie ticket if you want.” There was a brief silence that was only breached by the rhythmic sound of our sneakers slapping against the asphalt.

“Is it your dad, again?” Emma asked.

“He wants me around tonight. But maybe, later tonight when he’s asleep.”

“Your mom is a bitch.”

“C’mon, Emma.”

“Well, she is. I know she’s your mom and all, but she left you and . . . and

“I know, okay, Emma. I . . . I know.”

“Sorry.” Emma apologized.

We stopped in front of the entrance into the county forest preserve. It opened up to a gravel trail that sliced through about 2,000 acres of oak and hickory. The trail ended at a subdivision of mid-century bungalows, one of which was my house. A multitude of tiny beams of sunlight shot from the holes in the thick canopy and struck the gravel trail and the forest floor. The floor was covered with moss and dirt and littered with dead branches, fallen trees, and islands of grass. A breeze rushed from the entrance and whipped around Emma’s hair. She used her index finger to hook and draw the bundles of hair away from her face. The breeze smelled like an exhalation of something ancient and old. It was warm and musty and smelled of dirt and wood riding above an undercurrent of flowery sweetness and a hint of sourness.

“Do you smell that?” I asked.

“Sorry, I can’t.” Emma tapped her crooked nose with her index finger. “Well the good thing is no allergies.” She smiled disingenuously.

“Oh. Sorry. I forgot.”

“Don’t worry about it. So you want to go to the movies?”

“How about I just call you if you know . . . if everything is okay.”

“Sure. Sure. You want me to walk with you?”

“It’s okay. It’ll be out of your way. It’ll be dark by the time you head home. Plus remember there’s a killer loose.” I feigned a small smile.

“I’ll be okay. You sure you don’t me to come with you?”

“Yeah. I kind of want to be alone.”

I turned towards the entrance and walked into the forest. The air in the forest was noticeably warmer and thicker. The gravel crackled under my sneakers. I looked back and Emma was standing there looking at me, fighting her whipping hair with her thin fingers. I waved and she waved back. At that moment, I wanted to her to come with me, but pride cemented my lips together. I headed deeper into the forest.

“He nearly died,” the doctor remarked. “Be grateful that he only lost the use of his body below the waist.” That was his diagnosis after my father fell off his ladder and cracked his back on our concrete pool deck. The first year was full of optimism and we forged strong bonds among my mother, father, and me as we adjusted to the new challenges and routines. I thought we would be okay, and I did feel grateful in that first year.

The yelling didn’t suddenly erupt. It was a slow simmer of slights and subtle cutting remarks between my father and mother. My father couldn’t go back to work as a contractor and his disability check wasn’t enough to cover the regular expenses and ever increasing medical bills. His accident was a horrible comedy. A man who had never had a major worksite accident had his body broken by removing leaves and debris from the gutter. My mother began working part-time at a local convenience store a couple miles from the house, in addition to her full-time job as an office manager. The toll of her work and taking care of my father slowly twisted my mother’s usual look of care and concern into looks of aggravations. Her banal chitchat and gossip while she cleaned my father’s mess or doing other caretaker duties later became silence that eventually became heavy sighs and finally outright comments of frustration. My father fed off her aggravations and frustrations and reflected it back like warped funhouse mirrors.

In the midst of my parents’ yelling and solitary but audible crying, I wished he would have broken his neck. After about three years from the accident, my mother left my broken father and me for a handsome salesman who sold medical equipment. They somehow met in the parking lot of my father’s doctor’s office, after one of many appointments. One time, maybe it was the first, I saw her laugh and brush her hand against the salesman’s upper arm as I wheeled my father to our car. I knew what I saw, but I didn’t want to believe it. “Mom!” I yelled. She stuck one index finger up as to indicate that she needed a minute or she needed me to hush. After another laugh and flicker of her chestnut hair, she came into the car with a smile that I hadn’t seen since before my father’s accident.

My father emptily brushed the separation off and frequently told me he was glad she left. She was a whore in high school and she’s a whore now he would say. One late night I went to the kitchen for water. I saw a bluish glow coming from the ajar bedroom door. The carpeting muffled my footsteps, and I snuck up to the sliver of blue light and saw my father scrolling through Facebook pictures of my mother and her new life. The pictures showed my mother smiling and laughing with her arms around the medical salesman. As my father scanned through the pictures, his face had a scowl that was interrupted by a brief look of sadness. I heard him whimper and growl and then slam both of his fists onto his useless legs, muttering something unintelligible. I withdrew into the darkness and quietly slid into my bed. As I laid on my bed, staring at the ceiling that strangely looked dark and vast like the surface of the ocean at night, I wondered if my mother thought of us.

Oddly, there was no sounds of chirping birds or the drumming of woodpeckers in the forest. It was mainly quiet but for the rustling of the leaves. Even the sound from my footsteps on the gravel was muffled. The smell of the forest was sweet and the air was heavy and moist. I began to sweat but it wasn’t uncomfortable. There was a warmth as inviting and pleasant as a thick comforter in the dead of winter. Among the tree trunks and the brush, I caught something shimmering. It was nearly blindingly bright. And surrounding it, there was a halo of rainbows.

Not long after my mother left, my father began drinking. In the winter, he drank in his room with the door shut. His drinking was evidenced by an empty liquor bottle and my father passed out and snoring in his wheelchair. But when it was warm, my father drank cheap whiskey by our pool that was now defunct. The pool was effectively a pond containing greenish scum and trash that fell into it — mainly old newspapers and fast food wrappers. I never asked why he drank by that pool. Maybe he was reminiscing the good past and reliving pleasant memories. My father beamed as my mother and I, with our hands locked together, jumped up and down after he announced that we would be getting an in-ground pool. In the summer, even after being at the job site all day, my father would leisurely swim laps in our small pool. He screamed at me, “Come on in! It feels real nice!” Then he proceeded to kick water at me. But now, I don’t hear him yelling ecstatically for me to jump into the pool. I hear his snoring and mumblings as I wheel him back into the house; his grunts as I place him on his bed; and his mutterings as I change his diaper, clean him, and put new pants on him.

But my time with my drunk father didn’t always consist of a sad quietness. Sometimes he’d boil and overflow with an anger that we both knew where it came from but chose to remain silent about. He would try to hit me — strenuously spinning his wheels over the thick carpeting and then attempting to wildly swing at me. His striking radius was limited by the length of his arm and the confines of the chair. I could have easily have avoided his fists, but I didn’t. Watching him flail his arms hurt more than the actual punches. His flailing arms were like a nine-tail ripping and tearing at my heart. The hits provided both of us some kind of relief.

I noticed I wasn’t on the gravel path anymore. Instead, I found myself among the undergrowth somewhere in the forest; on a path that appeared to have been cut by animals lumbering through the undergrowth year after year. The air was almost suffocatingly thick, and it was hot despite the shade of the canopy. I didn’t understand how I ended up off the gravel path, a path I couldn’t see now. The same bright light shined in front of me. I squinted and attempted to block some of the light with my hand. Around the brightness and through the rainbow halo, I noticed that there was water. I realized that the bright light was sunlight reflecting off water. Suddenly, there was a faint singular cry in the distant. I swiveled my head side-to-side, trying to decipher and locate the cry among the rustling of the leaves. For a moment I thought I heard my name. But now there was only the sound of the leaves again. I pondered for a few minutes about which direction I should go. If I headed away from the light, I thought I would surely end back on the gravel path. Walking through this forest nearly everyday of my high school life, I had never known there to be any bodies of water, river, lake or otherwise, near the path home. My father would have already passed out, and so I would have some time, I thought. So I decided to walk towards the light and the mysterious body of water.

The air smelled overwhelmingly sweet, not like chocolate, but like thousands and thousands of blooming lilacs and roses. But underneath the sweetness, there was an undercurrent of sourness, faintly like burning rubber. As I approached the water, the forest receded and there was a large clearing with a field of wild flowers exploding with yellow pollen that hovered momentarily and fell like gentle snow flurries. In the middle of the clearing there was a circular pond that was approximately 30 feet in diameter. The water was crystal clear and looked cool and refreshing. There were some cattails near the edges of the pond and a few lilies floating on its surface. A gentle breeze caused small waves that crashed against its flowery shores. At one edge of the pond, a tall dead tree stood. There were small patches of leaves parsed out on the trunk and the dead branches. On a large thick branch that extended over the pond, there was a small, thin, grey creature sitting on the limb, and it was playing a wooden flute.

I rubbed my eyes but the creature was still there. Oddly, I didn’t feel afraid or even shocked because it felt like the creature had always been here and rightfully should have been here. To think of this pond without the creature felt abnormal and weird. It belonged to this place like a window on a house. The creature had thin limbs but its head was large and round. Its legs dangled from the branch and swung back and forth as its thin long fingers covered and uncovered the holes drilled in the wooden flute. As the creature inhaled in preparation to play the next bar, it showed its rows and rows of needle-like teeth contained in its large mouth. When the creature blew, no sound came out of the flute. Instead I felt a wave of warmth and comfort and peace. Thoughts of my father, my mother, and my past seemed to melt away. As if, the weight of it all just disappeared. Tears welled in my eyes, and I fought not to cry. When I looked below the creature, the water looked more appealing than before, and I inexplicably craved a baptism in the pond. I dropped my backpack and strolled towards the pond, luxuriating in the warmth and peace of this magical place.

I thought I heard my name again. It was faint, muddled, and distant, but I was nearly certain it was my name. I continued towards the pond, snapping the tiny branches strewn among the wild flowers underneath my sneakers. I saw the creature dancing on top of its branch. Its thin fingers quickly flickering up and down and across the ancient flute. A couple of feet away from the pond, the air was heavy and with substance, so much so that I felt like I could feel it on my skin. It felt oily but stuck to my skin and clothes. In the water, I saw the supposedly dead Nick and Michelle swimming in the pond.

They were naked, unashamed, and smiling. Nick was floating on his back, occasionally kicking his leg to propel him around the pond. A portion of his belly protruded out from the water like a human iceberg. Michelle was dog paddling around the pond and her red hair splayed out on top of the surface of the water. Her long hair barely covered her buttocks. “Nick! Michelle!” I cried out. They didn’t respond. They just smiled back and continued to swim. Again I heard my name, but this time it was clear and unquestionable. I scanned around the pond but I didn’t see anyone other than my two missing classmates and the grey creature dancing and playing his flute. Suddenly, my father emerged out from behind the cattails. Unlike Nick and Michelle, he was fully clothed, wearing his grey sweat pants and a black t-shirt — one out of the many shirts bought in bulk at Costco. He kicked his legs as he sidestroked into the middle of the pond. He was swimming like he did before the accident, I thought. My father looked at me and screamed, “Come on in! It feels real nice!”

“Dad?” I responded. “How did you get here?”

“Come on in! It feels real nice!”

“Dad, what’s going on? Why is Nick and Michelle here? Why are you here?”

“Come on in! It feels real nice!”

The pond did look nice. If you could look past the sun shimmering on the surface of the pond, you could see multitudes of tiny, rainbow colored obsidian shards littered on the bottom of the pond. As I looked at my dad smiling and laughing as he splashed in the pond, I felt happy and content.

“Come on in! It feels real nice!”

Everything about this felt odd but it also felt oddly right. I looked at the creature again. Its fingers were now a blur, rapidly playing one silent note after another. I heard my name again. The voice was a woman’s voice, and it had a sense of urgency to it. “Come on in! It feels real nice!” My dad smiled and waved for me to come into the pond. I felt a sudden tug on my arm and heard someone yell my name. I peered behind me and saw no one. I began unbuttoning my shirt. I felt the tug again but it was more powerful than the last one. Shortly thereafter, someone shrieked my name from behind me. I turned around and saw Emma crying.

“Emma? What are you doing here?”

She suddenly stopped crying and looked shocked and confused. “What the fuck are you doing?!” She screamed.

“What do you mean? I’m going to go for a swim. My dad, Nick, and Michelle are already in there. Do you want to come?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?!” She yelled.

“Huh? The pond . . . over there . . . I’m going for a swim.”

“Pond? There’s no fuckn’ pond!”

I turned back towards the pond and instead of it being made from crystal clear water, it was a large pool of sloshing, bubbling, viscous tar. A large dome of noxious vapor hovered over it and a few feet from its shore. The air smelled like burning rubber but there still was a lingering hint of sweetness. My stomach wrenched, and I began dry heaving. I suddenly lost strength in my legs and fell to my knees. I felt dizzy and the world appeared to spin around me. I tried to grab the wild flowers but my hands grabbed only dirt and sticky tar. I realized that there was no field of flowers and that the branches that were snapping underneath my feet weren’t branches at all but countless bones of small and large animals. Among the bones there were piles of tattered clothing. On top of the pile there was a shredded high school cheerleading skirt and a torn ribbon.

“Help,” I mumbled. “We have to get out of here. The gas. . . .”

“I don’t smell anything,” Emma responded. I waved for her to help me up. She grabbed my arm and slung it over her shoulders and attempted to help me stand. We both wobbled up. In the corner of my eye, I saw the grey creature dancing and playing his flute at the base of the large, dead tree, but it began slowly moving towards us. “We have to get out of here,” I muttered. We stumbled forward and staggered away from the tarpit. As we approached the trees at the edge of the clearing, Emma nervously asked, “Did you see that . . . uh . . . that grey thing?” I swung my head back and saw the grey creature dancing among the bones, kicking them up as it danced a jig in the clearing. It grinned from ear to ear as it continued to play its flute. “Come on, Emma, we just gotta go,” I weakly ordered.

When we plunged into the forest and the undergrowth, I felt instantaneously better. I felt strength return to my legs, and I was able to stand without Emma’s help. “What’s going on?” Emma nervously asked. “I’m not sure. We just can’t be here. I don’t know if it was the fumes from the tarpit or . . . or . . . the flute . . . . All I know we have to start running, away from this place. Okay?” I answered. Emma nodded affirmatively. I took my arm off Emma’s shoulders. I grabbed her hand, and we began running. We sprinted through the undergrowth and back to the gravel path. From there, we ran as fast as we could towards the forest exit. The trees sped by us and the air, now cool, struck our faces, causing us to tear. As we ran the gravel and tiny rocks on the path were thrown up in the air behind us, producing a trail of grey dust. After we emerged from the forest, we caught our breath. The forest groaned and creaked like an old home. Weaved within the rustling of the leaves, I thought I heard faint notes from a flute. Emma quizzically looked back at the forest and then at me. We stared at each, silently acknowledging the now audible music. We started to run again. We didn’t stop until we reached my house, a mid-century bungalow with a dark grey stucco facade.

I opened the chocolate brown front door and called for my father but there was no answer. “Maybe he’s not here,” Emma proposed. “Dad!” I shouted. We made our way to the back of the house, passing between the blue upholstered couch and a wooden coffee table with dents and gouges caused by my father’s wheelchair. We passed by my room; messy enough that I would have been too embarrassed to show Emma in other circumstances. We approached my father’s bedroom door. It too had dents and gouges, but they were from my father’s half-hearted, angry punches. I opened my father’s bedroom door and discovered an empty bedroom with a couple of empty beer bottles and his laptop displaying a swirling screensaver. “Dad!” I shouted again. There was no response. We walked to the back of the house. The hallway opened up to the kitchen that was fairly clean but for an empty, green plastic bowl that sat next to the sink. The interior of the house by the look of it wasn’t out-of-place, but something felt amiss. Normally, I wouldn’t have worried about my missing father because I expected him to be passed out by the dead pool. But this time, it felt different. Emma also looked concerned beneath her disheveled hair that glistened with sweat and behind her glasses that have slid down by the tip of her nose.

I took a deep breath and opened the backdoor. There by the pool, my father’s wheelchair sat — empty. And next to it was an empty whiskey bottle. We trod slowly to the pool edge and found my father floating facedown in the muck and algae of a half-empty pool. Crumpled flyers and other trash had congregated around my father’s black shirt and grey sweat pants. I didn’t cry, but I noticed I was still holding Emma’s hand. The air was warm again and the noise of the subdivision — children laughter, cars rolling on pavement, and the buzzing of the lawnmowers — ceased. We looked at each other and then our eyes fell down to the empty bottle next to the wheelchair. Our shadows stretched over the concrete and the bottle. The shadows filled the bottle, and it appeared as if the bottle was now filled with a swirling black liquid. There was a waft of sweetness and a faint melody of a flute. I squeezed Emma’s hand.