Black Ponds

The water is still. No ripples disturb the black mirror surface. A vast inky spill in the middle of the dark green expanse. The green is haunting as if the beauty of each tree and bush is tainted from drinking up the water of the forest pond. No sign of infection or illness spots any leaf, trunk or branch, though each tree seams to reach from the soaked soil. Arms of the black expanse ready to grab and infect the very air. The moisture that hangs dense, chokes and strangles, no refreshing breath is found here. The area is mostly untouched by man, other than the small trails and signs that surround the pond and give passage to a clearing of grass and weeds on the south side of the lake.

Over my life I have been to many ponds in forests, but never has the absolute absence of sound chilled me. Even with the still water of the pond not even a mosquito makes an appearance on this stage. The pond seeming to have made it clear it is the only parasite allowed here. Then I showed up, flying in the face of that rule.

Since I left highschool my life has been an endless pursuit of self malice disguised as pleasure seeking. Constant promises spoken and predictably broken to all those around me. Directionless pursuit of just enough money during the weekend to dull the anxiety with any concoction of drugs or alcohol, hoping one weekend it either kills me or the promised drug induced spirituality gives me some direction.

It never did, it only grew a deeper hole. A more expansive longing for meaning to filled. I could hardly get out of bed at this point. Wallowing in all my failures and self pity in my fresh adult life. I eventually was calling in sick to my job 1-2 times a week worried that if I left my room all my sadness and worry would buy a pack of razors for me. My head became disconnected from the rest of me, I would just watch myself do things while I just yelled at myself silently to do better and how much of screw up I was.

Then one night I completely disconnected from my actions, my body took the wheel. As if my head had said one too many things over the past years. I couldn’t control it any longer, I got up watched as I got in a car, drove two miles into town, walked into our local department store. I walked slowly down the isles searching on the outside and screaming in terror and fear on the inside.

Then there I was, standing in front of a king beige snake, meant for labour and work, but for me was my last earthly purchase. A strong and sturdy rope. I couldn’t figure out of it would hold me as I turned the package over and over trying to find a weight limit. I found it and to my surprise I just made the cut.

“200-220lbs.”

“Made for the biggest of jobs” scrawled across the front of the package. I giggled to myself, the irony of such positive messaging in contrast to such a deeply disturbed mind about to commit a deeply disturbing act.

In this moment I realized the my mind had taken back over control, but my mission had not changed but gained a new variable of self control over my deep desire to end my pain.

I returned home 15 minutes later, the parking lot to the family apartment was covered in puddles from the rain that had fallen just hours before. Filling each concrete bowl that scattered between each yellow line of the parking lot. The clouds were starting to clear and the moon cut through with vibrant white light in each gap in the clouds. I took one last look around. Taking in the freshness of the air, how cool it felt on my skin, the moisture that filled each breath, and then I caught just on the tree line, small movement on the trail that lead into the wood behind my house. I brushed it off as an animal.

I realized then that I had never through all 20 years of living in my family home, actually mustered the time or energy to go in there, and I never would. My thoughts then returned to the task at hand, get up to my balcony.

Once I had reached the balcony, I slowly tried to tie the noose, it was too loose.

“God, I wish I had time to practice…”

As this left my lips, I realized, there would never be time to practice this or anything, I was going to bad at tying a noose for the rest of my life. Will people realize how bad it is? Will they make comments as they pull me up or cut me down, on how badly I tied my rope? I down to the parking lot below, the clouds had cleared now, the puddles each had a big white moon in each of them, like giant eyes all watching me as worked away.

“Made for the biggest jobs!” I laughed to myself one last time.

Then all of sudden all the sadness, pain, and self pity flowed out of my eyes. I couldn’t stop, it just came and came, feeling as if I didn’t stop soon my eyes would dry out like raisins in their sockets. I began to scream into my hands,

“I’ll never be good at tying rope”

This was the only thought that pulled me down from that ledge that night, I was home alone. Not that it would have changed much if my parents or siblings were there too. But I escaped that urge, it felt as if I had wiggled my way out the hands of some greater entity, that had drove all my mind and body towards that goal. Stopped and wounded by the simple fact I wanted to better at tying a rope, I wanted to better at lots of things.

The next few days didn’t seem real, I had moments where I questioned if I really had died and I was just in my last moments of dreaming. I waited for it all to go black one day for hours, but when it never came, when I felt the grip of my urge finally leave, I relaxed and slept like I had never slept before.

Then the next week I sat down one day, decided to get into school. Trying to will meaning through education, fill the bottomless pit of misery that had grown over the last 3 years. I put my all into my grades and school work. Then the slow isolation crept upon me, I never talked or made any connections. Slowly freinds slipped away, my ability to talk to anyone fell like sand through my fingers, and I eventually gave up. For the next two semesters I was a ghost, my assignments would arrive in electronic mail boxes, though I was no where to be seen.

In mid April a week before the start of summer and end of finals, I layed down in a tiny twin bed and drifted off. I could feel cold, slime of a dark substance beneath my feet, and when I looked up a vast black puncture by tiny white sparks, the moon so bright it illuminated my surroundings. I was chilled to my core, the muck beneath my bare feet seemed to wriggle between my toes. As if the grass was grabbing me, I then looked out across a moonlit pond. The moon reflecting perfectly off the obsidian black surface. Then I saw a clearing across the pond, someone stood there, too far away to make out. They slowly walked towards the pond, my heart began to race, I had no knowledge of why all primal instincts in my body were set off in this moment. My breath became rapid as I choked on the moist air, tasting of rotting wood. My fear awoke me, panting and coldly sweating into my sheets, as if the air in my dream had condensed on my skin.

This dream haunted me all summer long, repeating over and over, becoming a moment longer each time. At this point the figure would submerge past the top of their head, no ripples, no struggle just the continuing silence of the scene. As I stood on the other side of lake watching a person drown themselves. The pain of the cold not allowing any movement from my muddy position.

Nearing the end of the summer, two days before my expected return to my dingy cave of isolation that waited for me at my university. I stepped out from my steam filled shower to towel off. As I looked in the mirror I saw black water come up slowly from the drain below, a familiar and foul smell emerged from the water. My disgust was then over powered, I felt drawn to the water, like it was a seductress. And as I tilted my head over the sink to stare into the inky mess that had stopped just short of over flowing my sink basin, I saw the reflection of that same moon from my dream. I jumped back almost screaming, but the cold that had frozen me so many times as I watched that poor soul take his own life swallowed all the energy I had left in my body. I felt as if I had become a cold stiff corpse without dying.

I awoke the next morning on the floor, confused and convinced it had been a dream.

I went on with my day and nothing happened as I returned to school the next week and started classes.

It was on my first day of the second week, I stepped into my philosophy class early to read over the reading assignment from last class. I was half way through when, the room chilled, my skin felt began to feel moist, and each breath in was moist, tasted and smelled of rain. When I looked up I had to hold back a scream or it was held back for me by my fear. There I was again, back in the parking lot, surrounded by the moon filled puddles. I looked up across the parking lot, I was near the tree line, and there I was getting out of the car. I closed my eyes, begged for it to all be a dream. When I opened them, there I was back in my lecture hall, confronted with face of two confused peers. I ran, never looked back, as I bursted through the doors out into the hall and back outside to my car.

The next few days I spent alone in my apartment, haunted by more dreams whether waking or sleeping about that parking lot, sometimes reliving that night, sometimes watching me actually go through with the deed from the tree line of the parking lot.

Today, after 2 long weeks of no sleep and lack food, eyes sunken and bags that aged me 5 years, bloated and pale despite my food intake, a small bruising forming on my hands and toes, like the beginning to narcosis; the urge has returned, the grip I felt that night one year ago held tightly around my body.

I got in my car, for the hour drive back to my parents, I had called them that morning telling them I needed to see the doctor, faking a jolly and optimistic tone. As the day went on the control I had over my body once again relinquished, the driving, walking, and taking was not me.

I arrived home just before dark, it had only slightly rained that day, but even so the uneven parking lot still had pools of dark water scattered all over. As I stepped from my car, I looked at the tree line where I was positioned in my visions. A shock spiraled up my spine, the grip over my body tightened. I then turned and watched my body take me back up stairs, spend a night watching a movie and eating dinner with my parents. They asked how I felt and details on my appointment the next day, I effortlessly came up with lies about times and how I was doing. I screamed internally to be saved, but it wouldn’t leave my lips only bouncing around in the prison I was now in.

After dinner I layed down and waited for night to come. At 12:34am, I then stood up, the dread returned as I descended the stairs back down to the parking lot. I then stood across from that spot in the tree line, and as my eyes landed on it, my control over my entire body was completely relinquished. I just began to walk, reaching the trees, stepping into the muddy soil of the woods, the moon watching over me. And I walked.

So here I am now, cold, scared, and shaking. Sucking in each choking breath of air, the trees reaching out from their watery mother that reflects the vast white moon in the sky back at me. The smell of rotting wood fills my nostrils, I stand here for a moment. And I look up, there across the pond is a white figure illuminated by the light.

I begin to walk forward, still screaming in my head for my body to stop.

I’m now up to chest in black water, the mud sucks at my shoes, my eye stare forward at the figure across the lake. They just stare in fear. At this moment just as my eyes descend under, I see the outline of my face. Tears can just be made out as spill out of my eyes, the cold holds him and he can’t scream for me to stop. I know the feeling, cause I saw it all those nights ago, I empathize with the fear he feels for me as I descend further into the black. It’s too late, the empathy won’t save me, I was dead already, I died a year ago on that balcony my body just continued on. As I suck in automatically, my lungs burn as they fill with water. My vision blurs, and blackness fills me. All my pain and hopelessness dissolves into the water, I flow into the tree roots, forever reaching out from that black pond, breathing out a rotting stench, that fills the lungs and hearts of each future visitor.