I asked for story prompts on my Instagram, and I finally got around to writing this one!
Since it’s September, I’ve fully embraced the spooky somber fall vibes. I don’t celebrate Halloween, but I do love a bit of a mystery/thriller/eerie feelings. I hope this story fits the bill!
Prompt: It was quiet, 2:30 a.m., and the heel of her shoe was broken. She was soaked and happy, but… the sky couldn’t lie. It hadn’t rained in Maple Hills since 1879, and her mother was bound to know that she’d visited the pond again.
But Marjorie Jane couldn’t help it. She’d felt lost in this world since she’d turned 13. She saw the way people looked at her. She didn’t even have to say a thing. Before she even got to, “Hi, my name is—” she’d already been labeled a social outcast.
Was it her glassy green eyes, the color of a forgotten fishbowl? Was it how her hair was perpetually on the verge of frizz, holding itself in the air in a way that defied physics?
“You shut people out with a look,” her mother had told her once. But Marjorie Jane didn’t mean to. She wanted to welcome them in. How was she getting the message so wrong?
On her fifteenth birthday, heartbroken after no one showed up to her birthday party, she’d fled into the woods behind her house. She remembered the wild, fiery feeling that coursed through her as her cheap cotton dress billowed around her. Her feet flew faster and faster, shoeless even though she knew that was unwise. Yet she never once stumbled on a twig or rock.
It was as if the forest was welcoming her. It was the first living thing to ever give MJ such a warm greeting.
She must have run for days, the air sufficing as her water, her bread, her meat. She wanted to run forever, away from the cruelty of her peers and the way they watched her in solemn authority like a jury waiting to sentence her to the chair.
She only stopped when the world opened up again, and the treetops gave way to marbled sky. An oasis spread before her, all the colors so bright it were as if she were in a photo and someone had turned the vibrance all the way up. Neon green fan-like fronds framed a lusciously aqua pond, and the whispery arms of a willow tree fell down like stars from heaven to brush the pond’s surface.
Ducks warbled to each other from beside the pond, as if discussing MJ’s presence. One duck gave a decided quack, then locked eyes with the girl and waddled over to her.
Quack, quack, he welcomed. He kept a respectful distance away, but his eyes were full of curiousity and intelligence.
The pond became her heaven. She disappeared there every evening after school to do homework, read, and try to memorize every branch and leaf and grass blade. Her mother never asked why she got home later than all the other school children. As long as MJ got good grades, she didn’t pry into unimportant questions like her daughter’s whereabouts.
Tonight had been different. It was the end of the school year, and she dreaded that which everyone else celebrated as the pinnacle of their scholastic career: the prom.
She’d have no dress to wear. No date to bring her. No dance moves to impress the social elite. But there was no getting out of it. Attendance was mandatory, unless you could manifest a doctor’s note or preplanned nonnegotiable vacation.
MJ only lasted ten minutes. The music was too loud, the lights too bright. Some unforeseen force kept her ten feet away from everyone at all times, and mentally she felt millions of miles away. All these kids cared about who liked who and how many more years it was until they could get into a bar without getting IDed.
An image flashed in her brain, in time with the music. It was the pond. It was calling to her.
Come back.
Then she was back in the gym, the skyless gym. A group of kids laughed loud and hard, probably at an inside joke she’d never understand. A tall guy with spiky blonde hair spilled punch on the floor but ignored it. Sploosh. Someone stepped in the red liquid. Sploosh, sploosh. Three more kids walked right through the puddle then tracked it across the gym. They looked like the squiggly tracks of an otherworldly animal.
Come home.
The pond was in front of her again, still and silent in contrast with the madness currently in front of her.
Her heart pulled at her legs to start running, her arms to pump harder so she could get there faster.
Who would notice?
Who would care?
Who ever had? Who ever would?
MJ swayed, giving into the pull. The music didn’t stop, the pulsing lights didn’t flicker back to normal fluorescents. The party would continue without her.
MJ pushed open the front doors of the school, then jumped down the steps three at a time. Her feet hit pavement, and that’s when she started to run.
I’m coming.
The stars were her only audience. Her mother had dropped her off at prom, but MJ had no problem running home. It was only five streets away, and besides, there was an invigorating energy flowing through her that could’ve fueled a marathon sprint.
The pond was the only home she’d ever known. The four walls she’d grown up in had changed multiple times, as had the people surrounding her. They’d always left her hollow. But the pond only gave, it never took. The dark forest surrounding the pond should’ve scared her this night, but it didn’t. The trees were merely guards protecting the gem inside. They’d let her through.
Sure enough, she passed through the thick brush easily enough. She tumbled into the clearing where her pond was, amazed by the transformation night cast over it.
Moonlight dusted the pond surface with sparkles, and the dew settling over all the plants gave the whole scene an ethereal feel. MJ fell onto the ground, drunk with the relief of momentarily losing the unsettled feeling she’d been fighting for her whole life.
This was the only prom she ever wanted to attend. For the first time, she climbed into the pond, gingerly at first because the water was a little too chilly. Soon her body acclimated to the temperature. Her green dress turned darker green, melting into the water. The ankle strap on her heel caught on something under the water. MJ pulled, and the strap gave way. She didn’t even care it had broken. She’d never have anywhere to wear these too again.
There were no fish in this pond, just a collection of lily pads and then dark silence. MJ sliced through the water, paddling around and letting the water slide over her and through her.
She must have lost herself a little, because time lost all meaning. Getting out of the water was like cutting off a limb. She was shocked to see that the time was 1:49 a.m. Her mother would be waiting for her.
MJ began her walk back to her house.
It was quiet, 2:30 a.m., and the heel of her shoe was broken. She was soaked and happy, but now that she was soaking wet, this didn’t seem so romantic anymore. The night wind teased her, coming and going freely and causing her teeth to chatter.
Just a couple more steps, she thought, eyes closing. Just a couple more steps.
#
The policeman put his hands on his hips, noticing the muffin top extending out past his belt. Dang. He really should lay off on the sweets. But nothing could get him through a night shift like an iced machiatto and a Cruller.
“Who called this in?” He asked. He was standing beside the body of a teenage girl, a white sheet respectfully draped over her. A crowd had gathered, and proper protocol demanded they leave. But who cared about proper protocol in a small town like this? Rumors would be flying before the sun peeked over the horizon, so they might as well get their starting facts from firsthand experience. There were a few kids from the local high school who had stopped by on their way home from prom, hoping for something exciting to close the night off with. Two neighbors had come over after they heard the police siren. MJ’s mother stood on the fringe of the crowd, face gray and eyes empty.
“Her mother,” said the responding officer, a new hire everyone called Sammy. He’d been first on the scene, and he was slightly too drunk to be working. He hoped no one would notice. “Thought it was just your typical runaway story, but we found the girl lying right in front of the woods.”
Sammy’s next words left a chill in the policeman’s heart. “She almost made it home.”
An old woman spoke up. Her name escaped everyone’s memory . . . Beatrice? Becky? It was something on the tip of their tongue, a feathery thought they almost captured but never could.
“It was that pond,” she said, bottom lip trembling. “The pond got her.”
Everyone grew silent.
“It draws young girls in, like a siren. It targets those who were never loved, who were failed by the people who should have accepted her.” The old woman stared at MJ’s mother with an accusing glare, then swept her gaze over at the teenagers. “Shame on you. Shame! She didn’t get what she deserved. But you will.”
The woman backed away from the crowd, shaking her head as she stared at the body of the girl whose only crime had been being different. “You will.”
Wallflower Garden 
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