Inktober 2022

Joanne stood at the entrance of the forest near her university, peering into the dark pathway leading in. She took a quick breath to calm down, trying to push down her strange intuition, and walked inside. The leaves and twigs crunched beneath her soles, the constant chilly breeze rustling the dense canopy that kept out the sunlight. She stopped a few times to tie her laces, which kept coming undone, but otherwise remained set on the trail leading to the Pond. Several people, nearly two dozen, had gone missing here for periods of time, but mostly reappeared again out of nowhere, completely changed. And among those people was her younger sister, Melanie.

About half a year ago, the sisters were walking along this very trail, taking a breather from their homeworks. Melanie had gone on ahead at some point, and suddenly disappeared around the Pond. Joanne was absolutely devastated by her disappearance, returning everyday to try and find her sister, but she had vanished without a trace.

It was also thanks to her search that she learned Melanie was not the only one who had disappeared here. Many others had been seemingly whisked away into thin air, completely gone from the surface of the Earth for weeks, months, or even years, only to reappear suddenly one day, wearing strange expressions, all roughed up, traumatized and weak. Luckily for Joanne, Melanie had also returned after four months of disappearance, but she was also changed.

One day, as Joanne did her daily search of the forest for Melanie, she suddenly saw a soaked figure dragging themselves out of the Pond with groans and whimpers. She rushed over to help and only managed to recognize her younger sister after the person had stopped thrashing around like a wild animal in her grasp.

“Melanie! Melanie! It’s me! Joanne!” She frantically yelled, looking over her sister with panicked eyes. “What on Earth has gotten into you? Where were you? You–”

Melanie suddenly stopped moving, staring deep into Joanne’s eyes which stunned them both into silence. Joanne finally got a good luck at her lost sister; her hair was unkempt and messy, her entire body dirty and covered in some strange looking wounds, but most distinctively, her eyes had lost their hopeful glint, worn down by dread and fear.

“Joanne-” her sister murmured, voice raspy, repeating the name a few times before her eyes turned vigilant and frantic again, scanning around. She then desperately tried to say things, screaming fragments of sentences like “Leave”, “Pond”, “Danger”, “Away”, and “Joanne” several times, before passing out unceremoniously as the other called an ambulance.

Melanie was now in rehabilitation, traumatized and different from her old self, but back and alive, which Joanne was already immensely grateful for. However, she couldn’t help but wonder about what exactly had happened to her sister and how on Earth she had ended up how she was now. So here she was, standing before what she has determined is the root cause of it all; the Pond.

It was this endlessly deep, black void of water the size of a small swimming pool, almost entirely stagnant. The people having returned from their disappearances were said to have crawled out of it, as Joanne witnessed herself, but some also said that there were strange ripples on its surface right after a disappearance as well. No one has tried to enter it however, due to superstitions, urban legends and simply because it was such a strange space.

As Joanne took another step towards the Pond, now less than a meter away, she felt her laces coming undone again. With a slight sigh, she bent over to tie it while thinking back on her endeavors to get the police to take a look at this spot. However, as she did so, her body suddenly lurched forwards and she felt herself lose her balance. She had no time to think whether she had stepped on a lace and tripped or if something had pushed her as she felt her face hit the ice cold water of the Pond, her entire body following suit.

The water became completely opaque, the outside world seeming so far away as Joanne thrashed, trying not to keep sinking downwards. With how deep down she was going and the less air she had in her lungs, she felt her body and her eyelids specifically growing heavy, her heart beating faster than it ever had as her world went black.

After an indescribable amount of time, she woke up to a harsh howl of wind battering over her face and the ice cold feeling of her drenched clothing seeping into her bones. She took huge gasps of air as she pushed herself up on her forearms, lifting her head as best she could.

What greeted her was not the bottom of some pond, nor the forest or even a hospital ceiling, but the bloodstained sky of a ruthless world, worse than even the most terrifying of films.