Blue strands

The pond was a man-made muddy water hole in the middle of a heath and the one distraction that allowed me to get through the grind of the week. There I became a bobbing head among the lily-pods that the lone lifeguard on shift would occasionally check on to make sure was still afloat. The three lifeguards that worked there and I never exchanged pleasantries as at first I found them too intimidating with their sharp eyes and pursed lips and later I got used to my invisible anonymity badge and I wasn’t intentionally going to lose it by starting chit-chats. I liked to imagine that my odd choice of swimming costume made them think of me as quirky and interesting. In reality, the frilly swimwear was a hand-me-down from a colleague with an odd-fashion sense who received an extra one in error and insisted I keep it because we’re the same size and I never got around to buying something more sensible.

When I would pull myself up the slime-covered rail-ladder onto the deck, I’d always feel as if I was leaving behind the emotional baggage that managed to accumulate through the day, and would leave to go home only half as miserable as when I entered. I dread to think how I would have tolerated a move to a new city if it didn’t have this little space where nature was still allowed to roam free to some extent. I abhorred the concrete the city loved to splatter everywhere. It made me uncomfortable like I was trapped somewhere I shouldn’t have been allowed in.

Despite the prime location, the pond wasn’t popular. At first I couldn’t wrap my head around it when I realised people would sit in sweltering heat in nearby cafes wishing for their frappes to put a stop to the sweat trickling down their foreheads rather than get up and jump into the pond. It made little sense to me but I long gave up trying to guess the logic behind the things people did and didn’t do and I trained myself to ignore the crowds that would disinterestedly walk past the signs for the pond. The lack of variety allowed me to quickly learn the faces of the few I always saw on my swims, but like the lifeguards none of us ever spoke. I enjoyed the solidarity in our unvoiced pact to remain quiet and undisturbed in our ventures around the pond. As the days grew shorter, the group of regulars started to thin and I was secretly pleased as it was easier to imagine the pond being only mine.

October was drawing to an end, and the day was as ordinary as they come except for some car collision on my bus route that caused the bus to crawl with delay. I arrived later than usual, slightly irked but then I was in the pond soon enough, feeling the familiar burn of cold water on my muscles and felt myself relax. As I rounded my first corner, I ended up thinking about the new recruits at work that I’ve been asked to train. Two were straight out of university and I wondered if I ever looked that young. A mallard in the distance dipped its head into the water and I smiled, at once forgetting the youthful faces. Momentarily a surge of happiness to be able to be so close to nature overwhelmed me and I steered off track to swim a bit closer to get a better view of the bird, and I often would think of this moment and wonder how that day would have unfolded if I just ignored the damn mallard.

I swam closer and the bird’s top half was still submerged, and a part of me tried to remember how long ducks could stay underwater without coming up for air. I knew nothing about birds and smiled again at the coral legs dangling in mid-air. Seconds ticked by and I felt an unpleasant chill at the base of my neck. I reasoned it was time to go back to more vigorous swimming to keep out the cold when in the corner of my eye, I saw the mallard shift and I turned my head to look at it in full view. It’d bottom was back in water and it was only then that I saw, and I continued to stare, unable to comprehend the sight in front of me.

The mallard’s head was gone and it’s place was a bloody stump of a neck. The gentle waves were making the rest of the body rock and I scrambled back in a frantic display of shock and revulsion, causing an onslaught of water to drip into my eyes, delaying any attempts to get away.

I wish that was the worst that happened. Right then, something thin-like and colder than anything I know wrapped itself around my left ankle. It gave a sharp pull and then I must have screamed and my mouth was full of water and my esophagus was burning and then my lungs and everything hurt. A fraught, semi-coherent thought that I was going to die reached me and I opened my eyes. In front of me, I saw thick blue strands of hair and I tried to swat them away. The strands moved. A translucent, veiny face, something resembling a human in the broadest of terms stared back at me. It’s thin mouth opened and the teeth were prick like and long and I felt myself wanting to scream again and inhaled more water.

The attempts to get away with water filling my lungs must have been wild, adrenaline-driven and pretty pointless. The grip on my ankle was strong and unrelenting and I just couldn’t loosen it enough to escape. Through my darkening vision, I saw the face come closer but all I could focus on were the teeth, mere inches away from me, which I knew would try to grab and tear at my flesh. The thought of it happening seemed matter of fact then, an inevitable event that I had no bearing on. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see anything that was going to happen from that point on and tried to prepare for the pain. In reality, I probably didn’t wait long, but then each second stretched into an endless chunk of time so tortuous that I thought my heart would manage to give out long before the thing got to me.

When the pain came it was razor sharp and white.

Then, an unspecified amount of time later I become aware of my senses. The smell of wet wood and the feeling of raw pain in my chest led me to open my eyes. The light was overwhelming and bright and I twisted to the side and vomited what must have been the pond water. The face of the lifeguard appeared in front of me but her voice was muffled.

Much later, wrapped in a blanket in the back of the ambulance, the life-guard explained that I slipped under the water surface not soon after stepping off the rails into the pond. I couldn’t have been underwater for long, for she jumped after me and fished me out. I glanced away from her face towards her arms, thankful for their strength.

I was admitted to the local hospital for observation and with the curtains drawn around my bed, images of the creature and the mallard and the closing in teeth replayed in my mind on repeat while I attempted to ignore the sudden onset of tingly and itchy skin on my back that started an hour ago. They felt like real memories rather than figments of my imagination, but I’ve had no prior experience in near-drowning so I supposed it could be a residue of cheating death. I still didn't understand how I could have almost drowned. The doctors were clueless, saying they could see nothing wrong with me.

I heaved a sigh, and lifted up my left shoulder to create a crevice between the pillow and my body so my fingers could reach the patch of skin that was annoying me; the itchiness just kept getting worse but I didn’t seem able to reach it. I threw away the blankets and sat up and stretched my hand further and just about hit the spot. The itch subsided somewhat and I drew away the hand. The fingers were slick with blood and I felt faint at the sight. I took off the cables that connected me to the heart monitor and scrambled out of bed and hastily threw on a robe and ran to the nearest bathroom. It was empty and I pulled down my top and twisted my head to see my back in the mirror. It was a spectacular canvas of scratches and the biggest wound was the size of a two-pound coin. The uneven edges made it look as if it had been torn off. It was open and red and I moved my fingers to touch it. I pressed on it and screamed when hot pain spread through my back. I looked down and saw amidst the blood that my half-broken fingernail caught a strand of hair, but it didn’t look like mine. I drew the hand closer and saw the hair was of a deep, blue tinge.

I admit I don’t remember much after that. My memories of the next two months are hazy at best. I know the bearest of facts, the things I heard over and over from others so often the information somehow penetrated deep enough for me to remember. I spent a month and a half in a psychiatric ward and the last two weeks with my mum up north. They said I suffered a psychotic break and I don’t know what to think.

I will be leaving to return back to my flat next week with clear orders of how often to take my medication, since now that’s something I apparently need. I thought about the pond, but I don’t harbour any inclinations of swimming there again. In fact, I’m yet to take a bath or a shower that lasts longer than a minute.

The blue face still haunts me some nights, for a part of me deep down knows it must have been real. The marks on my back were not something I’d imagined and I believe were a testament of what happened in that pond. I thought about contacting the life-guards to ask in a roundabout way if they ever have seen decapitated ducks floating around, but in the end I didn’t have the courage. Instead, I’ve done some googling and found a number of deaths linked to the pond. As it would seem, the pond has quite the reputation, which would account for the low numbers of swimmers. It’s known as the ‘pond of the unfortunate’ as quite a few experienced swimmers have drowned there for no clear reason.

At first, this made me wonder if there’s anybody else out there who almost drowned and saw what I have, but now I’m forcing myself to stop thinking about it. It’s not healthy to constantly question your own sanity. I’ve decided I’ll just have to live with not ever knowing what really occurred that day, but I can’t say this bothers me as much as I thought it would. I suppose I like the comfort this lack of answers offers. Sometimes it’s easier to convince yourself the really terrible things that happened to you were nothing more but a nightmare.