I'm not sure how you would do this, but maybe like 'something isn't quite right in the water' an eerie sense of wrongness
OCTOBER PROMPTS, DAY ONE: NADINE & THE POND!
What a good prompt! This story is kind of rough, I didn't do any real editing, but I think it's a really cute rough/first draft! Maybe I'll edit it up and put it on the website in November! Also, wow ... First short story published on my actual Tumblr in a minute, everybody clap!
Finally, Nadine was alone. The other children had gone home, lured away from the playground by their parents or dinner, the snap! buzz! of the streetlights coming on. In groups, in pairs, clumped together like homing pigeons, they petered out until it was just Nadine and the swing set, the steep medal slide.
Now, Nadine could unwind herself. For hours, she’d been playing at her own private game of make believe—pretending to be like the others. It was hard work, and took more imagination than any outer space or royal fantasy. To make it believable, to make it real, she had to adjust her spine, change the set of her eyes, and hold her mouth very carefully. She drew her arms away from her side, tried to mirror the posture of the other girls. Nadine tempered her laughter, taught herself how to smile and tease, how to discern mockery from playful banter. By the end of a school day, she was scooped hollow.
The playground after curfew was a great place to replenish herself. There was no one to bother her, no one to perform for. Nadine set her mask aside, and strode over to the swings. She’d been eyeing them for a while, but apparently, it was no longer “cool” to be seen actually playing on any of the equipment. Her peers, the little sect of girls she wished to ingratiate herself with, preferred to sit at the benches and show off their flip phones. Nadine, phoneless, more interested in the company than the possessions, kept letting her gaze drift to the swings.
Now that she was alone, she got on a swing, kicked off her tennis shoes, and kicked off into the sky. What a rush! Every sensation was like bliss—the woodchips crunching against her school socks, the night air whipping up her braids, the feel of the wind against her skin. She took the swing higher, higher, and tilted back at her head. Delicious vertigo, the excitement of being up so high and the fear mingled…Nadine made no noise, no whoop of joy or laughter. She took in deep breaths, felt every nerve in her body alight.
Suddenly, a sound. Nadine dragged her feet hard against the woodchips to bring herself to a stop. It sounded like laughter, bright and high, but not so joyful. It was almost malicious, teasing. Nadine listened to it, but did not move, fear keeping her rooted to the seat of the swing. What if she wasn’t alone? What if some of the kids stayed back to see what she was doing out there? And, thought a sickened Nadine, what if they were all gathered in some shady spot, laughing at her?
Her stomach was oily, roiling. Every time she thought to get up and start home, there came another peal of laughter, higher and meaner than before. Tears stung at her eyes. A lump the size of a peach stone lodged itself in her throat. Nadine held fast to the swing’s chains to give her hands something to do, lest she start scratching herself.
After maybe ten minutes of sitting there petrified, still as a rabbit in headlights, Nadine forced herself up on wobbly, ringing legs. They (if it was a group of kids, as she thought) could laugh all they like, but it was getting cold and she needed to be home before her dad was. She didn’t like the idea of him worrying about her, and there would be no explaining that she was help up at the playground by far-off cackling.
Still, Nadine didn’t want to walk the main street. She could just imagine it, her walking alone and then those kids coming out of the shadows, taunting her, jostling her. Poor Nadine with her mask off, poor Nadine at the swings at night. With enough time and twisting, the story would turn into something ugly. Nadine, you know, that weird girl? The slow one? Well, I saw her at the playground doing some weird ritual on the swings. She looked crazy, a real—
She cut the thought off short, slipped her shoes back on, and started towards the woods. There was a path through the trees that lead right up to Nadine’s backyard. She knew it well enough by day; she couldn’t imagine night changing it all that much.
Slowly, the way lighted by the dim glow of the moon, Nadine cut through the woods. It was strange in the dark, the trees and bushes and metal fences that separated nature from the houses only black silhouettes. She inched herself along, stopping every now and then to admire the look of moonlight on a leaf, revel in the feeling of tingling moths against her forearms. She was usually adverse to weird touches, but there was something appealing about the quiet of the woods, how branches and leaves reached out to her. To hell with castles! If Nadine were the sort to indulge in princess games, she’d want her domain to be of green and dark, cool night air and the evening opera of crickets.
Halfway home, Nadine came across a pool of water. It was black and motionless, and when Nadine put her hand to it, it was strangely warm. Aware of the time but curious, Nadine found a stick and squatted by the water. She threw in leaves, twigs, some small hard things that might’ve been berries or seeds. She imagined she was a little witch brewing up potions, an alchemist making bizarre compounds. Her mind filled, swelled. For a while, there was nothing but the black water, her hand stirring.
So enraptured in her pretend was she that Nadine hardly notice when the face in the water appeared. When she did, finally, see it, she fell back onto her bottom. She panted, blinked, then inched towards the water. Yes, it was there and it was a face. It was almost her face—that was her broad nose, her mouth, her long black box braids, but there was something not quite right about the girl in the water. Something about the set of her mouth, how her eyes sparkled with a sort of barely concealed malevolence.
“Hello!” said the girl in the water.
Nadine waved her hand.
“Can’t you speak?”
Nadine shrugged.
If Nadine did not have much to say, the girl in the water had plenty. She was full of stories, and she told them to Nadine, one after the other. They all seemed to flow together at some point, so Nadine wasn’t able to separate the story about the girl with the donkey skin from the story about the mermaid whose legs turned to seafoam. It was all one thing, one massive tapestry of wolves and monsters, boys raised by monkeys and girls who traded their mother for a pretty drum.
So it went, on and on, until the girl in the water quieted and asked, “Do you want to hear another story?”
Nadine nodded enthusiastically. She sat cross-legged at the mouth of the water, skin pimpled with gooseflesh.
“It’s a really good one. It’s about a faery who gets stuck living with humans. She feels lonely and weird. Only…” The girl in the water frowned. “Only, I can’t tell it to you if you’re up there.”
“Up here?”
“It won’t sound the same if you’re not here with me. Plus, my storybook…I can’t remember the whole thing without the storybook, and I can’t really bring my book to the top. Do you see what I mean?”
Nadine didn’t. The girl had told her so many stories already, and she didn’t see how she could hold a whole treasure trove of tales in her save for one. And besides, it was late at night, even the moon lost to her. No doubt her father was home right now, thinking Nadine was in bed already. She wanted to get back to him, away from the water and the cold. Somehow, suddenly, the stories didn’t sound all that fascinating, and the girl in the water no longer intrigued her. Nadine stood to her feet and told the girl goodbye.
“Wait!” cried the girl. “Don’t you want to hear the story? Don’t you want to come under?”
“No, thank you,” said Nadine, and she continued on her way home, not-so-nice laughter and crickets nipping at her heels.
