The Frog Pond

Ruby began her day with a cigarette, as always. Normally she’d take it with a cup of the blackest coffee; she decided to forgo caffeine that morning, fearing it would heighten her anxiety. 

She sat in her car, engine shuddering from the cold and flicked a flame from her clear BIC lighter. It was a bit of a routine for her. Not just the cigarettes but the way she lit them. She would purchase the most nondescript lighter available from the Mobile down the road and scrape off the plastic design so it was perfectly clear. Then, she would use that lighter until the fluid ran dry only to repeat the process with a new one. The control of the situation always felt therapeutic to her. Her addiction dated back to her high school years. Tommy Tanny, a boy she’d been talking to but never dated, had offered her a drag behind the football bleachers when she was sixteen. But it was only recently that smoking had become a sort of coping mechanism.

A current of frigid air rushed into her car when she cracked the window, the early morning flurries pouring in as the tobacco smoke trickled out. Ruby pulled a red knit cap over her low ponytail and wrapped her jacket tighter around her torso. It took every ounce of her willpower to hold her chattering teeth steady as she took a puff from her cigarette. 

Smoke obscured her reflection in the rearview mirror but did little to hide the dark circles which had taken up permanent residence under her eyes. She could feel her lids growing heavy already, dark lashes nearly brushing the crest of her cheekbones. The previous night had been anything but restful. After laying her head down for twenty minutes or so she would suddenly jerk awake, victim to some violent vision. Some gorey nightmare, just like the ones which had begun haunting her back in October.

Initially, her therapist, Dr. Bradford, had helped work through her nightmares. Every Tuesday afternoon, Ruby had cozied up in the doctor's sitting room and told her about the dreams. In return Dr. Bradford had suggested possible causes.

The dreams shapeshifted, arriving differently every night. But at their essence they were all the same; leaving Ruby with the same residual fears and cold sweats whether she recalled them or not. 

In the one which she remembered most clearly, she was standing in the front yard of her childhood home. Except she was twenty feet tall. And even though the house had been bulldozed years before they’d been born, her two children sat playing leap-frog in the grass. She had begun lumbering towards them and realized too late that she had no control over her limbs. Her lips refused to release her cry of warning as the shadow of her boot hovered over Brian and Leah. One moment she was frozen there with one foot poised to strike, the next her children were reduced to a red ooze seeping from underneath her boot. 

But the dreams had stopped. At least, they had for a while. A few weeks ago, they had returned with a renewed fervor. This time, she willed herself to forget the graphic details. But the imprint of them remained in the cold sweat that soaked her nightgown each night. They had remained in the racing of her heart as she was thrown into consciousness and they had remained in the lingering feeling of guilt that she could never quite place.

She wondered if she would be able to stay conscious for the whole forty five minute drive to the Hillside Penitentiary. If she fell asleep at the wheel…well she doubted it could be any real loss to the world as a whole. But her brother would be expecting her. And she could never seem to let go of those tender childhood memories which kept her coming to the prison every month, every visitation week.

Flicking the end of her cigarette out the window, she released the emergency break and switched on the radio. The words were a jumble in her mind. They didn’t seem to make sense. She recognized every other word at the most. Her mind wandered elsewhere.

“Still…how…music” came the words through the crackly speaker.

Music had lost much of its joy since they had arrested Casper. Although they were the same age (Ruby actually eight minutes older than him), Casper had cultivated her music taste, showing her every song that he ever loved.

“This one Bobby showed me!” he’d said one day, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he practically shoved the headphone bud into her ear. She couldn’t remember who Bobby was…A classmate of Casper’s. A friend for a short while. She had always felt a pang of pity for her brother. His friends never stuck around very long. But at least he could count on her, his one true friend forever, from birth to death.

Somedays the twins had sat at the koi pond that was set into their front yard. Casper would play his music out loud as he kicked his feet in the water. Startled flashes of orange and white would swim away in a hurry. What song did he always play? It was something in the classic rock genre. Guns ‘N’ Roses maybe?

She didn’t really want to remember any specific songs though. It would’ve broken her in an instant. Remembering a name or hearing the melody.

The stoplight a hundred feet before her turned yellow. She took the opportunity to light another cigarette with her clear BIC lighter. The smoke curled out the window in a pretty cloud.

After a few miles of driving, through the commercial section of town with its endless McDonalds and Dunkin’ Donuts and Wawas she flicked that one out the window and lit another. Then, after a few more miles, she did the same thing. One cigarette she lit at a stop sign. One she lit while waiting to make a left turn onto Cherry Street. One she lit at a red light right in front of the pool supplies store.

Half of the sign that perched on the roof of the squat building had peeled off. The other was so faded by sunlight that it was barely legible. Ruby remembered the name of the store though. From when she was a kid. It was Jim’s Pools and there had been a cartoon rubber ducky right after the words. Her mom had taken them there to get a fountain for the koi pond when they were in elementary school.

Her memories of her childhood always seemed to take her back to the koi pond. Casper loved the pond. She did too, but for different reasons. Mostly, she loved the plants. In June, Siberian irises blossomed, the rich violet color making a lovely scene as it reflected in the water. In mid-July the lilies boomed a pale pink, floating daintily on the surface. Casper liked to name the fish. The solid orange one he called King and the orange and white spattered one he named Misty. He always seemed to love animals, Ruby had thought.

One day, they’d even found frogs living in the koi pond.

It was during a heat wave in late June that drove both siblings out of their air condition-less house.

“Ruby, come see,” he called across the yard.

At the time Ruby had been using a stick to slowly carve a hole into the ground. She scoffed at the very rude interruption before tossing the stick aside and running to her brother.

He sat crouched on the smooth stones that lined the pond’s perimeter, his hands cupped in the water.

“What?” Ruby asked, annoyed.

“Come see,” he repeated, beckoning her closer with one hand. In the other, he clutched something in a loose fist.

She peered at his hand. “Well?”

He opened his fingers slightly, ever so slightly. Gentle as ever.

A frog’s head peered out from his grasp.

“Oh!’ Ruby cried. She giggled at the tiny face looking up at her. “He’s so cute!”

Casper had grinned at that. She didn’t realize until years later that it had never reached his eyes. He just gazed, as if in a trance, at the creature balanced in his palm.

Ruby smiled at the black beady eyes on either side of the frog’s brown head. In the background the irises were shriveled and wilted and black from the heat and the sky was such a pale blue it almost seemed white. But the scene still seemed beautiful at that moment. She felt like she was floating in that summer haze, not completely grounded. Not completely focusing on the events unfolding around her. It was the snapping of bone that brought her back to reality.

Casper’s hand had closed with a sickening crack. She thought at first that it was an accident. But his knuckles were turning white with a vile intention that curdled her stomach and formed a heavy stone in her throat.

“Cas!’ she yelled. The anger was lost when her voice broke, withholding tears.

He looked at his sister with empty blue eyes, like a sleepwalker. A thin stream of crimson dripped out of his palm.

The blood roused her from her stupor. In an instant, Ruby was sprinting away from him, tripping up the porch stairs and pushing her way through the screen door. Anxious to get to her bedroom, she climbed the stairs two at a time ignoring the discomfort which the hot stuffy air brought about. Once inside, she slammed the door and grabbed her toy bunny, Nugget, from his place on her bed, clutching him to her chest. She let herself fall back on the mattress, tears slowly collecting in the toy’s gray fur.

The awful scene at the pond replayed over and over in her head. Laugh, crack, drip. Laugh. Crack. Drip. It wouldn’t stop. Each vision of the blood dripping from Casper’s hand sent another wave of sobs through her frame.

She stared at her wall blankly, vaguely grateful that it was yellow and not red. Not the vacant blue of the eyes she’d stared into moments ago.

It took ten minutes before her brother came to check on her.

He tapped lightly at her door. “Ruby?”

She sniffled in response.

Turning the knob, he cracked the door slightly. “Are you mad at me?”

Silence.

“Ruby, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said, standing in the doorway, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Still, Ruby kept her face buried in Nugget’s soft fur. “You’re not,” she mumbled.

“Please, Ruby. I’m sorry.” She wouldn’t have forgiven him if it hadn’t been for the tears in his voice.

She glanced up at him, with one eye. A bleary-eyed boy stood before her. “Don’t do that again,” she said finally, begrudgingly. Her eyes were still red and puffy.

“I won’t. I promise.”

And he didn’t. He only ever killed one frog at the pond.

Ruby was on her eighth cigarette and five minutes away from the prison when she returned to reality. She knew she would reek when she arrived but couldn’t bring herself to care. It would only be for half an hour anyway. At the most. She vowed not to stay any longer.

The memory of that moment by the pond forced the dream from the previous night into her consciousness. She had been crushing a white rabbit with her bare hands until it was reduced to a twitching pile of flesh and fur. When it died, it released some strangled noise that sounded almost human. It all reeked of guilt. A guilt she could never seem to get away from.

With the monumental gray walls of the prison now in view, Ruby turned into the nearest parking space and switched off the car. She was situated between two red sedans. It seemed like a bad omen.

The procedure of admittance into the prison’s visitation wing was the same as always. She slid her driver’s license across the table and walked through the metal detectors, retrieving her ID on the other side. A guard guided her through the swinging metal doors into the east wing. At the end of the hall, she followed him around a right turn into the window room.

The corridor they entered was narrow, with grayish cinder blocks to Ruby’s back and a wall of bulletproof glass to her front.

On instinct, she started scanning the windows. Most of the prisoners looked the same but there were only two inmates in the visitation wing that day. Even with buzzed hair she could pick out Casper instantly. He waited in a box towards the end of the hall, his light hair almost glowing in the harsh fluorescent light.

It felt like a death march, walking towards him. But then, that’s how it always felt on visitation days. Because Ruby knew exactly how the visit would play out, just as unsatisfyingly as ever. Casper would act perfectly normal. Normal enough for his sister to wonder whether he’d been falsely convicted. He would assure her, when she asked, that he was a guilty man. And she acted perfectly normal towards him in return, hating herself for it. Hating herself for glazing over his crimes in the name of blissful ignorance.

She never wanted to know any details. From the day of his conviction she’d started avoiding newspapers and pleading with her mother not to tell her any specifics. She couldn’t bear it. The thought of her best friend doing unspeakable things… She never learned the victims’ names or ages, their occupations or hobbies and she felt like a snake for it. There was a certain blame she carried. Afterall, she had caught a glimpse of his violent tendencies but let it slip her mind when it became convenient to do so.

 These questions of “who, what, how” never stopped nagging at the outskirts of her mind, even when the answers were so unwelcome. It felt like madness.

She settled into the uncomfortable metal chair and unhooked the receiver attached to the wall.

Casper’s pale eyes stared at her through the glass, his receiver already balanced between his neck and shoulder.

“Hey,” he said.

She wondered if she would chicken out.

“Hi.”

Silence spanned between them. Time ticked by. Ruby resisted the urge to hang up and run for the exit.

“How’s Fred?” he asked.

She grimaced, but didn’t answer, staring at her folded hands instead. Some time passed. She lost track of how much.

“Ru-”

“How did you do it?” she blurted out, before she could convince herself not to.

Casper blanched. It was his turn to look away. “Kill those people?” he asked, quietly.

Ruby nodded. 

He chewed on the inside of his cheek. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Licked his chapped and bloody lips.

“Strangled ‘em,” he said finally.

Gritting her teeth, she stared at his forehead and forced the rest out. “Who? Who were they?”

“Ruby-” he started, twisting uncomfortably in his seat. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“I need to know,” she said with a resolution she never knew she possessed.

“I could lie and save you the trouble,” he suggested.

She shook her head, willing the tears back into her eyes. “You wouldn’t tell me if you were about to lie. And I think you’ve collected enough sins for this lifetime without adding another.”

His eyes darted away from hers for the second time, staring into his lap. 

`` “Tell me,” Ruby demanded.

When he finally responded, his voice was barely a whisper. “The sisters who lived next door. Alana and Agatha. Eight years-old.”

She froze at that. Her throat was constricting and the tears were lodged like splinters in her eyes. She stared. She stared at her brother who would not meet her eyes again. Time was thick and liquid like honey or hair gel and she couldn’t figure out how long she’d been sitting there. Gaping.

Her mind rushed back to her.

“I am going to leave now, Cas,” she said carefully. She hung up the receiver and let the guard lead her towards the exit.

The world tilted under her as she found her way through the parking lot. Her legs couldn’t seem to walk in a straight line. She was reminded why she had remained ignorant for so long. Because now that she knew…the world was ending. The world was ending and she couldn’t feel anything but an acute awareness of her own lack of feeling. Even once in the driver’s seat, far from the view of any inmate or guard, she couldn’t cry.

She started her car and lit a cigarette, swearing. Swearing never to return.

When she tucked herself under the covers that night, she fell into an instant, dreamless slumber.