Creatures in the Pond

On a Sunday morning when we were children, two creatures appeared in the pond off Longleaf Road.  

            The creatures in the pond looked like men. Two brunette twins, staring deeply into each other’s eyes, shoulders deep in the black water. Around their shoulders was thick white fur extending up to two-foot-tall pairs of ears on both of their heads. Identical twins in rabbit costumes, unable to take their gaze away from one another. Under the water were they holding hands? Or standing straight, with big, costumed rabbit feet sinking deep into the benthic rot? No one could see past their chests through the murk.

            The creatures were not alive and never had been. Sculptures, placed by an anonymous artist in the middle of the night. This was a relief to the old man who’d found them and immediately assumed them to be the corpses of a “suicidal homosexual couple.”

            The mayor assured everyone the bizarre things would be removed with haste, but the youth of the town rallied around the twins. Two teens came to school for spirit week dressed as “the bunny men” as they had quickly been coined. Some upperclassmen even ventured into the pond to meet them, but only after downing several Busch Lights. The Bunny men were quickly adopted by the culture, and so they were allowed to stay.

            Ten years and ten months after the Bunny Men began their swim, the virus hit.  I was far away from the Longleaf Pond when the upheaval began, on the coast of Connecticut with my well-to-do New England friends. We’d sat on the rocks in Westport with all our luggage and cried goodbye as our dormitories were locked up. My friends got on a train back to their respective upstate manors, and I got on a plane back to Alabama.

            It had been almost three years since I’d been home to Lee County, but I could not explore the familiar crowd of a football game or even mingle after a church service. We were supposed to stay at home and wait for the disease to subside. Once a day I would take a walk through the pine trees around my house and cry for my friends who were now across the country. Would they catch it? Would someone close to them? Would the deaths ever slow enough that we could return to each other?

            It was on one of these walks in the woods that someone else returned to me.

            “Oh, hi.” I wiped the snot from my nose with my forearm and swallowed hard.

            “You’re back.” My childhood neighbor, Cooper, didn’t ask why I was crying in the middle of the woods. That’s all there was to do besides die.  

            “So are you.” Cooper had left to learn about technology in California after earning an ACT score only one point higher than mine. That was just before I left for Connecticut. He hadn’t seen me in years.

            “Everyone is.”

            I nodded though I hadn’t realized it before, everyone came home when the dying started. Many of my childhood companions would be back from school. I wondered if The Sonic Drive Thru was seeing more business than usual, but then remembered that nothing was open.

            “It’s weird” I remarked, an understatement, “And boring,” besides the point.

            “So boring” He smiled, “I’ll call you later.” He turned and marched up the hill toward his parents’ porch.

Later that night, Cooper did call. I picked up on the second ring.

            “We’re gonna swim out to the Bunny Men, you wanna come?”

            “…”

            “Hello?”

            “Who’s we?” I was hesitant. We really weren’t supposed to be going anywhere, even though we were at the lowest risk of dying. It seemed irresponsible to try and achieve our childhood goals now.

            “Just me and Dalton” Another old buddy of ours. In high school the three of us would play card games and drink whatever was available. That sounded like a way better night than dipping into scummy longleaf pond, but even card games were a risk these days.

            “We’ll be outside, we’ll stay far away from each other, it’ll be fine.” Cooper argued, “We always said we would swim out there one day, so how about tonight?”

I walked along the tree line toward that old pond and thought about this life with all the dying. The shifty way strangers looked at each other now, untrusting. Could you kill me? Could you? Late night hosts were telling jokes to no one, crowded cities seemed to be crumbling, and the streets of my humble home felt so empty and cold even though summer was just beginning.

When I got there, I was glad to see my old friends again, together. We couldn’t hug and whisper gossip about where our classmates were now, but it was still a joyous reunion. We’d come on a mission though: if we were going to have to live in our childhood homes then we might as well fulfill a childhood dream. Time to meet the Bunny Men.

We waded in still fully clothed, partially because there was no point in trying to save our clothes for later, and partially because we were too awkward to undress in front of each other. The bottom of the pond was rocky, but I preferred that over rotting leaves and slime. The water was smooth and silky under a blue moon that lit our path to the center of the pond; and there the men sat, much closer to each other than we were allowed to be now. They ignored us as we approached them. I reached up and wrapped my hand around one’s left ear, hoping to pull myself up.

Sploosh

The bunny men went under, and then quickly splashed back to the surface.

“They’re floating!” We laughed and dunked our new pal’s heads under again and again. Soon we forgot about our fear and dunked each other as well. Splashing and screaming and spitting out pond scum. We forgot about dying, and coming home, and even school and the last two years. Eventually we thrashed back to the shoreline and sprawled out on the grass of the banks.

I looked at my friends, their chests rising and falling under wet t-shirts, their eyes blinking through the drops from their hair, and just laughed with them. It was hilarious that we were there, that any of this was happening, that the bunny men were just floating torsos and heads all along.

It occurred to me that the world was ending, and this was my company. We hadn’t exactly chosen to come home, but we were there, and we were choosing each other then. Our bond was now more than that of high school buddies. Would we die for each other? I didn’t know, but we were risking to death to see each other. These could be our last months, weeks, or even days. We were going to spend them together regardless.    

Footnote and thanks for Creatures in the Pond

When I was a child, an artist named Alex Podesta created a sculpture of two men in bunny costumes that was installed in the Jan Dempsey Pond. They were the subject of city-wide jokes, and swimming to meet them was an item on many Auburn High Schooler’s bucket lists. That sculpture is the childhood object I chose, as prompted in my creative writing class.

            In my story I frame the sculpture to be more of a cryptid than an established art installation, because that’s what it felt like as a kid. I want to give the bunny men’s creator (and likeness) Alex Podesta credit because his art inspired my writing and many memories growing up in this city.

            Though my story is not a true one, it is based on real emotions I felt during quarantine and imagery from my childhood here in Auburn.