RDP Thursday: MEANDER

Cleo Manning likes to hike and stroll in the park down the road from her house.

The park is full of lovely flowers, and along the trails to the ponds are maple trees and willow trees and even a few aged maple trees that may have been in the park before the city of Marsten decided that this was the place it’s residents would want to rest their weary bones.

Cleo doesn’t care much for the flowers( they make her sneeze) , she does like the trees and the shade that they cast along the trails but what she really loves is the pond in the middle of the park with a secret hidden right in the middle of it.

The Pond in the park is  deep and it’s floor is dark because sunlight can’t reach the bottom of it, most people would call it a lake but Cleo knows that a in the middle of the Pond, dead center at it’s deepest point is a tree and it’s rooted to the bottom of the pond in heavy chains made of human hair.

Vines with white flowers carpet the Pond’s floor and any light down there is radiating from the leathery blooms.

Sometimes Cleo sits on  the single granite bench and she as still as a statue as she looks out upon the Pond.

After awhile, she stands up. She smooths her dress, her hair and she looks from furtively from side to side and if no one is around she says ( to the tree at the bottom of the pond )

” Dunk me in a pond in my best dress, will  you Judge Gedney? I sold my soul for that dress. My soul.”