the Pond
the following was taken from Lynne Lowe's interview with Jack Munroe -Not only are you a gifted cartoonist, but your first zine effort, "the Pond of Echoes", is magnificent. I find it hard to believe that you wrote it when you were only 16 years old. I have never seen a teenager write with such depth. What is the background of this extraordinary piece of fiction? Was it an assignment for English class?
By the word "zine", I'm sure you mean my first "all-words" publication. But yeah, it actually took me a good four years to finally print that thing up. My friends had always bugged me to, but I never thought it was that great. And now that I've supposedly made TreeFrog Publications an official company of some sort, I wanted to diversify it. I'm having a lot of fun with Die, Spanks!, but I wanted to print out something serious and dark. A bit different from DS!. And believe it. I did write "the Pond" when I was sixteen. I remember walking into the living room while my sister was watching "Jane Eyre" (the Black and White version with Orson Welles) on television. It was at that scene where Jane finds out about that guy's crazy wife locked in the room with the large wooden door. Freaky! That's all I had to see, though. I instantly jumped in front of the computer and went to work. I finished "the Pond" in two nights (and you can almost pinpoint where I stopped and started up again). I watched the entire thing of Jane Eyre a year later, and saw how "the Pond" is nothing like it. And no, it was not for English class. I never did anything interesting for school. I always saved talent-filled creations for shit that counts. But I did show it to my English teacher in my junior year of high school, and I think that's why she had a crush on me (she was always trying to hug me and shit).
an excerpt - - - Monday, November 18th, 1765
It's been more than a week since my last entry, but something has come up and I'm debating whether it was reality, or just the fact that this large house is getting to my mind. The Vandenbornes went out to their friend's home for the second time since I've worked here. And since I had nothing but time to think, I went to explore the cellar. I had been down there before to retrieve bottles of wine, but this time I went further, past the shelves of the old wine. When I came to what looked like some catacombs, I noticed someone crying. It scared me so much that I ran up to my room and locked the door. When the Vandenbornes got back, I told them nothing. I don't want them to suspect that I may be losing my sanity...
Elizabeth walked into the library of the lonely house. It was the first time she had been in the room, and since the Vandenbornes had left the day before, Elizabeth was entirely bored. She walked over to the small set of shelves in the corner and eyed the titles. Nothing interesting, of course. Some of the books were even written in Latin and Greek, so Elizabeth made her way to the other shelves.
After finding a novel that seemed interesting, Elizabeth walked into the living room to read it. She sat down in Evelyn's chair and turned to the first page. There was a picture of a woman under the surface of a pond. She appeared to be pulled under by hands formed of mud. It made Elizabeth shiver.
"There must be something to do in a house this big," she said to herself.
Then it struck her. She remembered seeing a tunnel when she was in the cellar, getting a bottle of wine for the Vandenbornes. But it was hardly a day to go and explore the cellar. It was dark outside and the rain seemed like it had no end to it.
"What else is there to do?" Elizabeth asked herself.
The cellar door was opened, and Elizabeth crept down the wooden stairs, carrying a lantern. She walked past the shelves of wine and champagne, into the long, dark tunnel. There were hollowed out spaces in the walls of the tunnel, but they were empty. Just before reaching a turning point in the tunnel, Elizabeth heard someone cough. It was a light cough, but it made her jump.
"Is... someone there?" a scratchy voice asked.
"Wh- who...?" Elizabeth began, but after muttering those words, the voice began to wail and cry. It scared Elizabeth so much that she ran straight to her room and locked the door. Was the house haunted? Or was it just her imagination again.
That night, Edward and Evelyn came in through the front door and Elizabeth carried their bags upstairs. Not a word was said...