Spoopy Writing Challenge - Day 3
Well, well, well. What’s a cutie like you doing on a blog like this? Oh wait, you’re here for the new story in my October writing challenge. Alright, fair enough. However, I am once again asking for your support.
In pre-ordering my debut novella, Sisters of the Crimson Vine. Do it. Do it now.
Okay, ghosties and ghoulies, today’s prompt comes from Bryan Andrews:
You are digging in your garden, and you find a body. It’s yours.
So for my third story of my seven day spooky challenge, I bring you…
Sow Thy Garden Full of Ire
“Here you go, Mrs. Andrews.” Mr. Felling passed me the metal urn that contained my wife’s ashes. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss.”
They’d all said that. “I’m sorry for your loss.” The cops who’d called me in to identify her body but covered for the drunk man who’d run her over, the priest who had only last week condemned our love in his sermon, the members of Irewood’s Women’s Brigade – all permed hair and judging eyes. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
But they all lied.
And there would be no justice for my sweet Brynne. The cops ruled it an accident, didn’t even pretend to care. Jordan Hobbs. Killer, drunk, beloved son of a local business man. Off scot free.
Stepping out of the funeral home, I kept my gaze on the urn in my hands, avoided noticing all the eyes that watched me. All the people that hoped – with this tragedy – that I would move, leave their small town and take my otherness with me.
“I only moved here for you, Brynne,” I told the urn as I set it on the passenger side seat. “You wanted to live in a small town and live out that cozy fantasy of owning a creaky old house with fireplaces and a library, knowing your neighbours, of having a garden.”
Passing through the streets of Irewood, I fought back the tears, the anger, the hate, the despair. Passing all the happy people, oblivious – or worse, happy that Brynne was dead. This small town choked with nepotism and close-mindedness, cursed with a born hatred of those they considered outsiders. Crossing city limits, I drove out into the countryside – copses of vibrantly coloured trees, yellowing grass drying out for winter, baled hay, contented horses.
I took her home. My beloved, my first girlfriend after coming out, my wife. Now dead.
My Brynne, nothing but ash.
Our home was a large two-storey farmhouse. Arguably too big for just us two, but Brynne had talked about settling and then fostering a whole litter of kids. She’d been a foster kid and got lucky with a good family, it was her dream to pass that luck onto others. She’d never had the chance to be a mother.
Parking, I took her urn into the house and put her above one of the fireplaces she’d found so dear. Then, with daylight burning, I went out into the back. To work on the garden.
#
Thirteen days later, the pain of grief was still raw and so were the injuries to my hands. Still I dug in the garden. I had, after all, promised Brynne one. The air was chill and crisp, smelling of molding leaves and damp earth. Clouds streaked the sky like knife slashes, the sunlight was watery and weak.
With every thud of my shovel striking dirt, a memory was unearthed.
The confusing moment when I’d met Brynne at a work function and been so wildly attracted to her that I was speechless on my boyfriend’s arm.
The terrifying moment when I’d confessed my feelings for her after a year of friendship and a bitter breakup with my then-fiance.
That beautiful moment standing across from her by the river where we said our vows in front of our families.
Her lips, her smile. Her eyes, her laughter. Her terrible cooking and amazing desserts. Brynne. My Brynne.
Deep enough. I’d dug deep enough. Dropping the shovel, I knelt and began to scoop dirt with my hands. A hole four feet wide, five and three quarters feet long, three feet deep. Removing the last fistfuls of dirt, I found a body.
Slim, pale skin marked with a dark birthmark on the left hip, soft curly dark hair cut just above the shoulders. And a face that I was well familiar with, having looked at it every day in the bathroom mirror for the last thirty three years.
I brushed the remaining dirt from her body, my body, for she was me as much as I was her. She opened her eyes and sat up, giving me a sad smile.
“You should put some clothes on,” I said and made to reach for the shovel, but she stopped me.
“I’ll unbury the next one,” she said, standing and taking the shovel. “You should take care of that.”
I looked down at my hands, blood had seeped through the thick bandages, the pain kept barely at bay by the Vicodin I’d taken hours before. Ten fingers severed at the middle knuckle, ten mounds in the place where I’d promised to plant a garden for my Brynne.
She, my twin, my sister, my child, went to the nearest mound and began to dig.
#
Eleven of us at the edge of town. Eleven of us armed with sickles, silver sharp in the moonlight. The town was quiet, asleep. 3 a.m. The Witching Hour.
We marched on the town. The eleven of us, an army of me, consumed by anger and hate and rage, but most of all sorrow. An army forged from the darkest wish of a grief-bound heart, under a sickle fall moon, and fed with blood.
Comfortable in their own compliance, we found doors unlocked and windows open. We each crept into these unguarded houses and found those sleeping within. We would not kill them all. No. We would only take one half of a whole, sunder conjoined hearts in two, as they had mine and Brynne’s.
We knew we would die. It was small town America, after all. They would eventually get to their guns, they would kill us just as they killed Brynne and her dreams and her love and her smile. But we would make them remember, we would bring them the reckoning that was a long time coming. We would make them think twice when the next hopeful couple moved in.
So from house to house we slunk, leaving screams and wails behind us. Our silver sickles now stained red with retribution.
A harvest to remember.
Eee, that was a bit of a dark one, wasn’t it? Here’s Poe dressed as a shark to act as a palette cleanser and I’ll see you tomorrow!
x PLM
