Writing Challenge With Andrew Saxsma!

The challenge:

In 3000 words or less, write about a widow/widower that talks to themselves. Are they crazy, or are they still seeing their deceased spouse? What does their child think about it?

The Result:

Field in the Dome

by Byline

      I never knew too much about things like artificial atmospheres and fake gravity, things like liquid diet rations, pissing into a tube, and ‘deep sleep’, or things like ghosts…

      I grow corn on a ship, hurdling at ninety-nine percent the speed of light.  The only reason I know that?  It was in the brochure.

      Slip, that’s what they call me on the ship.  Dad calls me Sprout.  I don’t care for either one, but we’ve been going so long, flying so far, I can’t remember my real name anymore, not that it would even matter.  We’ve got another eight years before we’re back on Earth.  I’ve got time.

      I heard, once, things get funny when you’re in space too long.  I heard about guys walking out an airlock, thinking they’re stepping out onto their front lawn, sidewalk, whatever, when, really, their skin crystallizes and all the gases, liquids, and all the body’s juices shoot through their eyes like a ketchup bottle squeezed too tight.  But, as I said, what do I know?  I just grow the corn.

      I grew up outside Chicago, working in my Grandaddy’s field, alongside my Pap, pulling weeds with my bare hands.  Pap says that’s what God made ‘em for, for pulling weeds.  Did that for about three years ‘til one really hot summer, Grandpa cooked us supper, let the dog out, then went to bed and didn’t wake up again.  He was colder than a flagpole in January when me and Pap found him.  After that, some deep space trading company bought up the farm and Grandaddy’s back acres, and roped me and my Pap into one of their ‘long’ routes.  Pap used to say it was the least they could do.  If not, we’d ‘a been out on our asses and Pap was much too proud a man to let something like that happen to his family, especially when he could do something about it.  Anyway, Pap talked mom into coming along too, not that he had to pull her arm too hard or nothin’.  She loved us, her boys.  I think it would have killed her to be without us for sixteen years, eight there, wherever it was they were throwing us, and eight back to Earth. 

      At first, Mom complained about stomach cramps, and she didn’t eat too much either, maybe once a week, if that.  It made Pap nervous, concerned, and he talked her into seeing the ship’s Doc after a few weeks. 

      Turned out, her gut’d been eaten up by cancer, something wicked, just completely hollowed out most of her insides like a carved up pumpkin.  The Doc said he’d never seen anything like it, thought space might have made it work faster, nuking her like a microwave.  Doc also said the human body, it wasn’t made for space, no matter how you played it.  Either way, he was right.  She didn’t make it two months.  Passed quietly, she did, without a goodbye. 

      The Captain wanted to pop her body out an airlock but Pap wouldn’t have it, said he wouldn’t have his wife thrown away like space trash.  He buried her, instead, in the soil in the Dome, the ship’s mid-section, where we grew the crops and most of the ship’s food stuffs.  Wasn’t ‘economical’ to fill the ship’s hold with enough food to feed ten guys for sixteen years.  Made it mandatory we grow what we eat.  Made sense, even to a guy like me who didn’t get much farther than the eighth grade. 

      It busted Pap up for weeks, though, Mom’s death.  He cried so hard, so often, he had no voice.  He had these hitching fits where his body would shake, snot and tears pouring down his face.  I couldn’t watch it.  I mean, I tried, but after a while, it just got too hard.  You can only watch a grown man, your Pap, suck for air because he’s blubbering like a suffocating fish so many times before you say to yourself, I just can’t watch this anymore, can’t do it.  So, that’s what I did.  I stopped.  It’s funny, but maybe that was part of the problem.  This man once hand-wrestled a cow to the ground while hungover as shit, but now he can’t stop crying long enough to eat.

      He started disappearing before too long.  Nobody knows where he went.  I got my guesses.  But, he wouldn’t show up to water the crops or check the irrigation lines and nutrition dispensers for the soil.  The way it works, he and I take shifts, me at ‘night’ and Pap during the day.  I say ‘night’ because it’s always sunny in the Dome.  It’s like New York City at New Years, all the time. 

      So, it’s not like I’d caught him slacking.  I couldn’t.  We didn’t work together, ever.  Well, sure, we crossed paths now and again, but like I said, he’d been doing a lot of disappearing acts, so even that stopped.  But, I knew he’d been doing it, or rather, not doing it when, we started losing whole acres of crops.  Whole fucking acres!  This isn’t like back home, on Earth, where a guy can lose his lot and write it off.  Here, when we lose a crop, somebody ain’t eatin’, simple as that.

      I went to the steel closet hutch, near the Dome’s crew quarters, at the back of the corn field after testing the irrigation lines one day, and saw Pap, just sitting there on the bench inside beneath the humming fluorescent bulb hoods.  The room reeked of sweat and bitter, humid body odor.  He had this quiet, sour look on his face, just lost.  He stared off.  If he knew I was in the room, he made no indication.  He just sat, hands entwined, eyes unblinking. 

      “Pap?” I asked, putting my tool belt into my locker then shutting it.  The hinges squeaked, grinding rust and metal into little flakes that fell to the grated floor.

      He looked up at me, like he didn’t recognize me, at first, then he smiled for just a moment, half-assed, before looking back down at his folded hands; lost again.  

      I sat down beside him and wrapped my arm around his shoulder.

      “When was the last time you ate, Pap?” I asked, giving him a good squeeze, feeling his bony shoulders and spine.  The artificial gravity was playing hell with his muscular system, especially without any food to strengthen it back up.  “Feels, to me, like you’re wastin’ away to skin and bones.  Mom would-”

      “Sprout,” he said, interrupting me.  He removed my hand from his shoulder and stood, walked over to his locker and stopped, facing it.  “Do you know what happens to a person’s soul when they die out here, on a ship, in dark space?” he asked.  He reached for the locker handle and held it, waiting for my answer.

      “Pap, you gotta’ stop this,” I said.  “The Captain, the crew, they all think you’re a couple marbles short of a jug, and I’d wager they may be on to something, what with all the times no one can find you.  Let’s get you back to work, get things back to normal.  That’s what you used to say; hard work does the body good.  We’ve lost another lot this morning, prolly another on its way out tomorrow.  We need normal right now.” 

      He looked up at the ceiling and I could almost hear him smiling, though I couldn’t see his face.

      “Normal,” he said, on the verge of a good ole laugh.  He lifted the handle to his locker and eased it open.  “Tell me, Sprout, did the good boys from the bridge send you down here to talk to me?  Did they beg you to make a lick of sense from what I’ve been doing?  Let me tell you something right now.  There aint’ nothin’ wrong, boy-o.”

      “Pap,” I said, standing from the bench, reaching out to him.  “Nobody sent me down here for you.  I got no clue where this is coming from.  I’m worried about you, is all.  It’s been three months.  You gotta’ let her go.  The grieving’s killing you.”

      He laughed and reached inside his locker and I heard him lift something heavy from the tool hook inside.

      “Grief?” he asked.  “This isn’t grief anymore, Sprout.  No, my boy, this is beyond that now.  I can see it.  I did see it,” he said, turning around, holding a chrome hatchet with a rubber-reinforced grip.  He twisted it around in his hand, testing its weight.  “I saw it.”

      He took a step toward me, glaring at me, and I bumped into the bench behind me, falling onto my ass on its seat.  I gulped, nervous, and I could feel my palms, greasy with sweat.  This man, it wasn’t my Pap.

      “Out here,” he said, looking down on me, hatchet in hand.  He licked his bottom lip, staring through me.  “In this endless void, it’s got nowhere to go, the soul.  It lingers for too long, doing nothing, vulnerable, becoming something else entirely.  I don’t know what.  Don’t much matter what it is, not to me.  Evil, I suppose, if you had to guess.  But, I don’t care, Sprout.  I don’t care.”  He stuffed the handle of the hatchet into his toolbelt and made sure it was secure.  “It’s not getting me, and it sure as hell ain’t getting you or the crew.”

      It’s funny, looking at him while he stood there, prepping to do whatever it was he had planned to do, the only thing I could think about was the first time we’d rolled a cigarette together, underneath the oak tree on my Grandaddy’s front lawn.  I couldn’t get it just right, and when I gave up, he licked the rolling paper, twisted the ends, then rubbed his knuckles on my head with a laugh, fingers smelling like sweet, cherry-scented tobacco.

      “Pap, go see the Doc, please!” I begged.  “You look like you’re a stone’s throw away from falling apart.”

      “There’s something I gotta’ do first, Sprout, then everything will be okay again.  Then we can go back to normal, eh?”  He smiled.

      I felt helpless as I watched him leave the hutch, holding the handle of the hatchet, dangling from his belt, as he walked.  Anger, white-hot, burned in my gut and I felt tears building in the corners of my eyes.  My chest hitched, and for a moment, I thought I might be the blubbering fish, sucking for air for a change.  I held my breath and let it pass, and I waited, thinking about my Mom, my Pap.  I know it hurt.  I’d hurt too.  I read somewhere that people handle death differently, and maybe that were true, I mean, it had to be, right?  Look at my Pap.  He’d taken something, something strange, and he’d ran with it like a Bear’s halfback in a sweet vanilla offense.

      Later that day, on my way to lunch, I saw him standing on the edge of the cornfield, staring down a row of stalks, hatchet in his hands.  He gripped it, afraid, and I thought I’d heard him talking, not in English, words sharp and menacing.  It rattled my spine and my blood ran cold.  I got goosebumps as I watched him, talking to nothing, whispering to the field.  He started yelling, the cords in his neck bulging, surging, screaming at the corn stalks.

      I took a deep breath and clenched my jaw, wincing as Pap shouted louder, waving the hatchet now, above his head, gesturing with his free hand at something I couldn’t see.

      Before I could talk him down or reach out to him, like a son ‘prolly should do, like he would have done for me, he’d disappeared into the field, corn leaves flapping behind him, cackling like a riled jackal.

      I considered running in after him for a moment, but him with a hatchet in whatever state he was in, it sounded like a bad shake.  Instead, I headed to the cafeteria, hoping this hold on my Pap would run its course, leaving him the man he was in the start, before Mom died, and he’d be back in the crew quarters by the time I’d get done fixing the broken belt in the west acre.  I’m tellin’ you, it didn’t turn out that way, no matter how much I sit here, amongst the broken piping and leaking hydraulics, wishing it couldn’t have gone the way that it did.  But, a good friend of mine used to say, ‘if wishes were horses, bums would ride’.  So, where’s my fucking saddle?

      It was probably two weeks after I’d seen him, Pap, charging into the cornfields with the hatchet.  Things had settled.  He’d gotten back to his routine, ya’ know, testing the nutrition dispensers for degradation, maintaining the water purity levels, regular stuff.  He’d even gotten his appetite back and started putting some fat back on them bones, really fillin’ himself back out.  He was comin’ around, and I even caught him smiling now and again, though he’d never admit it if you called him out on it. 

      That particular day, he’d spent about two hours trying to get pump one unclogged.  Some topsoil had gone soft and wedged itself something fierce in into the filter, and it wasn’t budging for shit.  He called it a day, figuring I could get it at night.  My hands were smaller, and I was the only one who could fit into the line if I couldn’t get it topside.  I remembered seeing him head to the cafeteria to grab some supper when I was walking to the pump hatch, putting on my toolbelt as I did.  I went in, clean as a whistle, came out stinkin’ like ten-year-old shit and sludgy mold, but I got that bitch unclogged, sure did.   Took me a couple hours too, but the only other things that needed doing weren’t at the top of the list, so I figured I’d grab me a shower before I got back to it.

      I’d gone into the crew quarters to grab a fresh pair of pants and a shirt before I headed to the bathroom when Pap threw open the bulkhead hatch and slammed it shut behind him with a hollow clang, planting his back against it, looking like he’d just gone toe-to-toe with the devil himself.  Sweat streamed down his forehead and cheeks, pooling into the collar of his shirt, soaking it a darker color the size of a dinner plate, and I wasn’t sure, but it looked like he had bloodstains on his hands.

      He struggled for breath, looking around the room, eyes darting back and forth like typewriter ribbons.

      I ran to him and pulled his hands out, palm open.

      “Jesus, Pap!  You’re bleeding,” I said.

      He yanked his hands back from me.

      “It ain’t mine,” he said, turning around and twisting the bulkhead lock clockwise, securing it.  He backed away from the door, panting like a dog still, ruffling the small amount of hair on his head.

      He spun around, remembering I was in the room, and grabbed my shoulders, shoving me back against a shelving unit on the far wall, rocking it on its teeny legs.

      I stared into his empty eyes, scared shitless, and I couldn’t tell, but I might have shit myself.

      “It was gone, but now it’s back, Sprout.  I thought I’d killed it, rammed a hatchet right through its skull, spilling its brains all over the dirt, but God-damnit all, it’s back.”  He reached behind me, grabbing something with some weight from the shelf, and handed it to me.

      I looked down at his offer, a hammer.

      “God can’t see us way out here, boy, here, where real and not real, I think, are one and the same.  I believe the soul, it’s a portal, boy-o.  When it’s got nowhere to go, it opens.  I don’t know much about heaven or hell, but what I do know is that something’s out there and-”

      Something screeched, like fingernails dragged across a chalkboard, on the bulkhead hatch.  Pap turned, listening to the squeal snake along the door, weaving along the outside of the crew quarters.  When it stopped, he looked at me, the color in his face gone.

      My heart quickened, heat building behind my cheeks while sweat rolled down the back of my neck.  I didn’t know it, but I’d started shivering.

      Pap flung me aside, knocking buckets and boxes off the shelf, searching.  He stopped, grabbing a tin of rat poison, for the small little stowaways we’d find from time to time.  He slammed the tin into my chest and waited for me to grab it.

      When I did, he said, “Pour some of that into the vent, there.”  He pointed at the vent covering over my bed.

      I held it up, looking it over, hesitant.  A clang echoed from the other side of the vent, where the thing let out no doubt.  Something was scrambling through the vent’s track, following it.

      “You wanna’ wait ‘til that thing is munching on the black stuff in your gut, the stuff that never sees sunlight, before you start dumping that shit, Sprout?” he asked.

      I stared at the vent cover, hands shaking, the liquid in the tin shifting back and forth, frothing inside.

      Pap tore it from my hands, along with the hammer, and buried the teeth of the hammer’s head into the vent cover, prying it open and throwing it to the floor.  He plucked the tin’s lid off with his mouth and turned it upside down.  The dark liquid chugged out in thick waves and I heard a shrill scream from inside the duct.  I ducked, covering my ears with my hands, screaming out while the shrill scraped the inside of my ears.

      I saw Pap fall back, tin flying through the air, bouncing along the floor, leaving a trail of dark poison behind.  He crashed, skidding along on his back.  I looked up at the vent duct and my stomach dropped, tears swelling in my eyes.  The air sucked out of my lungs and for a moment, I was dizzy.  What I saw defied everything I’d ever known, and I still doubt from time to time what I’d seen. 

      It looked like Mom, but the skin on her face sagged away from the bone, her eyes shriveled like rotted raisins.  Piss colored juices bubbled out through rips in her moldy, rotted skin.  She smiled, black, oily slime dripping over her lips and down her chin, and she waved before slithering back into the duct, hiding back in the darkness within.

      The ammonia sting in the air from the poison burned my eyes and throat as I crawled over to Pap, making sure he was still breathing.  He lay there, staring at the duct.

      “It lingered too long,” he said, over and over.  He looked at me as I sprawled up onto my knees, leaning over him.  “God can’t see us out here, Sprout.  He can’t help,” he said, grabbing my collar.  He sat up and pushed himself up onto his feet with a grunt.

      “Stay here,” he said, kissing my forehead.  “Whatever happens, don’t come out there.  Not if I’m screaming, not if I’m pleading for you to let me in.  Whatever I say, you CANNOT open that door.  Got me?”

      I nodded, feeling like that boy back on the farm, looking up to his Pap.

      He smiled and unlocked the bulkhead hatch.

      “Lock this behind me,” he said.  He smiled and slammed it behind him.

      I ran, locked it, then slumped to the floor beside the hatch, burying my face into my hands.  Funny things happen in space, I thought to myself.  It could have been my brain playing tricks on me, funny shapes in the reflections of steel and casings and all that shit, right?  What the hell was going on?

      I sat, waiting, tapping me feet on the floor, working through the nerves.  Hours passed, yet I stayed put, waiting for my Pap to come, to open the hatch and tell me everything would be okay, that Earth was just around the corner.  My ears popped and it felt like I was a hundred feet underwater, pressure shoving me down against the floor.  Blood trickled down my cheeks, dripping from my ears and it felt like someone was squeezing my eardrums.  When it finally stopped, I stood, hoping Pap would come inside any second.  When he didn’t, I opened the hatch and covered my mouth with my hand.

      Whole lots of crops were missing, barren stretches left, ripped up from the soil, like a tornado had whirled through, tossing entire dirt tracks all over the dome.  Stalks flittered through the air like snowflakes.  Nutrition dispensing pipes jutted up from the torn dirt tracks like broken bones poking through flesh.  On the ground, a long trail of field soil stretched from the field’s edge to the forward airlock, where the emergency shutter had slammed shut, sealing it tight.   

      Pap had opened it, and hadn’t escaped the suction himself.

      I stood there, looking around the dome, just as lost as Pap was that first day.

      I lied to the Captain, saying Pap had accidentally triggered the airlock on a maintenance check.  He would have wanted it that way, I think. 

      We’re a few days out from our destination now, and we’ve still got a long way to go before we’re home again.  I don’t know what’ll be there, waiting for me, and sometimes I even forget what Earth looks like.  It’s funny; space has a way of doing that to a guy.  As I write this, I’m having a hard time even remembering what Mom and Pap were like, and I have this urge to go outside, like an itch you just gotta’ scratch.

      Maybe that’ll change when we get planetside, maybe it won’t.

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Writing challenge with author, K.M. Rice!

Introducing the author of Darkling, this week's guest, KM. Rice!

The Challenge:

In 3000 words or less, write a story about a girl that has been forced to live with her odd aunt and uncle. What secrets does she discover and how does she escape?

The Result:

Rainbow Worm

By K.M. Rice

Leila had expected the time with her aunt and uncle to pass slowly while her parents were away on a cruise. After all, Marietta was significantly older than Leila’s mother, and as such, visiting the home she shared with her husband, Benjamin, often felt like paying respects to grandparents. What Leila hadn’t expected, however, was that the doilies on the backs of the armchairs and cantaloupe-smelling kitchen hid a deep, dark secret.

“Pass the salt, please, Benjamin,” Marietta said at the breakfast table one fine summer morning in mid-July. Leila chewed her scrambled eggs cautiously, having learned from experience that her uncle’s shaking hands often left behind pieces of the shell.

As if his wife’s request had just reminded him of the presence of the seasoning, Benjamin grunted as he grabbed the shaker and attempted to salt his eggs. Yet, true to form, his hand shook so much that Leila wondered if his breakfast was even palatable by the time he was done.

Marietta glared and swiped the shaker from him, her penciled-in eyebrows furrowing. Leila pretended she hadn’t seen at thing. At fifteen, she was usually good at negotiating other people’s moods, but her aunt and uncle’s constant bickering made her feel awkward, as if they’d forgotten she was in the room.

“This is great,” she offered with a small smile. “Much better than FrootLoops.”

“It’s too salty,” Benjamin griped.

Marietta sneered at him before giving the salt a good shake, sending it spraying into his face. Benjamin gasped and leaned back in his chair so far that it fell over, causing both his wife and niece to bark in surprise. Being the most agile of the three, Leila scrambled to her feet first and hastily knelt to help her uncle back up, the floorboards squeaking below her.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“That witch,” Benjamin hissed as Leila took his hand. Marietta merely continued to eat her breakfast as if she hadn’t just caused her husband to narrowly miss a concussion. “She knows I hate it when she does that.”

“You mean it happens often?” Leila asked as she hauled her uncle up by the forearm, the tip of her sneaker pressing down against a weak board.

“He deserved it,” Marietta mumbled. “It’s his fault that we’re in this mess to begin with.”

“What mess?” Leila straightened her uncle’s chair and felt the toe of her shoe sink again. Testing the board with more weight, she realized that it wasn’t just weak, but loose. Like the kinds of loose floorboards that hid sacks of gold in castles and magical medallions in palaces.

“Something wrong with your foot, dear?” Marietta asked.

Leila met her eye and found her aunt fixing her with a peculiar gaze. It was enough to make the girl slide her foot off the board. “My shoelace got stuck,” she lied before she could even figure out why she had the compulsion to do so.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Benjamin whined. “My eggs are covered in salt!”

“That’s not from me, that’s from – oh, never mind, you dunderhead!”

Leila was hesitant to resume her seat between the two of them who were locked in a silent staring contest. With her uncle’s bulbous eyes and her aunt’s upturned nose, it was quite the sight to see. In fact, looking at her now, Leila saw very little family resemblance between her mother and the woman at her side. Marietta’s hair was fiery red (albeit dyed) and her features were sharp and delicate. She was an odd sight when paired with Benjamin, who from most angles looked like he was melting.

Once the dishes were cleared and her aunt and uncle had left the kitchen, Leila eyed the floor. What could the two be hiding under there? Marietta had wanted to divert her attention, surely, so it must be something. Kneeling beside the loose board, Leila attempted to catch the end with her fingernails to pull it loose, but it only gave so much. She would have to get a crowbar or something else to use as leverage. If only she had… wait. What was that splash of color?

Barely visible on the side of the board was what appeared to be hand-painted writing. Vibrant letters in all shades of the rainbow peeked out at her from the dull oak. If she could pull it up farther, she could read what they said.

“Leila!”

Startled, Leila shoved the board back into place then hurried into the living room to answer her uncle’s shout. “Yes?”

“We’re heading down to the senior center for our water colors class. Grab your permit and you can drive.”

Leila’s face split into a grin. Forgetting the board, she dashed upstairs and headed back down with her wallet and learner’s permit.

The senior center was only five blocks away, but Leila felt very adult as she parked and turned off the engine. A senior citizen’s watercolors class wasn’t exactly her idea of an afternoon well-spent, but she didn’t have any friends who lived near her aunt and uncle, anyway.

Once in class, Marietta and Benjamin decided they liked each other again and began teasing and elbowing each other as they painted. Leila couldn’t decide what to paint, so she watched her aunt’s hands bring to life the colorful curves of flowers. At first she thought Benjamin had picked the same subject, but instead, his alleged flowers took on squiggly legs and antennae. Bugs.

Biting her lip, Leila turned her paper this way and that until she decided what to paint. Drawing upon her memory of what she had seen, she dipped her brush first in the red, then in the blue, pink, and yellow as she mimicked the writing she had glimpsed on the side of the floorboard.

“All right, class,” the instructor cheerily addressed the audience after their hour and a half was up. “Time to finish. Why don’t you share your paintings with each other?”

Leila glanced around the room. Half of the participants ignored the instructor and continued to paint, while several more were asleep and the remaining few looked as if they were shocked to suddenly discover their whereabouts.

“Roses, what a surprise,” Benjamin chuckled as he looked over his wife’s watercolor.

“About as original as yours,” Marietta quipped with a wink. “How about you, squirt?” she asked Leila.

Leila slowly held up her painting.

Benjamin narrowed his bulbous eyes. “Are those worms?”

“They’re letters,” Leila corrected. She kept her eyes on her aunt’s face, gauging her reaction.

The red-headed woman merely adjusted her glasses and peered at the painting before arching a brow. “Letters, huh? Don’t look like any letters I’ve ever seen.”

“They’re only half finished,” Leila pressed.

Marietta sniffed and looked away, admiring her own art instead. Leila peered at her work as a chorus of oohs and ahhs rose around her as several of the other participants shared their paintings with each other.

On the drive home, Leila’s aunt and uncle were so busy arguing over how to best get back to the house that neither noticed Leila’s near-silence. Maybe she had been wrong. Maybe the board she had found was just recycled from a painted structure. After all, Marietta hadn’t even reacted to her watercolor.

The three ate at a local diner that night, and when they returned to the house, Leila realized that she’d left her artwork in the car. Benjamin spotted her coming down the stairs. “Looking for a midnight snack?”

“I’ll be right back!” Leila chirped as she headed outside and to the driveway. Opening the car, she spotted two drawings instead of three. Furrowing her brow, she snatched them up to find Marietta’s flowers and Benjamin’s bugs. After looking under the seats and by the console, she gave up and headed back inside.

“Loose something?” Marietta asked.

“My painting,” Leila said, handing the two surviving pieces over to her aunt. “It’s gone.”

“Hmm,” Marietta said without a hint of surprise. “Must’ve blown out the window.” The older woman shuffled the paintings and carried them out of room. Leila knew when she was being dismissed, and was filled with a mixture of excitement and anxiety over having, apparently, struck a nerve.

So, her aunt had gotten rid of her painting, had she? Two could play this game.

Leila decided to wait until the couple went to bed before she would try to once again discover what was under the floorboards. The problem was, they both had a habit of falling asleep in front of the TV until the wee hours of the morning when one or the other’s snoring would inevitably awake them and they’d shuffle off to their room. As the TV blared downstairs, Leila laid awake in bed. By midnight, she was convinced that her aunt was actually a witch and the writing on the board was a protective spell. Breaking such a magical seal could cause her to become cursed, but Leila was willing to risk it.

In an attempt to hurry along her aunt and uncle’s bedtime process, she first got up and listened for a lull in the conversation on the crime drama then flushed the toilet, hoping the noise would stir one of the two. Nothing happened. Pursing her lips, Leila tried again, this time faking a stumble down the stairs, stomping the whole way. Benjamin twitched but that was it.

Realizing that the TV was making enough noise to mask any sounds that she would create in the kitchen, Leila gave up on trying to shoo the couple to bed and instead grabbed a hammer and headed for the floorboard. Wedging the end of the hammer claw into gap between the loose board and the others, she hesitated.

This could be it, she thought. My last breath as a human. For all I know, I’m about to be turned into a toad.

Toads weren’t so bad. In fact, she’d always thought they were kinda cute. And so, she gripped the handle of the hammer and yanked.

The board squeaked and gave a little, once again revealing part of the colorful writing. Waiting and listening to make sure she hadn’t disturbed her aunt and uncle, she yanked again, prying loose even more of the board. She could now clearly see the writing and furrowed her brow as she read. Sharp be spine and wet be slime, it read.

Repositioning the hammer, Leila gave another yank and pried the board free. Wincing at the squeak, she trained her ears on the other room for movement, but there was none. Rotating the board in her hands, she read the continuation of the writing.

With this ball, you are mine until whensoever you wish to end your time.

“I guess that rhymes,” she muttered, her knuckles white against the wood. A ball? Could it be a golden ball like in the fairy tale about the princess and the frog? Or possibly a ball of golden yarn like in the story of Rumplestiltskin?

Gently setting the enchanted board aside, Leila peered into the hole… and saw nothing. Deciding that it must be too dark, she tugged a lamp off of the mail table and set it on the floor beside her before switching it on. In the rush of light, she was able to see the dirt beneath the house, and nestled amongst it, a brown ball!

Grinning, Leila snatched it up, surprised by how light it was and the amount of dirt and plant matter that had stuck to it, as if it had been beneath the house for a very long time. Picking the debris off, she frowned as it began to crumble in her hand. Just then, the lights switched on. With a gasp, she looked over her shoulder, the crumbled ball in her hands, to spot her aunt and uncle glaring at her from the doorway.

“I can explain,” Leila sputtered. “I heard a rat and –”

“I said we should’ve just told her,” Benjamin griped. “Said it from the start, I did.”

“Hush, you dunderhead,” Marietta snipped.

“Told me what?” Leila asked.

“Do you have any idea what you’re holding?” Marietta asked. Leila looked down at the flaking plant matter in her hands and shook her head. “That’s a ball of horse poo.”

“What?” Leila hissed, flinging the substance from her. “Why the heck would you have horse poo buried under a floorboard?”

Sighing, Benjamin shuffled into the room. “Take a seat. I’ll make us some tea.”

“And wash your hands,” Marietta added.

Baffled, Leila did as she was told. Ten minutes later, the three of them sat at the kitchen table with steaming mugs before them. No one spoke.

“Sooo…” Leila ventured.

“You ever hear of the Salem Witch Trials? Or seen Wizard of Oz or Hocus Pocus?” Marietta asked.

Leila nodded, her eyes growing wide. “So you are a witch.”

“Oh, hell no,” Benjamin said with a chuckle. “One of those brazen bitches did this to us.”

Leila leaned back in her chair a little, both from what her uncle had just said and from the fact that he swore.

“Back in 89, I was young and lonely,” Marietta began. “Until your uncle came along. I had thick skin, you know. He was the first person I ever really felt.”

Benjamin gazed at his wife lovingly and rested his hand on hers. “And you were so beautiful, with those red flowers on your head.”

Leila tensed. If her uncle felt loose enough to swear, who knew what else would come out of his mouth next and their story was growing personal.

“You loved those flowers, so much.”

“They were delicious.”

Leila furrowed her brow and looked between them. “Wait, you ate them? Never mind, I don’t wanna know.”

“Sweetheart, I was different back then,” Benjamin explained. “Oh so very different.”

“How were you—”

“He was a slug,” Marietta stated. “And I was a cactus. We were so in love that when a witch happened by and asked if we’d like to be of the same species, he agreed. We just didn’t know that we’d be stuck as, well, you know, hot dogs with legs.”

There was so much wrong with what had just come out of her aunt’s mouth that Leila didn’t know where to begin, and all that came out was “Hot dog with legs?”

“Humans,” Benjamin clarified. “We’d thought she’d make us both cacti, or slugs.”

“But….” Leila dug her hands into her hair. “What do you mean a witch just ‘happened along’?”

“Happening along is what they’re good at,” Benjamin said. “Keep your eyes peeled for one happening along by you one day.”

“That ball of horse poo was chosen because it is symbolic of the strength of our love: it feeds both the plant and the terrestrial gastropod mollusk.”

Leila arched a brow. “An alien?”

“Slug, dear. That means slug.”

“It’s why she punishes me with salt,” Benjamin explained. It doesn’t hurt me anymore, but it’s a fear that’s hard to ever really shake…”

“And your red hair…” Leila whispered, going unintentionally cross-eyed until she shook herself out of it. “Why don’t you like being humans?”

“It’s exhausting,” Benjamin groaned. “So much talking and walking and doing.”

“Not enough being still and just, well, letting yourself and everything around you be,” Marietta added.

Leila pursed her lips and nodded thoughtfully. “Does my mom know?”

“You really think she’d believe us if we told her?”

“Then where does she think you came from?”

Marietta sighed. “An orphanage.”

Leila looked down at her mug. “And the horse poop?”

Her aunt and uncle exchanged a nervous glance. Leila furrowed her brow.

“You probably shouldn’t have touched that,” Marietta offered. “It was supposed to turn us back when we were desperately done as people, but –”

There was a loud poof and a puff of purple smoke. In the chair where Leila had sat was now a rainbow-colored worm.

The two senior citizens leaned over the table to peer at their niece’s new shape.

“Ah, the hell with it!” Benjamin declared before snatching up what was left of the horse poo and popping it into his mouth. Marietta did the same. Two poofs of purple smoke later, and a worm and slug were crawling on a cactus, and Leila and her aunt and uncle were never seen again.

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