A short story by E.V. Emmons
A tale of two families: One family’s halcyon life is
tragically disrupted, while another plans the perfect Halloween party. Evil is
a point of view.
Life on a farm is hard and if not for family, it would be
lonely too. We cherished life in the fields, breathing in the rich, loamy smell
of the tilled and mounded earth. We celebrated the sun and rain alike because
we understood that both nourished the land, and what was good for the soil was
good for us.
Months in the sun had turned our skin leathery, but we wore
it proudly as a mark of devotion to the fields. At night, we were content to
sit under the moon and soak up the warm ambiance from the porch lights.
Some nights, the sky would rain stars, and we’d sit and
marvel at the celestial light show. The cricket songs lulled us into an easy
rest until sunup when we’d do it all again.
One day, we noticed that the warm summer air had cooled, and
turned the maple trees flanking the lane from green to shades of gold and red. In
the orchard, the apples were ripe and round and shone like rubies. The animals
feasted at their troughs, munching the dried corn. Abundance surrounded us, and
we were thankful. All that remained was to relax and celebrate autumn and the
coming winter, or so we thought. We had no way of knowing the horrors that lay
ahead.
They came just before dark. One by one, with knives digging
into our skin, they plucked us from our beds. Large, powerful hands crushed to
our faces kept us silent. We squirmed and fought, hoping to get free of their
vice-like arms.
Father, with his thick and burly body, wriggled loose.
“Get ‘im, boys!” One man hollered. “Show that fool who’s
boss.”
In seconds, they had Father pinned to the driveway, the pea
gravel crushed into his cheek. Jeering and laughing, the three men took turns
at his belly and sides with their steel-toed boots, and when that weren’t
enough to keep Father still, a crushing blow to the head stilled him forever.
Pale, hard crumbs and guts oozed from the ruined flesh amid a rising fog of
limestone dust.
“Load ‘em up. Let’s get outta here,” one of them barked.
The thick burlap bags they shoved over us kept us paralyzed
as they slung us into the back of the heavy-duty farm truck. They slammed the
creaky gate shut and bolted it tight. Darkness smothered the truck bed, which
smelled like rotten beets, manure, and cabbage.
Mother lay slumped atop a thin bed of straw, her body
shaking under the burlap. After gathering the small ones close, we huddled
beside her, hoping that somehow, we’d be of comfort to each other.
My insides quaked. With Father murdered and left behind to
rot in the sun, what would become of us? He deserved so much more than to be
brutalized and left for dead. He would never know a proper burial, a return to
the earth he so loved. Visions of crows picking at his corpse and tugging at
his entrails haunted me in the darkness.
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