The Haunting of Southwood Plantation Road - Preview
Hey friends! I've been chipping away at a big writing project since... wow, mid-December now! I'd like to share a bit of it with you, as I'm very happy with it. It can be considered Tallahassee fanfic, but to enjoy it, your knowledge of the Mountain Goats doesn't need to extend beyond craving that mineral. (Can you tell I'm a chronic Tumblr user yet?)
When they actually got down there, all the way from Nevada, it was storming. That was probably an omen, she'd half-joked, and Alpha just looked at her.
(As time went on, she saw more omens. Around the house, inside of it, in her dreams. Crows, monkeys, vultures, corpses, fire trucks. She largely ignored them.)
The rain slowed to a sprinkle once the moving truck got there, and while her wife pulled everything off it, Etta tried to salvage the garden. She didn't feel bad about leaving the dirty work to her because she was much stronger. "You're a weak bitch," Alpha had screamed in their last argument, and it was about her emotional state but it applied to her body as well. She looked willowy, gentle. Well, at least she did, before that damn house got its teeth in her. Besides, when they moved in together the first time, Etta had been the one to lug all the heavy things upstairs.
It wasn't like she didn't have her work cut out for her here. The garden was thorny and overgrown, with a rotting and sagging fence they never ended up fixing. It smelled wonderful, though, and she found the cause quickly: roses. A solid half the thorns were from untouched wild roses. They had worked with the blackberries, greenbriar, and kudzu to completely overwhelm the back fence. If anything, it was impressive.
The old shed was definitely unsound, but she went digging in it. (That was another thing they never fixed.) She wasn't quite sure what she was looking for, considering they'd taken their tools with them, but she did anyway. She found a broken lawnmower, shears so rusty she couldn't open them, a too-heavy hatchet she could kill Alpha with (then nearly did a few months in), and a shovel. There was nothing wrong with the shovel. It was a perfectly good shovel, in fact, and she endeavored to keep it.
She would let the Earth have the back fence, she decided. Keep out rabbits. And she could have fresh blackberries through the rest of the season, plus cut the roses and use them for… something. They had precious little decoration, or furniture at all, really. Perhaps she could get a vase for them. The rest of the garden, however, would be cleared out. She'd put in carrots, potatoes, and some squashes. Etta took her Perfectly Good Shovel and set to hacking at the weeds.
The move had been in a hurry. They'd made too many enemies back in Paradise, including law enforcement. They rented a U-Haul, threw everything they could find inside, then sped to Las Vegas. The year at the motel there was long and frightening and claustrophobic. Space, Alpha said, that's what they needed. At least they could agree on one thing. They bought the house sight-unseen for pocket change and took the very same truck down to Tallahassee.
"This place is a damn nightmare," Alpha yelled from the crumbling porch. Etta pretended she couldn't hear her. Her ratty clothes and scraggly hair were soaked by now, but it was downright pleasant in the Florida heat, and she liked the way everything smelled when it rained.
Eventually, she'd cleared out a 5 foot by 5 foot square. This was a fine enough place to stop, she thought to herself. Alpha had long since finished taking their things inside (there wasn't much) and her ankles were all scratched up from the thorns. A solid three quarters of the garden remained, with weeds and brambles up to her elbows, and Etta decided to come back later. It wasn't getting any shittier.
When she turned to leave, she saw something glimmer in the dirt. Despite her better instincts, she knelt down. She had no trowel, and her Perfectly Good Shovel was too imprecise, so she just used her bare hands, pawing through the loosened soil like a feral dog. The two of them used to have a dog, some kind of shepherd. She didn't remember his name.
After a few moments, Etta pulled out her prize: A tarnished heart locket. It was very intact for its clear age. The chain was unbroken, and the little engravings weren't scratched in the slightest. If it was silver, like she hoped, it could be worth a lot.
She worked her thumb nail into the crevice and pried it open carefully. No soil, but there were two black and white photos. They were of a man and a woman, faces faded, in some kind of formal clothing. A wedding, maybe. They seemed to be smiling. She dug the pictures out with her pinky finger and flicked them into the dirt.
"From dust you came and to dust you shall return," she said, and laughed at her own joke. Then she closed it up and walked back to the house. She pocketed it; if Alpha saw it, it was good as stolen.