Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked by Christa Carmen

Author:Christa Carmen [Carmen, Christa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781989206003
Publisher: Unnerving
Published: 2018-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

LADY OF

THE FLIES

“When the leaves turn brown and the pumpkins grin,

And the trick-or-treaters knock and say, let me in,

Hide your cats and your dogs, whether big or small,

‘Cuz Pris-killa is coming to slay us all.”

Priscila Teasdale listened to the children sing their song as they skipped through the Gourd Falls Farm pumpkin patch, and raised a sickle in one catcher’s mitt-sized hand. In the other, she steadied a massive pumpkin, its stem thick as a man’s forearm and connected to a substantial length of vine. She tried to steady her thoughts, but this wasn’t as easy as controlling the gargantuan squash. She folded her six-foot frame at the waist, raised the blade with expert precision, and brought it down with a crack.

That’s a new one, she thought with regard to the catchy rhyme. Was it Stu, or one of his little girlfriends, that had come up with it? She didn’t ponder the question long. People were always saying things as if she wasn’t right there to hear them, forcing Priscila to conclude that she was as worthy of being seen as a street sign for a road that had washed away with last year’s rains.

Of course I’m harboring skeletons in my closet. She readied another pumpkin—this one the size of a large dog—for liberation from its snaking vine. Any woman who looks like me must have her share of skeletons, figurative or otherwise.

For a moment, the velvety feel of the vine against her fingers reminded her of the dogs, their prickly muzzles caressing her palm. She shook her head, dispelling the corporeal memory, and focused on the present.

She brought the sickle down, only to look up and find Nathan Hitcher staring at the dilapidated barn her crew would soon convert into a labyrinth of cotton spider webs and self-playing organs. He caught her eye before she could return to her task, and gestured for her to join him.

“Mornin’,” he said.

Priscila tipped an imaginary hat.

“How’re the preparations comin’?”

“They’re coming.”

“Good, good.” Nathan unscrewed an empty water bottle, spit a wad of chewing tobacco into it, and tossed it into a nearby wheelbarrow. “You’ve worked for my father for how long now?”

“Ten years.” What she didn’t say, was that it had been ten years since she’d walked out of her eleventh grade gym class and kept on walking. Walked despite the icy December air until she’d seen the sign for Seasonal Help Wanted; walked down the dirt path, into Hitcher’s office, and right into the position of Holiday Associate. She was chopping down Christmas trees and hauling them onto the main lot before the bell would have rung for final period.

Nathan sighed. “Every October, the fate of the farm is in the hands of a bunch of idiots I wouldn’t trust with a potato gun. Until now, my father has been on the scene. But this year…” He squinted in the sun.

Priscila, too, shut her eyes against the glare. She saw the black void of those sleepless nights in the weeks after Hitcher

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