![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apachefirecatTitle: Get My Shovel
Fandom: Original
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: OCs
Rating: R/M
Summary: A farmer reflects on all she has survived, but she's not done yet.
Word Count: 2,252
Written For: The author's 13 Days of Halloween 2022 and HC Bingo: Round 13
Warnings: Character Death, PTSD, Non-con incest survivor
Disclaimer: This one, for better or worse, is all mine, folks.
The farmer sighed. After all her years of struggling to survive, with the news she'd received the day before still weighing heavily on her heart, she knew her time was coming to an end. It was an odd mixture of emotions, especially given how long she had tried to escape this life. She could remember, at a very early age, jumping from the top of the very barn at which she was currently staring, when she was supposed to be feeding the animals their evening meals. She'd wanted so early on to kill herself, to end this futile existence, because her daddy would neither approve of her nor stop touching her. He'd preferred her to her mama since almost the day she'd been born, and he'd never stopped touching her... until he'd finally left this awful world.
So much would stop, she knew, the moment she was able to leave this terrible place. She had always known that fact, which was what had prompted so many of her earlier suicide attempts and... other mistakes. She turned toward the setting sun as she thought about Brian. She'd like to be able to say that after he had finally stopped coming around, he had never entered her thoughts, but this farm was full of the memories she'd made with him, both good and bad. She should have known her daddy would let her turn his friend down, and she hadn't helped, what with the way she'd flocked after Brian when she'd been younger.
Of course, in her defense she had thought following the man would finally get her away from this farm. She had thought he'd care when she told him how her daddy treated her, how he touched her when no one else was around but the animals... It was kind of funny, actually, in retrospect, that it had taken her loyal horse kicking the crud out of her daddy and him levelling his shotgun on her animal to get her to start fighting back. It was strange. She was worth fighting for, but she hadn't known it until Rebel had been in danger.
She didn't miss her daddy. She didn't miss any of them really, only the animals who she had buried over the years. They weren't worth her missing, not her daddy who had always taken advantage of her and tried to conform her, his only daughter, into his "second wife", not her momma who had always held her tongue even when she'd finally provided with a photo of irrefutable proof of everything her daddy had done to her before his death, not Brian who had turned into stalking her when her daddy had tried to run him off... It had taken stepping into the middle of that scuffle to realize that Brian had never cared about her, just about replacing her daddy in every way. Why, he would have just as soon topped her mother if he had thought doing so would have finally given him this old farm.
This old farm. She sighed again as she started toward the barn. She had mixed feelings about this place, too. She had never gotten to see the city, never gotten to be anything but a farmer's daughter. She had never gotten to live a life of her own or escape all her wretched memories of abuse. Why, between Brian and her daddy, there wasn't a single spot on this property that didn't give her a bad recollection or twelve.
She sighed as Ol' Bessie came trotting toward her, swinging her bell in greeting. She had ended up staying here after her parents were finally gone, mostly for the animals who had been her only honest friends throughout her entire, miserable life. She had cried on Ol' Bessie's shoulders more times than she cared to remember, having beaten her daddy down the one time he'd thought he would sell the cow. It had been her daddy and the other farmhands like Brian who had made certain that she knew where the animals would go if she ever left the farm, and so she had stayed with them growing gray alongside them over the years.
Henny pecked at the ground near her booted feet. She clucked to the little, red chicken as she passed. The bird reminded her of her momma, who'd often sat and held the chickens when her daddy had been drowning himself in the moonshine. She'd known what was happening, but she'd never dared to lift a hand to her daddy. In retrospect, she could understand that. Her daddy had been a strong man, but what she couldn't understand, or forgive, was that when she, on rare occasion, stood up for herself, her momma had disciplined her as well, even helping her daddy tie her down at times. She'd heard of women who sacrificed their young to keep from being beaten themselves, but that only proved further that her mother had always been a coward.
She sighed, her shoulders dropping. She'd worked hard as a young woman to gain muscles in the hopes of fighting off her daddy, but those muscles had long since faded just as the brown in her hair had turned to gray some time ago. People said stress could kill a gal, and if the doctors said was true, perhaps they were right. If what the doctors said was true, the cancer eating the insides of her stomach wouldn't let her live much longer. She'd finally be free of this world, but what then would become of the animals she'd protected for so many, long decades?
Some people said she was a slave to these beasts, but that wasn't true. She was a slave to her memories, and to righting the wrongs her folks had made. She was a slave to her own past, in no small part in the way that she had grown to abhorr dealing with other humans ever since her falling for Brian had led her into a nightmare of a stalker who, in some ways, had been far worse than coping with her daddy and all he had done to her. Brian had almost beaten her to death many times before her daddy had thrown him forcibly off of the farm, and even after her daddy's death, he'd shown up in town one day and followed her back to the farm. The words she had spoken then, the actions she had taken, had finally put him in his place for good.
"I don't know," she whispered to Bessie, reaching over and scratching the cow's forehead, "what's gonna happen to y'all. I wish I could stay an' keepin' takin' care of y'all, but I can't. My life -- heh, not that it's ever actually been a life -- it's about to be over, girl." She stopped in her tracks and stared into the cow's baleful, brown eyes. "It's all about to be over," she confessed. "All the misery. All th' cryin'. I know the county'll probably sell y'all all off to th' highest bidder when I'm gone, an' I'm sorry for that, but at least you'll be goin' to Heaven."
She spat tobacco onto the ground, a habit she'd picked up from Brian in denying her daddy. "I don't care what they say. You animals are th' purest souls ever. Th' only humans who come close are th' babies, an' they grow up to be miserable ass adults. You'll go to Heaven. Don't know if I'll get to be there or not -- probably not --, but if I do, you be sure to look me up."
She paused, hearing the unexpected sounds of a motor vehicle coming down the highway. Cow and woman turned as one to look down the lonely highway. The farmer had to shield her eyes with a hand to make out the single car barreling down the road toward them. It was bright and shiny, obviously pretty new and well cared for. Instantly, she knew whoever was coming was not any one of the locals.
She petted Bessie's brow. "Don't worry," she murmured, gripping the axe she'd come to keep over her years as an even more constant companion than any four-legged beast. "You're not bein' sold today, or any day while I'm still livin'."
She walked out as every animal behind her slunk back into the red barn. The car pulled up, and she greeted the suited stranger with a bright smile. "That's a mighty fine vehicle you've got yourself there, mistah!" She let him the gaping hole in her mouth where teeth were missing over her years not because of her tobacco usage but rather because of the men who'd beaten her throughout her lifetime.
"Thank you, Miss..."
She did not supply him with a name, letting out a long, low whistle instead. "What's a man like you doin' in these parts out here?"
"I've come to see a Missus -- "
Her blood ran cold as he spoke her mother's name, but she kept her bright smile firmly in place. "I can lead you to Ma," she said. "Just follow me." Turning, she subtly but strongly tightened her grip on her favorite axe's old handle. This particular axe belonged to her grandfather, and that old man never would have allowed her daddy to treat her as he had, if he had only lived. Funny thing, she remembered he had died from a cancer too, and although she had been very young when he'd gone down, she seemed to recall it had also been stomach cancer.
Her stomach felt odd now, and she pressed her free hand to it as it walked. The doctors had warned her that stressing would make her symptoms worse, but this man, stranger though he was, was nothing by which to allow herself to be stressed. He'd be dealt with just as soon as he saw her momma.
"She's... not in the house?"
"No, sir. She's out in the garden."
"This is a big farm you have. Is your father still around?"
She forcefully swallowed the lump rising in her throat, again tightening her grip on the old axe's handle. It had served her well and would always, she had learned, serve her well when it came to protecting herself, this farm, and the animals who also called it home. The oldest tomcat on the farm came up beside her and began to keep pace with her. One of the dogs barked, and she heard Ol' Bessie moo from somewhere deep within the barn.
She let Tyrone walk with her instead of trying to scare him off. His great grandfather had been her first pet, having been given to her when she'd still been a baby by her mother birthing him right underneath her high chair. She barely recalled that old cat, but Tyrone had always been a true friend. His own daddy had died scratching her daddy. She'd been too young at the time to stop the old man, either of them, but Ty had always proven loyal and protective of her. This evening was no different.
"Is your father still around?" the fancy man asked again when she failed to answer him.
"Nah. He's been gone... for some time now..."
"I'm sorry to hear that. It must be lonely for your mother and yourself out here. Tell me, you don't run this big farm all by your lonesome, little self, do you?"
"We like it just fine here."
The sun had sank behind the hills, and the shadows were growing longer when they reached the pumpkin patch. She turned to face the man, whose eyes she had felt upon her rear end during the entire trek. She was thankful she'd worn her overalls today as they didn't show as much as jeans, but she was doubly thankful for the axe whose handle she gripped so tightly that her knuckles had long since turned white. In the settling darkness, however, the stranger from the city did not see her true expression, the true darkness of her eyes, or how she gripped the axe. He did, however, look questionably around them when she stopped walking.
"I thought you said your mother was out here?"
"She is. You're standing on her."
The color drained from his face. She noted the hand that swept into his pocket and knew he was reaching either for his fancy cell phone or some kind of weapon. "You never told me your name?"
She smiled, allowing her gaping teeth to show again. This man was just like all the rest of them. "My name's Lizzie," she said and let her axe swing. As the man's head fell, Tyrone darted just a few feet away from his mistress. Lizzie sighed as the stranger's head hit a baby pumpkin and splattered the small fruit. She'd been planning on baking that one into a pie. "Oh, well," she spoke to her solitary companion, an animal as she'd always preferred, "better get the shovel."
Maybe she didn't have long to live -- and maybe it was kind of fitting --, but the humans in this world would no longer bother her in the little time she had left. Tyrone meowed loudly and swished his tail. He batted at something that had fallen out of the fancy stranger's pockets, and for the first time since the doctor's diagnosis, Lizzie felt herself truthfully smile as she watched the tomcat. Her laughter carried out over the garden. Slowly the animals emerged from the barn as Lizzie went to get the shovel.
The End
Fandom: Original
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: OCs
Rating: R/M
Summary: A farmer reflects on all she has survived, but she's not done yet.
Word Count: 2,252
Written For: The author's 13 Days of Halloween 2022 and HC Bingo: Round 13
Warnings: Character Death, PTSD, Non-con incest survivor
Disclaimer: This one, for better or worse, is all mine, folks.
The farmer sighed. After all her years of struggling to survive, with the news she'd received the day before still weighing heavily on her heart, she knew her time was coming to an end. It was an odd mixture of emotions, especially given how long she had tried to escape this life. She could remember, at a very early age, jumping from the top of the very barn at which she was currently staring, when she was supposed to be feeding the animals their evening meals. She'd wanted so early on to kill herself, to end this futile existence, because her daddy would neither approve of her nor stop touching her. He'd preferred her to her mama since almost the day she'd been born, and he'd never stopped touching her... until he'd finally left this awful world.
So much would stop, she knew, the moment she was able to leave this terrible place. She had always known that fact, which was what had prompted so many of her earlier suicide attempts and... other mistakes. She turned toward the setting sun as she thought about Brian. She'd like to be able to say that after he had finally stopped coming around, he had never entered her thoughts, but this farm was full of the memories she'd made with him, both good and bad. She should have known her daddy would let her turn his friend down, and she hadn't helped, what with the way she'd flocked after Brian when she'd been younger.
Of course, in her defense she had thought following the man would finally get her away from this farm. She had thought he'd care when she told him how her daddy treated her, how he touched her when no one else was around but the animals... It was kind of funny, actually, in retrospect, that it had taken her loyal horse kicking the crud out of her daddy and him levelling his shotgun on her animal to get her to start fighting back. It was strange. She was worth fighting for, but she hadn't known it until Rebel had been in danger.
She didn't miss her daddy. She didn't miss any of them really, only the animals who she had buried over the years. They weren't worth her missing, not her daddy who had always taken advantage of her and tried to conform her, his only daughter, into his "second wife", not her momma who had always held her tongue even when she'd finally provided with a photo of irrefutable proof of everything her daddy had done to her before his death, not Brian who had turned into stalking her when her daddy had tried to run him off... It had taken stepping into the middle of that scuffle to realize that Brian had never cared about her, just about replacing her daddy in every way. Why, he would have just as soon topped her mother if he had thought doing so would have finally given him this old farm.
This old farm. She sighed again as she started toward the barn. She had mixed feelings about this place, too. She had never gotten to see the city, never gotten to be anything but a farmer's daughter. She had never gotten to live a life of her own or escape all her wretched memories of abuse. Why, between Brian and her daddy, there wasn't a single spot on this property that didn't give her a bad recollection or twelve.
She sighed as Ol' Bessie came trotting toward her, swinging her bell in greeting. She had ended up staying here after her parents were finally gone, mostly for the animals who had been her only honest friends throughout her entire, miserable life. She had cried on Ol' Bessie's shoulders more times than she cared to remember, having beaten her daddy down the one time he'd thought he would sell the cow. It had been her daddy and the other farmhands like Brian who had made certain that she knew where the animals would go if she ever left the farm, and so she had stayed with them growing gray alongside them over the years.
Henny pecked at the ground near her booted feet. She clucked to the little, red chicken as she passed. The bird reminded her of her momma, who'd often sat and held the chickens when her daddy had been drowning himself in the moonshine. She'd known what was happening, but she'd never dared to lift a hand to her daddy. In retrospect, she could understand that. Her daddy had been a strong man, but what she couldn't understand, or forgive, was that when she, on rare occasion, stood up for herself, her momma had disciplined her as well, even helping her daddy tie her down at times. She'd heard of women who sacrificed their young to keep from being beaten themselves, but that only proved further that her mother had always been a coward.
She sighed, her shoulders dropping. She'd worked hard as a young woman to gain muscles in the hopes of fighting off her daddy, but those muscles had long since faded just as the brown in her hair had turned to gray some time ago. People said stress could kill a gal, and if the doctors said was true, perhaps they were right. If what the doctors said was true, the cancer eating the insides of her stomach wouldn't let her live much longer. She'd finally be free of this world, but what then would become of the animals she'd protected for so many, long decades?
Some people said she was a slave to these beasts, but that wasn't true. She was a slave to her memories, and to righting the wrongs her folks had made. She was a slave to her own past, in no small part in the way that she had grown to abhorr dealing with other humans ever since her falling for Brian had led her into a nightmare of a stalker who, in some ways, had been far worse than coping with her daddy and all he had done to her. Brian had almost beaten her to death many times before her daddy had thrown him forcibly off of the farm, and even after her daddy's death, he'd shown up in town one day and followed her back to the farm. The words she had spoken then, the actions she had taken, had finally put him in his place for good.
"I don't know," she whispered to Bessie, reaching over and scratching the cow's forehead, "what's gonna happen to y'all. I wish I could stay an' keepin' takin' care of y'all, but I can't. My life -- heh, not that it's ever actually been a life -- it's about to be over, girl." She stopped in her tracks and stared into the cow's baleful, brown eyes. "It's all about to be over," she confessed. "All the misery. All th' cryin'. I know the county'll probably sell y'all all off to th' highest bidder when I'm gone, an' I'm sorry for that, but at least you'll be goin' to Heaven."
She spat tobacco onto the ground, a habit she'd picked up from Brian in denying her daddy. "I don't care what they say. You animals are th' purest souls ever. Th' only humans who come close are th' babies, an' they grow up to be miserable ass adults. You'll go to Heaven. Don't know if I'll get to be there or not -- probably not --, but if I do, you be sure to look me up."
She paused, hearing the unexpected sounds of a motor vehicle coming down the highway. Cow and woman turned as one to look down the lonely highway. The farmer had to shield her eyes with a hand to make out the single car barreling down the road toward them. It was bright and shiny, obviously pretty new and well cared for. Instantly, she knew whoever was coming was not any one of the locals.
She petted Bessie's brow. "Don't worry," she murmured, gripping the axe she'd come to keep over her years as an even more constant companion than any four-legged beast. "You're not bein' sold today, or any day while I'm still livin'."
She walked out as every animal behind her slunk back into the red barn. The car pulled up, and she greeted the suited stranger with a bright smile. "That's a mighty fine vehicle you've got yourself there, mistah!" She let him the gaping hole in her mouth where teeth were missing over her years not because of her tobacco usage but rather because of the men who'd beaten her throughout her lifetime.
"Thank you, Miss..."
She did not supply him with a name, letting out a long, low whistle instead. "What's a man like you doin' in these parts out here?"
"I've come to see a Missus -- "
Her blood ran cold as he spoke her mother's name, but she kept her bright smile firmly in place. "I can lead you to Ma," she said. "Just follow me." Turning, she subtly but strongly tightened her grip on her favorite axe's old handle. This particular axe belonged to her grandfather, and that old man never would have allowed her daddy to treat her as he had, if he had only lived. Funny thing, she remembered he had died from a cancer too, and although she had been very young when he'd gone down, she seemed to recall it had also been stomach cancer.
Her stomach felt odd now, and she pressed her free hand to it as it walked. The doctors had warned her that stressing would make her symptoms worse, but this man, stranger though he was, was nothing by which to allow herself to be stressed. He'd be dealt with just as soon as he saw her momma.
"She's... not in the house?"
"No, sir. She's out in the garden."
"This is a big farm you have. Is your father still around?"
She forcefully swallowed the lump rising in her throat, again tightening her grip on the old axe's handle. It had served her well and would always, she had learned, serve her well when it came to protecting herself, this farm, and the animals who also called it home. The oldest tomcat on the farm came up beside her and began to keep pace with her. One of the dogs barked, and she heard Ol' Bessie moo from somewhere deep within the barn.
She let Tyrone walk with her instead of trying to scare him off. His great grandfather had been her first pet, having been given to her when she'd still been a baby by her mother birthing him right underneath her high chair. She barely recalled that old cat, but Tyrone had always been a true friend. His own daddy had died scratching her daddy. She'd been too young at the time to stop the old man, either of them, but Ty had always proven loyal and protective of her. This evening was no different.
"Is your father still around?" the fancy man asked again when she failed to answer him.
"Nah. He's been gone... for some time now..."
"I'm sorry to hear that. It must be lonely for your mother and yourself out here. Tell me, you don't run this big farm all by your lonesome, little self, do you?"
"We like it just fine here."
The sun had sank behind the hills, and the shadows were growing longer when they reached the pumpkin patch. She turned to face the man, whose eyes she had felt upon her rear end during the entire trek. She was thankful she'd worn her overalls today as they didn't show as much as jeans, but she was doubly thankful for the axe whose handle she gripped so tightly that her knuckles had long since turned white. In the settling darkness, however, the stranger from the city did not see her true expression, the true darkness of her eyes, or how she gripped the axe. He did, however, look questionably around them when she stopped walking.
"I thought you said your mother was out here?"
"She is. You're standing on her."
The color drained from his face. She noted the hand that swept into his pocket and knew he was reaching either for his fancy cell phone or some kind of weapon. "You never told me your name?"
She smiled, allowing her gaping teeth to show again. This man was just like all the rest of them. "My name's Lizzie," she said and let her axe swing. As the man's head fell, Tyrone darted just a few feet away from his mistress. Lizzie sighed as the stranger's head hit a baby pumpkin and splattered the small fruit. She'd been planning on baking that one into a pie. "Oh, well," she spoke to her solitary companion, an animal as she'd always preferred, "better get the shovel."
Maybe she didn't have long to live -- and maybe it was kind of fitting --, but the humans in this world would no longer bother her in the little time she had left. Tyrone meowed loudly and swished his tail. He batted at something that had fallen out of the fancy stranger's pockets, and for the first time since the doctor's diagnosis, Lizzie felt herself truthfully smile as she watched the tomcat. Her laughter carried out over the garden. Slowly the animals emerged from the barn as Lizzie went to get the shovel.
The End
Get My Shovel
Date: 2022-10-16 09:07 am (UTC)You can't even feel bad for any of them...and somehow, I think Ol' Bessie, Tyrone and the rest will be all right.