The Wrong Sort of Stories
A Milk and Honey Submission
[THOUGHT SECURITY DIVISION]
SUBDIVISION - D.S.A. [DEPARTMENT OF SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS]
CASE FILE: 19-5555-CE [MILK AND HONEY]
ASSIGNED AGENT: M.N. STRAUN
=BEGINNING TRANSCRIPT=
Stu had a sneaking suspicion that he’d been reading the wrong stories. He’d been raised on fantasy and fairy tales, but after moving to an isolated estate deep in the country to live cheaply while pursuing a writing career, he’d decided that the books he’d read had skipped over a few crucial lessons. The first lesson was this: if it feels too good to be true, that’s because it probably is.
The city had grown suffocating, as had his full-time office job; it was somehow boring and confusing at the same time. He’d always loved books, and would spend every evening lost in fantastical worlds of wonder and whimsy until, one day, he decided he’d had enough. He then spent every spare moment of his days crafting his own fantastical world, complete with original races and cultures and magic. He managed to put together a ramshackle manuscript, and sent it off to a friend of his who was actually a literary agent he’d met at a local bookstore. Against all odds, she said she loved it, and would be interested in representing him, but the book needed a lot of work first.
That had been the first nail in his coffin. The second came shortly after. He needed a new job, and he needed to get out of the city. Stu knew this, so he went online and desperately searched for something that would give him the time he needed to really work on his book. That was when he found what he took to be a killer listing on Craigslist.
“Help wanted. Elderly couple seeking young Farmhand for small estate in the foothills of Appalachia. Room and board provided. Bring a shovel.”
He applied immediately and got a response just as fast. He couldn’t believe his luck. The very next day, he terminated his lease, packed his bags, and drove from his hometown of Chicago down to the backwoods of Kentucky. He spent the whole drive recording voice memos full of ideas for his story and dreaming of an idyllic life in the country. He imagined himself sitting on a rocking chair with a cigar in one hand and a glass of bourbon in the other, talking about his struggle and describing his writing process to an adoring reporter from the New York Times.
His head was so full of dreams that he didn’t pay much attention to the nightmare of a house he was about to call home. This was the second lesson he’d never learned: if the house looks haunted, that’s because it probably is.
He arrived just as the sun was going down. He tried not to focus on the fact that he’d passed the last sign of civilization over an hour ago. He ignored the broken glass and the boarded-up windows of the farmhouse. He sang a song in his head to hide the fact that as soon as he stepped out of his car, the birds stopped singing, the bugs stopped buzzing, and the forest went dead quiet.
Stu put on a cheery face as he walked up the junk-riddled driveway to meet his new patrons, Mr. and Mrs. Burton. Neither of the two geriatrics smiled back at him. Stu held out a hand that Mr. Burton stared at and Mrs. Burton quickly looked away from, returning her attention to the black cat purring in her lap.
“Um, this is the Burton estate, right?” Stu asked.
The two old birds shared a look. Finally, Mrs. Burton gave a nod of her head, and Mr. Burton stood and said, “Follow me, I’ll give ya the tour.”
“Oh, um, actually, I was hoping to get my stuff situated inside… maybe tomorrow…”
Stu decided Mr. Burton was hard of hearing, for the man had already walked passed him and seemed to be heading toward the woods. The old man looked back once to say, “Bring the shovel.” Stu left his bags on the porch, grabbed the shovel from the trunk of his car, and scurried after Mr. Burton. This was the third lesson Stu should have known: don’t go into the woods at night, and definitely don’t go with a stranger.
However, the woods did hold a certain charm, at least at first. Stu felt like he’d blinked and been transported to another world. The trees were so old and alien, but Mr. Burton navigated them like a druid patrolling his grove. Stu’s mind was assaulted with fresh ideas drawn from the magical imagery that surrounded him. But as the sun set and the light faded, Stu couldn’t help but wonder just where the trail they were on would lead. And once the sun had fully set, the illusion that surrounded him fell through, and Stu remembered he was in a dark wood alone with a man he’d only just met.
Mr. Burton carried a lantern, its yellow light doing little to push back the darkness. The tiny flame that danced within looked to Stu like a fairy trapped in a bottle; an old fairy Stu thought would bite its own fairy dust at any moment. Mr. Burton took his time walking and didn’t say a word until they’d reached their destination. They’d arrived at a clearing in the woods, a small clearing. Mounds of dirt sat in lifeless piles at random across the property, and the corpses of uprooted trees formed a barrier against the surrounding wilderness.
“This ere’, this is where you’ll be working,” said Mr. Burton.
Stu looked around the dismal patch of land and asked, “Um, what will I be doing exactly?”
Mr. Burton motioned with his lantern to the shovel Stu held in his hands. “Well, you’ll be digging.”
“Digging what?” Stu asked.
“Holes.”
“What for?”
Mr. Burton eyed him for a moment, the yellow light making his pale, wrinkled skin appear ghoulish. Then he laughed, a crackling, hacking laugh, but one that made Stu feel obliged to join in on so as not to appear disrespectful. Mr. Burton kept on laughing. He chuckled as he swung his lantern around and started heading back to the house. Stu followed him, forced to listen to his laughter the whole way home.
Stu took his dinner in his room on the second floor of the house; the first door on the right after the termite-ridden stairs. He stared at the brown sludge Mrs. Burton had given him, his appetite suddenly abandoning him, and instead decided to try and crank out a few pages of his book. He set his laptop up on the rickety desk, pulled a half-drunk bottle of soda out of his bag, and got to work. He relaxed, enjoying the quiet, serene night, his room glowing from the light of his laptop and the silvery rays of the moon piercing through the window. He listened to the sounds of the countryside as visions of mighty warriors and beautiful sorceresses played through his mind. Owls hooted in the night. Wind rustled trees. Something loud crashed in the room next to him. This was when Stu learned the fourth lesson fantasy left out: don’t go investigating strange noises at night.
He leaned back in his chair, “Hello… Mr. Burton? Mrs. Burton?” he called out. When no one answered, he nearly turned back to his desk, but hesitated. Mr. and Mrs. Burton were old. Old people fall sometimes. What if one of them had fallen, and the other was asleep? What if they were so hurt that they couldn’t call for help? Stu looked around his room and quickly found an old dusty lantern sitting in the corner. He lit it and resolved to go and check on the couple, just to make sure they were okay. They were his patrons after all.
The door screeched as Stu opened it, and he half expected the whole house to be awake after all the noise. Instead, all was silent. Stu shone his lantern down the rotting stairs, but saw nothing lurking at the bottom. He turned to where the crashing sound had come from, and noticed that the door at the end of the hall was slightly ajar. Stu had never been a fearful man, and he’d never seen or read a single piece of horror media in his whole life. As such, with only a slight increase in the beating of his heart, he slowly walked down the hall and opened the door. He poked his head inside, along with the lantern. The room appeared to be a storage closet of some sort; old, wobbly shelves stuffed with boxes full of junk filled nearly every square inch of the space. He opened the door further and saw one of the shelves leaning awkwardly against the wall, its contents spilled out across the floor. Broken china and worm-eaten papers were everywhere. Stu stepped fully into the room and leaned down to inspect them.
A hissing sound to his left made every one of his hairs stand on in. He barely had time to swing the lantern around when something crashed into his chest, and he screamed. He fell to his back, dropping the lantern in the process. He couldn’t see in the dim light; he could only feel something furry clinging to his clothes, hissing just beneath his neck. With both hands, he gripped the furry thing and flung it across the room, where it smashed into and knocked over another shelf. Stu scrambled for the lantern and extended it out with a shaky hand.
A black cat, the same one Mrs. Burton had been petting earlier, looked up at him from where it sat hunched in the corner. It bared its yellow fangs and hissed loudly.
“Sooty-poo, leave him alone.”
Stu yelped and looked at the door. Mrs. Burton stood in the dark with no lantern and, more concerningly, no clothes. Stu looked away, trying to hide his blushing face. The cat, ‘Sooty-poo’, as Mrs. Burton had called him, stood with a dramatic stretch, waltzed over to Mrs. Burton, and began running figure eights between her bare legs.
Stu felt Mrs. Burton’s piercing gaze shift to him. “You okay boy?” She asked, her voice much colder compared to how she’d spoken to her cat.
“Um, yes ma’am. I’m fine.” Stu managed to say, rising to his feet, and then staring at them to avoid looking at the naked older woman.
Mrs. Burton blocked the doorway, “Big day tomorrow,” she said matter-of-factly. “Lotta work to get done, lotta preparations to be made.”
“Uh, yes ma’am. Lotta work.” When Mrs. Burton still didn’t move, Stu faked a yawn, stretching his hands above his head and saying, “Well, I’d better get some sleep—on account of all the work I’ll be doing tomorrow.”
He risked a glance up at the woman. Her face was expressionless as she stared at him. He wasn’t sure how long she intended to stay that way, but luckily, a meow from Sooty-poo made her look down and smile.
“Such a good cat, such a good cat, such a…” She muttered to herself as she turned. She kept muttering until she disappeared down the stairs. Stu released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and quickly retreated to his room, shutting the door firmly. He then shut off his laptop and climbed into the rickety old bed, choosing to sleep in his clothes to avoid as much skin contact with the dusty sheets as possible. The house was quiet the rest of the night, as was the surrounding forest. Stu slept uneasily to the sound of his own breathing, and the echo of Mrs. Burton’s voice between his ears.
Stu awoke to a banging on his door. He rose, bleary-eyed in the darkness, for the sun had not yet risen. He stumbled to his door, pulled it open, and found Mr. Burton standing directly in front of him, fist raised for another barrage of knocks.
“Time for work,” Mr. Burton said bluntly. “Follow me. Don’t forget your shovel.”
Stu nodded his head, too tired to speak, and quickly threw on some clothes. He sprinted down the stairs and out into the cold, early morning air. He caught up with Mr. Burton at the edge of the woods. A saw donkey that wasn’t there last night stood next to a pile of lumber.
“What’re ya making Mr. Burton?” Stu asked, hoping for some pleasant morning conversation.
Mr. Burton cast a single eye over his shoulder and said, “A box.”
The conversation died after that, much to Stu’s disappointment. He followed Mr. Burton all the way to the clearing, enjoying the crisp air and watching the darkness retreat before the rising sun. The sky was a light gray when they arrived. Mr. Burton pointed out a hole-less patch of land and said, “Start here. Couple of feet deep, a few feet wide, several feet long, you understand?”
“Um, can you be more specific?” Stu asked politely.
Mr. Burton sighed, “Just keep digging until I return. If you get lost, focus on depth.”
“Okay, yes sir,” Stu replied.
“Good,” said Mr. Burton. “I’ll be right back.”
Stu watched the old man walk away, and then he got to work. The sun rose slowly through the sky, and soon Stu was sweating, hard at work digging the opaquely described hole. He dug and dug, wanting to work as hard as he could for his generous patrons, but after a few hours his arms were numb and his palms had started growing blisters. He took a step back, set the shovel down, and examined his hole. It was a few feet wide, several feet long, but not quite a couple of feet deep; it was more like a few feet deep. Just then, he began to hear a racket coming from the trail. He turned and saw Mr. Burton approaching, leading a frail-looking donkey by a rope. The donkey was hauling what appeared to be a large, rectangular wooden box. Stu, not wanting to be useless, ran over to help Mr. Burton with the load.
Mr. Burton, for the first time, flashed a smile, “Thanks, boy. Hell, and here I thought you young’uns had forgotten how to work hard. You’re certainly better than our last farmhand.”
Stu beamed with pride as he helped Mr. Burton lower the box into the hole. It fit snuggly, and Stu lamented that he hadn’t gotten the hole deeper than he had. Nonetheless, it fit. Stu stood at the base of the hole, admiring his work with Mr. Burton. The box sort of looked like a buried treasure chest, just waiting to be discovered by a heroic adventurer.
“So,” Stu said, “What’re ya burying here, Mr. Burton?”
The old man clapped Stu on the back and left his hand there.
“Oh, you know. You.”
It was about halfway through his fall that Stu learned the fifth lesson: happy endings are the stuff of fantasy.
He landed hard, face down in the coffin, right arm snapping as he tried to catch himself, but failed to do so. He screamed in pain, struggling to get his feet back under him. But then something large hit him in the head, and he fell back down. Slowly, he managed to twist onto his back as the world went dark. He reached up with his good arm, and his fingers met a hastily thrown and assembled wooden lid. He screamed in the dark. “MR. BURTON! MR. BURTON PLEASE!”
But all he heard in response was the laughter of the old man and the rhythmic thumps of dirt slowly piling on top of him. Stu tried to lift the lid, but his arm was too weak from digging. His head throbbed with pain, and his eyes burned from where his blood had leaked down his face. He tried to calm himself, tried to slow his breathing. He listened, ears perking up at a new sound.
Whistling. Mr. Burton was absentmindedly whistling as he worked. Mr. Burton was whistling in the forests of Appalachia.
“MR. BURTON NO!” Stu yelled. He was no fool. He’d done a little research on what to expect from moving to the country. And if there was one rule he’d learned, it was this: don’t ever, ever, ever go whistling in the woods.
Suddenly, the whistling and the throwing of dirt stopped. Stu breathed heavily in the coffin, nose filled with blood and the smell of dirt. Then, much more faintly, as if coming from a distance, he heard the whistling start back up; distorted, but the same exact tune.
He then heard the terrified, quivering voice of Mr. Burton say, “Ah… shit.”
A sound like a jet breaking the sound barrier exploded above where Stu lay. The force of it was so great that the wooden lid of his coffin cracked right down the middle, and dirt spilled onto his chest. But Mr. Burton had only just gotten started with the burial, and Stu’s eyes were free to look upon the open air. A red mist drifted down and settled on top of him. Meat fell from the sky; the many mutilated parts of Mr. Burton’s annihilated body thumped against the earth. Stu poked his head up and looked around, but saw no sign of whatever had just destroyed Mr. Burton—only the scared, braying donkey remained. Slowly, he rose from his grave and, without really thinking, began to lead the donkey out of the clearing.
And as Stu was walking back to his car, he had a strange thought.
“Maybe the writer’s life isn’t for me.”
This was so good Brody!