I saw a picture on twitter yesterday that got me thinking. Not thinking in any sort of productive way, but that way that writers start thinking, as in: There’s a story here and I’m going to find it. So, here is the story. It’s not well edited or polished, but here it is. 

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To say Samantha loved her garden would paint a dramatically understated picture of bright days filled with every shade of green complimented by brilliant flowers in every color of the rainbow. She luxuriated in the smell of damp earth and gentle buzzing of a thousand types of insects. It was her one sanctuary from the hectic bustle of domestic demands, and a job that would make even Einstein’s brain hurt.
On a day as perfect as any she could recall, she went back into her garden, eyeing a big, horribly bland patch of grass. That patch of grass had been on her landscaping shit list for entirely too long. Sure, lawn was nice, but it was boring. She wanted more color, more vegetables, more greens, and most importantly, less grass to mow. She took out her shovel, she took out her hoe, she took out her gloves, and she faced the grass. 

Armed with the tools to convert a perfectly good lawn into a far better garden, she set to it. First, she removed the sod, then began turning black dirty digging ever deeper. With each shovel, she got the satisfying shuck of the shovel sinking into the earth. Then, a resounding clang rattled the shovel handle. 

Samantha frowned. Rocks of any notable size weren’t common in this area. The topsoil should go for many feet, not just a few inches. It certainly did in the rest of her garden. She tapped the bit of rock with her shovel and found it was, indeed, a substantial obstacle. It was deep enough that she could have left it, but leaving it would bother her. She got down on her hands and knees and set to finding the edges of the rock so she could move it.

A few minutes with her hands in the dirt and she uncovered not a rock, but a perfectly round metal object some sixteen inches in diameter. She continued to remove the dirt until she revealed an old rusted car wheel rim. It was absolutely embedded in the ground and wouldn’t so much as wiggle. More digging revealed the entire rim. It sat neatly in the hole as if she might just be able to pick it up and move it, yet it still wouldn’t budge. She pulled it, she kicked it, she even jammed the shovel under it and tried to pry, but nothing seems to help. It was almost as if it were still attached to the car. The thought made her feel cold, as if a great curtian of rain clouds had rolled over the perfect blue sky and quenched the sun.

In an attempt to reassure herself that this silly bit of debris was not still attached to a vehicle, she cleared yet more dirt from further around the rim. It took little time before she struck something else. This time, she hit what proved to be a fender. She nearly stopped and covered the whole mess, but curiosity pressed her on. Who would bury and entire car? 

As the morning wore on to afternoon and threatened to become evening, Samantha revealed more and more of the car, finally coming to the driver’s side door window. She tapped it with her shovel once, then twice, and on the third tap it shattered. It was so sudden and unexpected that she let out a little scream. Then she looked around to make sure nobody had noticed. They hadn’t, she was quite alone. The kids were with dad at soccer practice. 

Curiosity continued to push her, so she took her shovel and pushed it in through the broken window. She tentatively poked the interior of the car. The shovel stopped. Something pulled on it. She pulled back, but the shovel wouldn’t come free, then it shot clean out of her hands. She stared, absolutely dumbfounded and more than a little frozen by fear, staring at the broken window where her shovel had disappeared. 

A skeletal hand reached out of the window. Samantha screamed and turned to run, but something grabbed her leg. She screamed all the harder as she fell to the ground and something pulled her inexorably toward the broken car window. No matter how hard she grabbed at the grass and thrashed about, she kept moving until she reached the very edge of the car window. Then, she felt more bony fingers grasp her legs, pulling her yet hard, and in one very hard, swift yank, she was in darkness.

When her husband and children returned from soccer practice, they found a shovel, and a hoe, and a pair of gloves laying next to a small hole where an old car rim sat partially covered in dirt.