#Self-Injury | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lollystocks · 1 year ago

Text

To Blossom

Ectoberhaunt 2023 Day 2: Botanomancy (and a lil dash o technomancy)

Sam tends to her houseplants, her mother tries to connect, and Amity feels the effects of its rip in space-time. Words: 5,087 CW: minor injury, blood, self-injury, possession (mentioned), dissociation, mentions of a firearm

---

Her plants were getting grumpy. Again.

Not that Sam held it against them. As much as she had tried to make her dark, brood-perfect bedroom a comfortable home for the waifs and strays she had picked up from Amity Park’s nurseries and garden centers, (and perhaps a private garden or two), she only had so many hours in the day. The best temperature and humidity control money could buy helped of course, but between school, ghost fights, activism, and deliberately spending as little time as possible in her parents’ house…

Well. The grumpiness was understandable.

But Sam had found a rare, spare, afternoon with no obligations. Her homework was mostly up-to-date (she was refusing to do any of Lancer’s reading until the English department unbanned The Bluest Eye); the protest at Axiom was on pause until Tucker had okay’d her security plans; it was a Sunday so there were no new updates for The Grand Speadsheet; and she had already published two blog updates this week with the next one fully drafted. (“The True Amity Park Horror: A Miniature Surveillance State; or, The Bitches in Cheap Bleach Could Do With Being More Subtle When Spying On The Entire Town, part v”)

The irony of calling out the GIW’s spying operation was not lost on her.

And seeing as ghost attacks didn��t stick to a pre-circulated schedule, there was nothing to do on that front except keep the pager on loud, and get on with one’s day.

So, following an oh-so-wonderful lie-in, Sam was playing her favorite kind of politics: horticulture.

Following certain complaints, Sam had abandoned the concept of a general fertilizer and had bought a whole series - one each for tropicals, leafy, flowering, fruit, and cacti. The succulents would have to just put up with the latter. Windows thrown open, a torn up magazine protecting her dark hardwood flooring, a series of expensive and totally unused mason jars usurped from her mother’s kitchen, and a large jerry can of water sat at the ready, she set to work mixing up some please-just-fucking-grow juice for her many, many children.

Or she would have, had her pager not chosen that moment to scream at her from her window sill. A grating, 8-bit version of Ghostbusters (“the most frighteningly accurate depiction of ghosts in any move ever Sam, it’s iconic.”) that served as their “Fentonworks scanners have picked up a big ol’ signal somewhere, perhaps check it out gang” signal. Louder than the beeping was the profound sense of alarm from her plants. Or so she imagined.

Sam leaped up to silence it before it reminded her parents of her existence, knocking the jerry can over as she went. She ignored the chugging spill, slamming the “dismiss” button on the pager and then scrambling to find her phone among her copious bedsheets. By the time she extracted it, there was already a message:

Fanny Dampton: already on it, boxy’s throwing a tantrum at walmart

That would at least save them some time. Accessing the Fentonworks scan system to pinpoint a location always lost them a few minutes.

Sam typed with one hand, and started donning her boots with the other.

Man Sampson: Woodsborough Park or Elm Rd?

Fanny Dampton: elm

Fucker Toe-ly: moms got the car gonna take me a while to get there on dads bike

Man Sampson: I can swing round to get you, meet me at the end of your road, do NOT forget the extra thermos this time.

Fanny Dampton: i think i got it guys!

Fucker Toe-ly: bestie how are you typing and fighting

Fucker Toe-ly: i didnt forget it how dare

Fucker Toe-ly: i was giving it a premeditated and intentional vacation in my sock drawer

Fucker Toe-ly: she was tired

Fanny Dampton: i think i got it guys

Man Sampson: No that’s a good question, how are you typing and fighting?

Fanny Dampton: im not

Man Sampson: So when you say “you got it”??

Fanny Dampton: i ran off to GG and by the time i got back jazz had thermosed boxy. i ‘stole’ it from her so mom and dad couldn’t take boxy for testing. hid it in my leg, will get it out later.

Fucker Toe-ly: bestie im still not on bord with you using random body parts as storage it cant be good for a growing boy its also nasty as hell and also what about ectocontamination from the thermos

Man Sampson: I’m not sure Danny needs to worry about ectocontamination, Tuck.

Man Sampson: It’s also so on brand for you to be able to perfectly spell .“ectocontamination” but not “board”.

Fucker Toe-ly: what are we if not our brands? - francis bacon, probably

Fanny Dampton: look it’s all good guys, just need to focus on the hard part now - the family walmart shop

Fucker Toe-ly: god gives his hardest battles to his deadest soldiers

Fucker Toe-ly: what yall buying

Fanny Dampton: mom wants a gun

Man Sampson: Jesus Christ.

Fucker Toe-ly: aaaaaaaahahahahahahahah

Sam flopped back onto her bed, giving herself a minute - the come-down from “ghost attack mode” would take a sec, even though the problem had solved itself in rather nicely.

Sam nearly cried out when the handle of her bedroom door rattled.

A muffled voice forced its way through. “Sweetie? What have we said about locking your door?”

Sam sat up, slowly. Took a breath, and made her way over. “I said I’d stop re-installing the lock when you learn how knocking works.”

“Samantha Manson you wi-”

Her mother’s impending monologue on respect, rules and roofs was interrupted with a wide open door and a dead expression. “Yes, Mrs Manson?”

Her mom blinked, swallowing her previous tirade. It looked like it tasted sour. “Sweetie, I know it’s a joke, but your dad and I have asked you multiple times to drop the “Mrs and Mr Manson” thing. It’s-”

“A pointed nod to the irony of your formal standards of familial respect, yeah.”

“Samantha, can we please not do this?”

How rich. “Mom, it might help if you tried to actually-”

“-’understand why you do this rather than seek to use the blunt instrument of parental authority to control you’, or something, right?”

Sam blinked. Her mom could barely hide her smirk.

“We do listen.”

Sam kept her face blank and said nothing. Pointing out the obvious would do nothing but lead to yet another argument in a doorway, ripe for door-slamming and possibly injured fingers. These things always happened in doorways.

Breathe, Sam. Your silence will say enough.

Her mom broke eye contact first, glancing into the room, eyes widening the slightest bit at the soaked magazine pages on the floor.

“Oh Samantha, you really need to take more care in here. The floorboards…”

“It’s just water, Mom, and the paper got most of it.” Her heart rate was ramping up again. Her hands were flailing. “It’s fine, and you know what, why would you assume I wasn’t being careful? Like why is carelessness and thoughtlessness your first thought? I’ve clearly set up precautions against filtered water you can literally see that, but you couldn’t consider that maybe it was you trying to barge in here that could have startled-”

“-I assume a lack of care because I know you Sam, I’m your mother, and as much as I love you even you must admit you’re prone to impulse, undue planning, you take your possessions for granted as you know your dad and I will simply replace them for you at the dro-”

“-What did you want, Mom?”

This time it was her mother who prolonged the silence, maintaining eye contact, breath firmly controlled. Sam made a note of it, but would sooner die than admit who she had learnt her most effective habits from.

“What I wanted, Samantha, was to invite you down to the garden to do some gardening. Together.”

Sam rolled her eyes.

“Why is that such a shock to you, Sam? I’m elated you’ve taken to botany so well. God knows I tried to get you into it as a girl, not that flowers or weeding held any sway over you. But now you’re entering a new phase of your womanhood, you’re developing a sense of aesthetic taste, domestic pride, a new sense of responsibility, shedding your teenage fascination with the gloomy and macabre-”

“Literally what gives you that impression? I’ve got 3 animal skulls right there on my shelf Mom-”

“-Well you’re not wearing that awful makeup-”

“-Because it’s a Sunday and I only woke up an hour ago! Don’t tell me we’re two minutes into our first interpersonal interaction of the weekend and ‘cause I’ve not put my eyeliner on yet you think I’m, what, I’m ‘shedding the goth’-”

“-You are developing more refined tastes Samantha and I don’t see why you would deny that!”

It was taking all her willpower not to scream. She felt that if she turned around now, every plant in the jungle of her room would be giving her a menacing thumbs up. Tear her a new one!

“Oh my god Mom it’s just a bit witchier! Subcultures have fashion cycles too! Like yeah I’ve put my old band posters into storage and bought an oil painting at that auction we-”

Sam stopped. Breathed. Why did every conversion with her mom get so derailed?

Well because her mom found ways to sneak insults into every conversation, that’s why. Because she could do that. When Sam tried, it got her grounded.

It also tended to derail their conversations even further.

There were two ways to deal with Mom when she was like this. Way one, give her what she wants - a fight. Rise to the bait, throw some back, speak her truth, let the conversation switch between radically different topics at a whim.

Way two was de-escalation, and was far harder. It required a metric fucktonne of self-control, but mostly, just three ingredients.

Ingredient one: Stay On Track.

“Thanks for the offer Mom, but I’ll stick to my bedroom plants, thanks.”

“And while they’re looking lovely - besides that weeping fig of course - we are fortunate enough to have plenty of garden space, where plants can actually thrive. Are you unappreciative of that privilege?”

Ingredient Two: Don’t acknowledge insults that have nothing to do with the topic.

“I just want to focus on my bedroom, Mom. I don’t like the garden that much, you know that.” Not totally the truth - the greenhouse was pretty great. Mostly because it was firmly her territory. The perfect lawn and perfect flower beds were her mother’s.

Mom sighed, and set her shoulders. She was gearing up to say something. Something hurtful, no doubt. Sam braced, and prepared for Ingredient Three - when it gets really bad, disengage entirely. Shut the door. It wasn’t running.

Her mom said, “Well, we can do something about that. What would you change about the garden?”

Sam blinked.

And stalled.

“Samantha?” A nervous laugh. “Anyone in there?”

Sam frowned. “Um. Sorry?”

“You don’t like the garden. That’s a little hurtful as I put so much effort into it, and I think it’s rather beautiful, but I want you to like it too. So. What should we change?”

This was entirely new. Sam had no plan for this, whatever it was.

“Is it that it’s too “neat”? You’re “rewilding” attempts in the greenhouse are far from what I can deal with in the garden, and your father only convinced me to allow it was the greenhouse is mostly out of sight, but perhaps we-”

“Are you being serious?”, asked Sam. It wasn’t said with spite, or even incredulity. Just suspicion. Maybe even hope.

Her mom carefully folded her hands in front of her. She’d understood perfectly. “Dead serious, Sam. I- I want us to share something. We’ve never had something we could do together, except maybe swimming when you were little (but then you wanted to stop), and now that you have this wonderful new hobby, and it’s something I like too! So even if it means ceding some ground, if it means being able to spend some time with you that we both enjoy, even if it’s not really my company your enjoying but I get to see you enjoying yourself with me, then that woul-”

“It’s too much of a monoculture.” interrupted Sam, who had taken a small, defensive step back into her room.

“I’m sorry?”

“The lawn. It’s not just “too neat”, or “too perfect.” Like yeah I think it looks ugl- no, actually, it’s not that, it’s like it genuinely makes me uncomfortable. Those perfect lawn stripes are, they’re like this symbol of America but only in this really gross, plastic-and-fructose-syrup way, you know?”

Her Mom hesitated. She began to speak, but Sam barrelled onwards.

“And it’s not just how it looks, ‘cause like, turfgrass lawns are just such an issue. Like you have to put so much effort into keeping it up because it’s an invasive species and not meant to grow in the US so you have to keep it going with just so much fertilizer and even paint which runs off into rivers and causes eutrophication but then you also have to douse it in pesticide which kills of pollinators and you have to aggressively mow it with that massive fuel-guzzler-”

“Okay you hate my lawn, but you can’t ask me to lose the whole lawn!”

“Why not? We don’t use it for anything - you entertain on the patio, we don’t use it for games or even walking, it’s just there!”

“I won’t have our beautiful land just be mud-”

“Mom you asked for my opinion!”

Her mom blinked, and, for some reason, shut up.

“You can’t do that you can’t come to me with a sob story about bonding and ask me something point blank and get angry at my response without letting me finish the goddamn thought.”

Her mom opened her mouth, closed it, and gestured with her hand. Please, finish the goddamn thought. She folded her hands in front of her again.

Sam nodded. “Thank you. Look I can send you articles, there are alternatives, if you want to do that and if you want to take my mere suggestion seriously. Like, moss, or clover, or wildflowers. Or maybe even do something with all the space? You’ve got the planters crammed up against the patio. You could fill the space with more planters and have paths fill that space if you wanted to do something really cool. And make habitats for the pollinators. Like the botanical gardens.”

Her mother’s eyes registered that. Their trip together for her thirteenth birthday had been her mom’s suggestion and she hadn’t given Sam much of a choice. Sam had reluctantly adored it all the same.

The small succulent from that trip had stayed on her desk ever since. Alone, until earlier that year. When it suddenly gained a whole host of siblings.

Time to disengage.

“Look Mom, I’ve got to finish this. Mopping up the water. I’ll send you those articles if you’d like, though.’

Her mom straightened, smiled with lots of teeth. “Of course, Samantha. I’ll read them.”

Sam nodded, and went to close her bedroom door. Her mom gently stopped her. “I’ll be in the garden, if you need me.”

A thin smile. “Sure thing, Mom.” She closed the door with a soft click.

Sam liked to imagine the plants were angry on her behalf. They’d seen the whole thing, and obviously they’d be on her side.

Sam grabbed a dirty t-shirt from her laundry basket and set to mopping up the remaining water. As she worked, she counted all 38 plants her in room and noted their locations, light levels, water levels, obsessively-

God, she just couldn’t make her mom understand. That it wasn’t about looks and aesthetics and beauty, it was about the- the- the inherent sanctity of plant life, the codependent relationship between flora and fauna, the exchange of air and breath, the nutrient cycles, that her own

daughter you are mine the daughter of green the daughter of ultraviolet the queen of roots uncountable through the ground the city the planet

you are ruler you are monarch the flowers the leaves the vines these are your children these are your subjects these are your responsibility

you understand child you understand my daughter that humanity is infection is gnats is too-much-water is invasive grass it must be purged this pest

is yours to feed on to take their nutrients they are flies in the trap you will do my bidding my sweet greendaughter they will do yours you are chlorophyll you are ectoplasm shed your meat dissolve the juices of your flesh you-

…

Sam gasped and clutched her hand. She had somehow managed to find a sharp-enough pencil with which to stab her palm. She looked up, brain catching up to the fact that she had managed to drag herself to her desk, even amid the episode.

That was good. New, but good. Her body was able to act to pull her out, now. Even if she didn’t remember it.

Just another example of feeling eerily disconnected from her flesh body.

She fell into her office chair, and her head fell into her hands. She breathed. Always fucking breathing, like it’s a chore. Fucking oxygen. It never felt quite right, these days.

She needed to center herself. She knew the steps. Couldn’t remember the fucking steps. They were in the notes app on her phone. Where was her phone?

On the ground, by the jerry can and the mason jars and the magazine pages. Okay. Easy.

She sat up, walked, then half crawled to the same spot on the floor. Crossed her legs, sat upright, faced the desk, keeping the pencil in sight. Flexed her injured hand, and reached out for her phone.

She found the list quickly enough - she’d put the shortcut on her homepage.

5 See

Sam spoke aloud to the room. “I can see my phone; my desk; the window with the tree in full bloom. The raccoon skull on the windowsill. And the jerry can, it’s still got a bit of water in it.”

She shuddered a breath out. Unlocked her phone again and read the next line.

4 Touch

Sam closed her eyes and concentrated. “I feel the small stab wound from the pencil in my left hand. It fucking hurts. I feel that my right leg is a bit damp from sitting on the floor. It’s cold. I feel my boots on my feet, because I never took them off. I feel my pajamas on my skin.”

A longer breath in, and one out. She carried on, no longer needing the list.

“I hear the air conditioning, even though it’s not very hot. I hear the odd car on the road. I-”. Sam hesitated. How honest are you meant to be during these things? “I still hear the echoes of the voice. I hear words like ‘daughter’ and ‘queen’ and ‘flesh’ and ‘green’. But not with my actual ears. It’s a metaphor, kinda.”

“I can smell the lemongrass candle I’m burning. I can’t think of a second smell. Maybe my own body odor? I haven’t showered yet.”

“And I can taste my own ass-mouth, as I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

Sam sighed, and opened her eyes. A bird chirped from the tree. She furrowed her brows and stared.

“You couldn’t have done that earlier buddy? I had to admit I heard his voice instead, you tardy bastard.”

The bird probably didn’t laugh. But it sure sounded like it.

Before she could forget, she opened the Grand Spreadsheet on her phone, and went to the “SAM” tab. She logged the time, with the note “short episode. Mild self injury broke it, no memory of that bit.” and hit ENTER.

Five seconds later, her phone rang - the screen flashed the caller ID “circuits mcgee 🌱 🤓✌🏾🧑🏾‍💻🍑”

He started talking the moment she accepted. “Ohmygod Sam are you okay??”

“I’m calm enough to have filled in the spreadsheet so let’s say yeah.”

“FUCK. You were doing so well, it’s been weeks, thought we’d left ‘em behind for good. What’s the injury?”

“Stabbed my palm with a pencil. Not very hard, I don’t think? There’s a bit of blood but it stopped already.” Sam opened her hand to inspect the little puncture. A small spec of gray left by the pencil and some dried blood, and it stung to hell, but she had had far worse.

“Yeah but Sam, you know as well as I do that around here, an injury healing fast doesn’t necessarily mean ‘all is well’.”

He had a point, there. “You’re right, but I’m being honest actually, it really is tiny. I can send a pic if you want confirmation I’m not just bei-”

“Don’t you fucking dare send me a picture of your wound Samantha Manson.”

Sam let out an honest-to-god giggle.

The line beeped.

“That’s Danny, wanna-?”

“Yeah add him in.” said Sam, as the texture of the background noise changed with the opening of a new line.

“Oh my god, Sam are you okay?”

“She’s good man, sounds like a small one.”

“They’ve gone down in severity and frequency, I honestly think we’re coming to a close on that.”

Danny’s voice again. “I know you don’t like talking about it over the phone, want us to swing by for a debrief?”

“Honestly there isn’t much to it that isn’t what I’ve covered before. I’m his daughter-queen again, we love plants, we’re eco-fascists, yada yada.”

“It’s not the info that’s important Sam, it’s you saying it.”

Sam nodded, before remembering they couldn’t see her. “Good point. Even so, a full debrief feels unimportant. I can just…” Sam hesitated, then completed the thought. “I can just tell my plants.”

A short, but uncomfortable silence over the phone. She had hoped that comment would land better.

Tucker spoke first. “So no change on that front?”

Sam reached out a hand above the pothos hanging near her desk, and with a slender finger, beckoned it upwards. It rolled, like it was stretching itself awake, and a leafy vine reached up to her fingers. Curling around it, not dissimilar to a cat.

mother, she imagined it crooning.

Her thumb gently stroked a leaf. “No change on that front. If anything…”

“It’s getting stronger, isn't it.” asked Tucker.

Sam didn’t want to answer that. But Tucker’s correct conclusion was unnerving. “Was that a lucky guess, or…”

“...It might be the same for me.” He said, in a small voice.

“For fuck’s sake guys, there’s a tab on The Spreadsheet for this! Why is this the first I’m hearing that you’re both getting… more?”

“Well sorry Dr Fenton-”

“Don’t call me that-”

“-but what with updating it with all the spying I’ve been doing on half of fucking Caspar High-”

“Tucker tracking your symptoms is more important than tracking Dash’s-”

“Guysguysguys, let’s all pipe down, kay?”

The conversation went quiet, again. They all took a moment, planning their words.

Sam broke the silence. “I’ll go first, if that’s okay?”

Their noises of assent came through simultaneously.

“Okay so point one: Danny, you’re probably right about Tucker and I not being totally on it with documenting our developments.” Sam twirled around in her office chair, eyes darting about her room. “I can only speak for myself, but it’s mostly just that not much has changed? Or more that it’s changing gradually? Like I have an episode, I can log that. But ‘I think I’ve got a bit more control over my houseplants this week than last week, and a tree might have tried to talk to me yesterday’ feels like an unimportant update. I dunno. What about you, Tuck?”

There was an awkward silence. Some shuffling. Neither Sam nor Danny stepped in.

It was something of a habit amongst them. Thinking space didn’t always need to be filled with noise, especially when it was obviously someone’s turn to talk.

Eventually, “Ah man. It’s less that, more like, I guess you’d call it denial? Like… okay, skipping a bunch of keystrokes when hacking the GIW and using your brain instead is something I can probably brush under the carpet until I put it into words in The Spreadsheet which is either ironic or fitting I guess.”

That was new. Tucker had been developing… some sort of connection to his networks and cybernetics. At least enough to have rare insight into how those systems functioned, and sometimes being able to intuit novel solutions, or just know when something would bug. And one time, he may have granted his phone partial sentience. But a direct input into his code? New.

“Well that, and, agh. Right okay, full cards on the table. Sometimes, I go to put something about myself in The Spreadsheet, and I get this itching feeling. One high up in my chest that’s too deep to scratch. Not sure what to make of it, but I don’t like it. So I avoid triggering it, okay. Probably just anxiety.”

Another silence. Sam froze.

Danny asked, “A kinda itch that’s like, ‘stop that right there’?”

“Well yeah.”

Sam’s heart rate spiked, all the plants on her desk standing to attention. “Wait, you get that too?”

“Not you too, Sam.” came Danny’s voice. He sounded small, defeated.

“Okay this wasn’t me covering anything up, I’d just never like, consciously thought of it like that before?”

“Okay, you both get an itch that makes you not want to do something - in your case Tucker, it’s when you’re like, compromising your own security?”

“Yeah. Or like, my privacy, or data.”

“Sam?”

“Well it doesn’t come up very often? Can’t even think of a time, just that what Tucker said rings a bell?”

The sound from Danny’s line had changed. He must have found somewhere away from the shopping crowds.

“Okay. Tuck, what kind of feeling do you get when you, I dunno, patch in a new security protocol to The Spreadsheet?”

“Well I feel satisfied, obviously.”

“Yeah but is it a different kind of satisfaction to like, doing well on a test? Is it specific to when you’re hacking something?”

Sam could hear Tucker processing that. She had to process it too.

Tucker eventually managed an eloquent “Fuck.”

“Is it like, like a slight vibration? Feels like a warm cat purring on your chest?”

“Yes, Sam, that is exactly what Obsession feels like.”

“Shit.”

“Well I guess we can stop speculating that the denizens of Amity Park are slowly developing ghostly traits, if Sam and I are developing Obsessions.”

Because that was the crux of the whole matter.

For the last year, the three of them had been doggedly tracking the changes in the population of their little town. People acting just a bit stranger, a bit more compulsive. Heart rates and breath rates decreasing. No obvious reactions to blatant ectocontamination in the cafeteria food.

Voices just a bit more distorted over the radio, or tv. Heaters turned down, AC turned up. Tucker had even set up a bot to analyze the blinking rate at Caspar High and some local offices to compare with similar places elsewhere in the state. Unsurprisingly, the citizens of Amity Park didn’t feel the need to blink as much.

Shrugging off the voices in the cornfields, the apparitions in the woods, the shivers down your back when you look at a cemetery sideways. These adjustments had come quickly to the population due to their sheer frequency - The Horrors only hold sway when they surprise you. But the blatant unease the town residents gave to outsiders wasn’t just shrugged off amongst themselves - it was firmly, blatantly, ignored.

“No but you guys are special cases, you both had prolonged, individual overshadowings by powerful ghosts and your obsessions are related to them. Most of the town have either been mass-influenced, or just had quick stints as meatsuits. Like we’ve known for a while something’s happening but it feels like it’s speeding up for some people - Paulina’s never been this concerned with being pretty, or Wes with being up in everyone’s business. Then there’s the school building itself which is a whole ‘nother-”

Sam cut in. “Okay okay, we definitely need a big meeting to talk this through. Today?”

“Probably not, I’ve got mom’s actual normal gun to deal with…”

“I found a weakness in our backdoor to the Mayor’s Office’s security and it’s got me paranoid, I gotta patch it before something happens…”

“Okay, tomorrow after school? Yours, Tuck?”

“Sure thing, I’ve got the car tomorrow too. I’ll pick you up on the way in, Sam.”

Sam scribbled the reminder on a note. “It’s a date, gang. I’ll try and put together like, a report, I guess.”

Danny said, “I’ll catch up with you guys on the school steps tomorrow. Stay sa- Mom Jesus Christ that’s not how you- guys seeyousoon.” and his line went dead.

“Talk soon, Sam!”

“Talk soon, Tucker.” She hit the red phone icon.

The pothos, without encouragement, had continued to climb into and around Sam’s hand, gently holding a leaf against the pencil wound. The rest was clamped tightly around her wrist and forearm. Too tightly.

With the feeling of being watched, Sam turned her head, glancing around the rest of her bedroom. Every plant had shifted slightly, reaching for her, leaves and stalks fighting gravity to be closer to her.

mother, she imagined, again.

She extracted her hand, and walked briskly to the door. She strode quickly down the bright hallway, and down the grand staircase, grabbing her father’s set of keys from the hallway bowl. Reaching the front door with the full intention to shut herself in the plantless, steel, diesel and chrome deathtrap that was her father’s car and just drive, she stopped with the door handle in her hand.

A slight tickle filled her chest. An itch.

She turned to look through to the kitchen, and could see her mother in the garden beyond. Her usual hairspray-hard hair had rare flyaways, and a streak of mud marred her perfect neutral makeup. She knelt by a flowerbed, a tray of poppy seedlings on a paving stone beside her. Babies that Sam didn’t know yet. Her mother gently teased aside the soil with her trowel, placing each seedling bundle with care.

Sam’s chest warmed as she watched her mother. It hummed. She let go of the door handle, set her shoulders, and went to join her mother in the garden.

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