Your Story #128

Prompt: Write a short story of 650 words or fewer based on the photo prompt above. You can be poignant, funny, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story.

Email your submission to yourstorycontest@aimmedia.com with the subject line "Your Story 128."

No attachments, please. Include your name and mailing address. Entries without a name or mailing address with be disqualified.

Unfortunately, we cannot respond to every entry we receive, due to volume. No confirmation emails will be sent out to confirm receipt of submission. But be assured all submissions received before entry deadline are considered carefully. Official Rules

Entry Deadline: CLOSED

Out of nearly 150 entries, WD editors chose the following 5 finalists. Vote for your favorite using the poll at the bottom of the page.

They had arrived earlier by the old road wending through the fingerling hills away from the city. Now, the air is thick with humidity and the scent of lilacs, the kind of air you can feel, that slides down your throat like honey. The suburb does not know it is evening yet, but the cicadas are hinting at dusk and have picked up their circuitous melody. Vast hedges march between houses in stoic columns, and cast long shadows.

The children eagerly wade into the creak just within sight of the back patio. They pace through the shallow water haltingly like fishing birds, hunting for shiny rocks or tadpoles in the silt. A peanut gallery of crows make unhelpful comments on the children’s passtime from atop a telephone wire.

The house, much like the lilacs, has reproduced asexually across the suburb. White siding, a two-car garage, black shingles. The curtains and shades are all half drawn, like lazy eyes squinting against the final glare of the summer sun. White sheds occasionally squat on emerald lawns, the progeny of the houses.

Earlier that day, the house had been mostly empty, but then, vans had pulled up, and disgorged many boxes. Inside, the parents are still fitfully unpacking, glancing occasionally at their spawn in the stream. There is little wind today and so the trees that grow along the back of the property line have put off their greetings. They will wave hello when the August storms come.

To the crows, it was a strange conjuring. The house was silent and now it is full. And there are many new and shiny things which need to be examined. While most watch the children play, a few older crows have gotten to talking about the house’s previous inhabitants. They recall generational memories, knowledge passed down from crowmother to hatchling.

Beneath the house, old water lines open and pump like veins. The vents let out stertorous sighs as they are awoken from slumber, and the house cools.

Outside, the old crows have decided to leave a token for a person described by their forebears.

The house has passed through the family since it was born from fresh-cut timber. It holds the memories of four generations, though not every transition was straight, one generation was skipped.

Earlier today, there were assorted cookies brought by a neighbor, and lemonade. The children had eaten them out back. The sun had heated the package and melted the chocolate ones, warmed them through, almost like they were fresh. There were other cookies too, one with nuts. The children had broken that one up and given it to the crows.

Later, this house will be empty again.

There is a rapping at the window and a rustle of wings. The old crows have repaid a small kindness. The windowsill is cracked open. Something has been left on the outside sill.

The object is something lost from a previous childhood. It has unearthed old unpleasant memories. Once, this house was full of different people. A past generation that occasionally looked after the parents of the wading children. When the stream meandered differently. When the trees were friendly enough to wave hello on windless days, but remain stout and resolute for climbing.

Memories, passed down by the crows and recalled by the mother as she hides the old thing away. She will bury it below a hedge. She will bury the memories in her mind. But the old house will press in. Every creaking floorboard is a gentle reminder. How can it be that a pleasant childhood can bring pain simply through its passing? How can a house be haunted when the dead have left no ghosts behind?

Like clockwork. Six AM, Tuesdays and Fridays, the electric hedge trimmer winds up—on, off, then on and off again—the pattern repeating for two hours. Since I retired, I haven’t slept well and the morning chorus next door doesn’t help. No better on Mondays and Thursdays when the lawnmower starts at six.

I moved to the 55-plus community in January so several months passed before the early-morning wake ups. My three-bedroom rancher sits at the arc of a cul-de-sac next to a house I hadn’t seen yet. Hadn’t seen it because a tall, dense privacy hedge surrounds the property.

The owner’s driveway penetrates the hedge through an eight-foot tall, solid-wood two-door gate painted dark brown. Not even a walkway to the front door. For visitors, only a button and a speaker to one side of the gate. For mail, a box, with the name Fredericks, to the left of the speaker.

I’m not given to complaining but surely a friendly conversation would have some impact on his—her?—yard-care schedule. However neighborly my intentions, he never responded to my button pushes. After several failures, I tried knocking, then pounding on the gate post. Nothing.

One Tuesday morning, I waited on my side of the hedge for a lull in the noise. “Mr. Fredericks?” Nothing. “Hey Fredericks.” Nothing. Just resumption of the obnoxious buzz.

I reasoned that he must go out even if only to get gas for his mower. I thought I’d be able to hear his car—but, no… never. Every day for a week I sat by the window facing his house, waiting to see him (her?) leave or return. Would I be fast enough to catch him? Maybe not, so the next week, I moved to a rocker on my small front porch. Still nothing—nothing but the annoying sounds.

Enough is enough. Fredericks grated on my last nerve. At seven AM—the day being Friday, trimming day—I headed to the hedge, the sound growing stronger as I approached. I walked around the hedge twice before I found it: a slight thinning of the matrix of shrubs. During the next interval of quiet, I yelled, “I’m coming over, Fredericks.” I pushed into the hedge, crawling and contorting my body to penetrate the thin but tough network of branches. Wish I’d worn a long-sleeve shirt. Blood oozed along three or four deep scratches in my right arm.

Finally, I burst through the last of the barrier and into his yard. I stopped to scan the property. Silence. “Fredericks?” Then louder, “Fredericks!”

Silence… but chaos. The inner face of the hedge grew wildly, like so many bony arms with claws reaching toward the house. The lawn bore knee-high weeds and a few blossoms of wildflowers. The house was dark. A line of roof shingles missing, one shutter askew, another fallen to the ground.

I walked toward the front porch but stopped at the bottom step. An emaciated, skeletal corpse, fingers still wrapped around the handle of a hand shear, lay against the door. His leathery face showed the effects of months in the sun. Skin stretched tight over his skull. The bullet hole, mid-forehead, was hard to miss.

Morning turned to night before the police left, their iconic yellow tape still in place. My stomach rebelled against lunch and dinner but accepted several offerings of bourbon and ginger before bedtime.

And, at six AM, I woke to the sound of a lawnmower.

The love story began the way so many do—with a look of longing.

Why is his lawn so impossibly green? I wondered, tiptoeing to peer over the hedge into my new neighbor’s backyard. Not just dutiful Chicago-in-summer green, but Wizard of Oz green, Great Gatsby green, shimmering, promising, beckoning.

A gardener emerged from the cedar garden shed that was half the size of my rented wood-frame house. He wore a dirt-stained Chicago White Sox sweatshirt and fraying jeans, and carried long hedge shears, probably pricey high-carbon steel.

Was he going to do some kind of Edward Scissorshands-type thing? Maybe I could learn something. He was probably from one of those high-end lawn care services that the Gatsby types hired while web designers like me muddled through with push lawn mowers and rusty pruning shears.

Mr. Gatsby probably didn’t know much about color, the way I did. If I ever met him, I could point out that the red hibiscus on his patio didn’t really play well against the canvas of the green lawn—a bit of a Christmas vibe going on. Or maybe I would just tell that gardener guy, who’d let Mr. Gatsby know that I was the neighborly type…

Gardener guy smiled and waved.“Hi, I’m Javier,” he called. “Sorry we haven’t had a chance to meet. Just moved in and all. It’s just me, but you know how it is. Seems like I have a ton of stuff.”

My cheeks flushed hibiscus red. “Javier!” I exclaimed. Ugh, curb your enthusiasm. “Nice to meet you! I’m Keisha. I just moved in myself, a couple months ago? Ha, you probably don’t know many Keishas, right? I mean, not that you wouldn’t, but most people? Never heard of Keisha. It’s Hebrew for…”

“Cassia,” he finished. “In the legume family. Like Cinnamomum cassia, Chinese cinnamon. Got some in my pantry, in fact.”

He looked like a thirtysomething Javier Bardem (the sweet one from Eat Pray Love, not the creepy one from No Country for Old Men), but no way was Mr. Perfect Lawn going to fluster me.

I turned my Chicago Cubs cap forward, toward him. Take that White Sox boy. “Yep,” I replied, “Chinese cinnamon is great for…”

“Stews, noodles, stir fries, that sort of thing,” he chimed in.

We stared at each other from across the hedge. I had the sudden urge to one-up him. It wasn’t just his storybook-perfect lawn that got me, free of bare spots, matted patches, rabbit holes. It was his lovely lavender wisteria vines and scarlet foxglove under the crabapple trees, and…

“I have a cool plant,” I offered. Oof, where did that come from? I sounded like a 10-year-old, trying to impress a boy. I turned and pointed to a shady spot under a swamp oak tree. “A toad lily. Tricyrtis hirta 'Moonlight'.” Ha, I had a botany class in college and knew my stuff.

Javier put up a hand to shade his eyes. “Nice,” he said.

“There’s a legend, you know, ” I continued, “that ancient Filipino tribes would rub sap from the toad lily on their bodies before frog hunting. The scent was supposed to attract frogs, and the sticky sap helped catch them.”

Javier grinned. “So are you trying to catch a frog? Or a prince? Or what about a garden-variety horticulturist?”

As it turned out, Javier was a horticulturist, specializing in urban green roofs. That night, he made me Chinese cinnamon beef noodle soup.

That’s the dish we have every night on our anniversary now. I keep telling Javier, “One of these days, I’m gonna wrench the secret of super-green lawns out of you.”

“Never,” he always says. “Guess you’re just gonna have to stick with me, right?”

“Well, I do have that toad lily sap so…”

And so it goes—for 30 years and counting.

Okay, let me just start by saying that I, Sam Brazinski, am not some weirdo perv. No way. Come on. I mean, I watch tv, and I know that there are some real freaks in this world. I am most def not one of them, okay? Jeeeez. Give me a break. I’m better than that.

I came here to Fulton to play baseball. On scholarship. Pretty good for a kid from the “da Region,” you know? My family couldn't believe it—full tuition and books and all I had to do was throw a ball! Well, not just throw a ball-- keep my grades up, too. Hey, I earned this--all those years of Little League with my old man as coach. Man, that was a rough gig sometimes, not gonna lie. Kid has a bad game and maybe his parents give him crap on the way home or when he gets home after the game. Buuut, when your dad’s the coach, there’s no end to it—on the field, in the car after the game, at breakfast. Taking out the trash...you get it. I guess it gave me a thick skin, though. No coach since has gotten into my head like my old man, that’s for sure.

“Sammy, your arm will take you places—to college, even maybe the pros. It’s your future. A lefty pitcher is pret-ty rare, kid.” When I signed with Fulton, my dad was bursting: “This is your opportunity, Sam-o. Take advantage.”

I was all golden until I blew out my arm my junior year. To this day I couldn’t tell you what happened; I mean, I had my rest days, did the workouts, the warm-up. I swear I heard it the second it happened—a real pop so loud I thought people in the stands could hear it. Then came the pain, man, the worst pain ever.

After the surgery I went home for a bit, a few weeks. My mom fussed too much, and my dad looked majorly ticked off all the time. Like he thought I’d messed up my arm on purpose, if you can frickin’ believe that. “Your arm was your ticket, Sammy,” he’d say when my mom was out of earshot. Shaking his head all the while. So, I came back down here to school to figure things out and get a job. At least until the college decides if they’ll renew my scholarship. Doing PT, taking some classes. In limbo but hoping for the best.

So instead of Summer Leagues, I’m working with the Fulton grounds crew, mowing and weeding and that kind of thing. Not gonna lie, I miss my guys, and at the end of the day, I’m totally ragged. But in a good way, like after a game.

But here’s the cool thing: yesterday, my crew’s assigned to clean up yards and gardens on sorority row, to get them ready for summer rush and whatnot. At first we worked on ladders--trimming tree branches in the back--and what to my wondering eyes should appear below? Some Gammas in bikinis , getting rays, you know? Come to Papa, laaa-dees. Oh yessss! Some sa-weet scenery!

I’m legit working here on the Gamma hedges. With hedgeclippers, because the electric trimmers are busted. Because of all my PT and rehab, I can rock that old-school beast better than the rest of the crew. And if it takes me longer to finish, I’m in no hurry. Sometimes there are some bare places in the hedge, you know? A nice view. My dad did tell me not to waste an opportunity, right? I’m not a creeper, really; I prefer ...opportunist. Yeah.

Aaand maybe my dad had it right about something else, too: my arm has taken me places. And today it’s brought me to the Gammas. Pretty cool —not gonna lie. 

“He’s doing it again.”

Jeremy forces himself off the couch, knowing his planned day of relaxation is likely ruined. He’s not one for confrontation.

Candice is. She hasn’t broken her gaze from a pair of hedge clippers haphazardly popping over their carefully manicured hedges.

“You have to do something about this.”

“Like what, Candice?”

She shoots him a look that gives him chills, even in the extreme heat.

“I’ll go talk to him.”

Jeremy shields his eyes as he enters the backyard, making a real show of the effort. The hedge clippers rhythmically chop, chop, chop as Jeremy walks under a small shower of freshly cut leaves.

“Hey there, friend.”

No answer.

He continues, realizing he’s never really met the neighbour in person. Maybe some warming up is in order before asking for a favour.

“Sorry to be a bother, but my wife. You know how that can go, right?”

The rhythmic chopping stops for a moment, before continuing with the same pitter-patter. Chop, chop, chop.

“Look, I just need you to stop for a bit. We’ll figure something out, but you’d be doing me a huge favour.”

Jeremy’s pleas go completely unheard. Chop, chop, chop.

He stomps his way around the hedge, preparing to unload weeks of frustration after being mistreated by Candice and now this rude neighbor.

As he rounds the green, leafy corner; no one is there.

Rather than question a win, Jeremy strides back inside to tell Candice of his success.

When he arrives, her cold stare remains, wiping the smile of success off Jeremy’s face.

“What happened?” Candice asks with an eyebrow raised.

“I talked to him, and he took off.”

“Did he?”

Candice points back out to the hedges, where the clippers continue to pop over the hedge. Chop, chop, chop.

Fists clenched; Jeremy trudges back to the yard.

“Hey, buddy. What’s the big deal here? Did you not hear me or what?”

No response. Just chop, chop, chop.

Letting his anger consume him, Jeremy tries to see through the hedge. Thinking maybe looking the neighbour eye-to-eye, in the act, will bring some sense of shame to their actions.

The hedge is too thick to see anything.

Running this time, he makes his way around.

And just like moments before, no one is there to be found. This time, however, the clippers are left behind. He looks around, passing the threshold into the neighbour’s yard. He doesn’t see anyone around.

He snatches the clippers from the grass, smirking to himself.

“Won’t be able to do much without these.”

Self-satisfied, he walks back into the house with the clippers. Candice, somehow still not pleased, glares at him with a dissatisfaction that comes through her voice.

“What are you planning on doing with those?”

“You wanted him to stop, so I stopped him.”

“Right,” Candice says, already bored of their conversation. “You want to use those to try and undo the damage he did out there?”

The sense of victory Jeremy was feeling escapes him like air from a balloon. Shoulders slumped; he heads back into the yard.

Jeremy is far from a botanist. It’s the reason he pays someone to maintain the hedges. It’s the reason Candice was so frustrated to have the neighbour haphazardly hacking away at it.

Knowing that there’s no way to make Candice happy with his work, he decides to just get started. He’ll pay handsomely to have their hired hand come and fix what he’s broken.

He lifts the clippers and gives it a chop, chop, chop. It seems to be going well enough, he thinks to himself. Maybe it’s not as hard as it looks.

Chop, chop, chop.

As Jeremy gets into a rhythm, something stops him in his tracks. Something all too familiar coming from the other side of the hedge.

“Hey there, friend.”