The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Happiest Memory
by D. Kai Wilson-Viola

The low hum isn’t crickets, or insects, though, for a second, I guess you could believe it.  The smell isn’t of almost ready to harvest corn either.  It’s dust. Barren fields, until I visualise what I grew up with. Like the other Remembrancers, I have a talent.
Around me the low hum isn’t quite so low now.  I breathe deeply, trying to remember all of the details.  Anchoring the crops.  Pulling them up from the earth.  And, because I’m doing it from memory, the tractor is there.

There’s a problem with that tractor though.
I push that away, as the hum rises, the crops undulating and spreading up and out with the gasps and rising susurrations of the machinery that sustains us.

The community we live in – it’s designed on memories.  We don’t NEED fields of food.  Not for food.  Turns out we need them for comfort.  And, though I wish I wasn’t the best at it, my specialities are:
a field of wheat.
…and something else that we rarely see now.

I push that back down too.
The fever pitch noise is rising to almost uncomfortable levels, and I have to really focus.  Sometimes, my corn is blood red.  Sometimes, neon.  Memory being fallible and all, I know what colour it should be, and though we’re not supposed to, I sneak a photo sometimes, to try and push away the mistakes.  I’ll hold it here, while others walk in it, touch it.

Stay away from the tractor.
The tractor itself though is a problem.  Normally it’s not right in front of me, but for some reason, this time it is. A hand pierces out from underneath the pastoral scene people are wandering off into, so I step forward myself, pretending to lean on the tractor.  Putting my foot where the glitch is.  Willing myself not to scream when it clamps around my ankle.

“Why’s the corn blood red?” someone asks.
I sigh, as one of the techs softly says, as if apologetic “Not everyone renders their childhood memories perfectly,” and inside I think “Oh no, I did, you wanted my happiest memory.  It was the day I killed my abuser.”

Fiction © Copyright D. Kai Wilson-Viola
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

About Author D. Kai Wilson-Viola:

D Kai Wilson-Viola aka Kai, writes in all genres.  She’s currently gearing up to release her first true Crime book and website.  This piece is an offshoot of ‘The Rememberancers,’ which is up in the next batch of plans.
When not writing, she can be found gaming or taking photos with her family in the Cotswolds, where she lives.

Find D. Kai Wilson-Viola on Facebook!