The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Reap What You Sow 
by Elaine Pascale 

The man swings his scythe through the wheat, cutting it from its source. He needed this back-breaking work. Last harvest, he had wielded a bayonet, reaping what others had sown. That work had been brain-breaking, destructive. He found psychological shelter in the productivity of farming.

He hoped to harvest and bind his acres within the week. That would require long days which would hopefully induce sleep-heavy nights. He silently begged whatever god was still listening for dreams absent of the cornfield at Antietam. He prayed to be free of the memories of the bloodiest day this soil had seen.

One sweep of the scythe severed a good five feet of wheat, distributing heads to one pile, stems to another. The wheat was high but only half as high as the corn had been and one-third as thick. Bullets had cascaded through the rows of corn as they had fought blindly, not knowing if they were harming the enemy or their own. Losing sight of what it meant to be the enemy or their own.

As he worked, the ground beneath him puckered and he imagined it to be full of his transgressions, of the bodies he felled for a cause he no longer believed in.

The days were growing short, his shadow growing long enough that it could swallow him several times over. Being submerged in blackness did not sound bad. Especially if it meant freedom from the visions of that cornfield.

The man had stopped swinging, yet he heard the sound of a scythe sweeping behind him. Being alone in the field, the noise should have been terrifying, but the pendulum rhythm lulled him. A shadow fell over his own, longer than his own, stretching on until it covered not only his farm but all the land that had been doused with blood when brothers had fought brothers.

“I know who you are,” the man whispered. He had seen that shadow and heard that sound in the cornfield. At that time, it had passed him over, taking instead hundreds of others.

The sound of the scythe grew closer. If he could see his own eyes, would they look like those he had encountered on the battlefield? Terrified yet world-weary at the same time?

He knew his eyes would appear empty. He had lost the humanity required for fear. He simply regretted not being able to finish his harvest.

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Fiction © Copyright Elaine Pascale
Image courtesy of Pixaby.com

More from Elaine Pascale:

The Kitchen Witches

The women of Cape Cod have a story that is dying to be told. If only they could live long enough to tell it.

When Fiona Walker is contracted to write about a party attended by her social circle, her friends begin dying. She captures the competition and misery of the women around her through three different stories.

In Wishes, Melanie Voss discovers a Time Between Time where nothing that happens counts. Initially, Time Between Time is a welcome escape from a life spent watching the clock while doing chores for her family. But something sinister is in the Time Between Time and it is headed straight for Melanie.

Death and Taxes tells the story of Nashville DeCota, the Cape Capo. Nash swears that she is not the Island Impaler, nor the Tooth Snatcher, but she has just as many skeletons in her closet. When her husband, Derrick, is kidnapped, she has to come clean about her crimes if she ever wants to see him again.

Fiona tells her own story in Hazing, where she finds that the real source of evil behind the deaths of her friends is worse than she could have ever imagined.

Available on Amazon!