Oh, how exciting! Another brand new never-before-seen chapter!
Enjoy.
Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 13 – Digging in the Dirt
Stacey, khaki shorts, rainbow colored t-shirt, straw farmer’s hat, gardening gloves, and work boots, kneeled in some freshly turned earth at the end of her garden. Some garden stakes, seed packets, twine, a hand shovel and rake, and Frank Sinatra formed a half circle on her right, and her eyes went back and forth among them as she decided what to do next.
“Tell me I’m not Mr. Douglas, this isn’t Green Acres, and Larry Martin isn’t Mr. Haney, Frank. Please tell me that?”
Frank, stretched out in the sun, opened an eye, winked at her, and purred.
Something crawled up her bare knees and she absently swatted it.
The crawling sensation remained.
Not so much something crawling as something feeling. A sense of long antennae touching, tasting, testing.
She stood up abruptly.
Frank rolled on his back and waited to be scratched.
Stacey looked back where her knees met the earth.
Tiny green shoots waved back and forth, something she planted unnaturally animated.
She kneeled again, this time making sure her knees weren’t crushing the shoots.
Their movement changed. They reached for her, seeked her.
She watched them find her knees and gently brush against them while she scratched Frank’s belly.
The feeling wasn’t new.
She’d had similar experiences as a kid in the woods behind her parents house.
Pleasant and inviting, she took a glove off and touched one of the roving shoots with her fingertip.
The shoot gently twined around her. It felt like a kiss.
Someone whispered, “Ascolta.”
She looked around.
Nothing. No one.
Her knees itched. She stared at them. The soft green shoots had penetrated her flesh.
She watched their tendrils wriggle just under the surface of her skin, could feel them reach and burrow inside her thighs.
“Ascolta.”
She snapped her head, stood quickly, and backed away.
The kitchen’s screen door clicked shut. Tom ran up to her. “You okay, Sis?”
Frank got up, arched his back, poofed his tail, hissed, and stood in front of Stacey facing Tom.
Tom stopped mid-stride. “What did I do?”
