The Gardens of Digby Green: Fill Dirt
Digby turned the truck and drove along the fence line until he reached piles of fill dirt that concealed his truck and actions. He’d enlarge this garden, a thing he’d never done before. “Dear Rosalie, we’re here.”
Rosalie screamed.
He swung the trowel, with its sharpened edge, across the gap between the seats, and braked. Despite her seatbelt, he felt the contact between steel and her throat. Her shriek stopped.
Digby glanced right. His passenger’s face was white, and her hands scrabbled at the belt buckle without effect. He smiled and released his seatbelt.
Her fingers found the button, and she twisted to the right as the seatbelt retracted, simultaneously opening the truck door. She dropped out, and fled across the loose earth, leaving one flat shoe behind.
Digby laughed, stepped out of the truck, trowel in hand. He slammed the door, and picked up the shoe before jogging after her. She was sprinting away between the bulldozed mounds of earth, but she wouldn’t get far. The vacant lot occupied four acres. He lengthened his stride, following her tracks.
“Ow. Oh, ow. Help me. I want to go home.”
“Poor Rosalie, did you find the sand burrs?” Digby jogged around the last earth pile before his garden plot.
She looked over her shoulder, and he, smirking, waved her lost shoe. “See what I have, Rosalie?”
The woman hobbled, tripped, and squealed as burrs stabbed her palms and torso through her blouse. Digby marched forward.
Rosalie wailed.
He gripped her upper arm with his left hand. Hoisting her upright, he dragged her toward his first garden. He chuckled. Dosing the miniature roses that marked it had been an excellent decision. They thrived.
“See that, dear Rosalie?” Digby gestured, and was rewarded with the sudden tension as his victim froze as she took in the cross-shaped planting a few feet away.
“No! No! Let me go home, please.”
The trowel blade in his right hand met flesh, hushing her cries. Then freeway traffic noise masked the resulting rhythmic splatters that lasted only a short while. Digby drove the trowel into the soil.
The Gardens of Digby Green is a serialized story that posts on Fridays.
Next week, part twenty-five, Drone.
Find a link to purchase Heartland Treasures anthology here.
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