Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 285

This week's picture prompt was taken by Alexa D Wilson over on twitter. It might seem like a strange choice, but to the horror writers mind it has a lot of intrigue. 

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Fertiliser

The spade was still there after all these years. It was worn and rusted, but the red on the handle was still apparent. It wasn’t much good for digging anymore, but it didn’t need to be; it had done its job decades ago, and now just stood as a marker.

Daphne felt a prickle down her spine and wondered if he was here standing next to her. She often thought he might be: judging her, hating her, despising her. Like he did back then when he was alive. Now she was old and frail, she wouldn’t have been able to stand up to him like she had done that day. When she thought back, she was quite impressed with how calm she had been when dragging his body down to his beloved vegetable patch. It had taken most of the day to dig him in under the turnips, and it had done wonders for the quality of the produce. Even now she could still grow prize winning marrows in it.

Everyone had believed he’d run off, and she’d let them. The state he’d made of her face that day had helped the story as they thought he had disappeared in shame. Ha! Shame; she wished. The one thing he had never felt humility about was beating her. Some days she was sure he took pride in it.

She was just grateful none of their kids had been born. That’s not how most women should think, she knew that, but she couldn’t have subjected them to him. They’d been better off born into a more stable family.

She’d never bothered with men after that, or anyone really. She’d enjoyed just having the place to herself and her peace of mind back. It took a lifetime to recover from all that trauma, and some days she was sure her brain wasn’t quite right, her memories would get foggy and she had moments when she was sure he was going to walk through the door again at any minute.

That’s why she’d come down here to the bottom of the garden, to check the spade was still there, a headstone of sorts, and see that nothing had changed. He hadn’t risen from the dead. And she’d pull up a few carrots for her tea and return to the cottage.