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Individual Immunity Challenge 2 - Dig It
LJ Survivor 2021
Individual Immunity Challenge 2 - Dig It
Standing outside Auntie Bev’s house with a pickaxe in her hands, she feels so tiny. But heavy. So very heavy as if her body is made of some gravity-hyped alien metal. Her weight is oppressive, as oppressive as what she faces. Movement is hard, painful, slow, and almost impossible. She is filled with unspeakable dread.
Inside, piled high on every side are big black garbage bags, mountains, and mountains of black garbage bags, the kind with “Construction” on the box. Everywhere she looks, in every direction, bags upon bags upon bags. She shudders. Where to begin?
She pushes her way deeper into the mess, climbing over bags, slipping on the plastic, struggling to find footing, shoving any she can to the side, trying to create a path through the dense, stinking, chaos. “Just start,” she tells herself and reaches up with the pickaxe and gently tugs one of the top ones toward her. “Slowly, slowly, you don’t know what’s in there,” she whispers softly, and then with a horrible rushing grinding noise they come crashing down around her bags, and bags, and bags.
No bones!
Leg bones, arm bones, skulls… "dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.” She is laughing hysterically and singing at the top of her lungs as she pulls them down. “The leg bone’s connected to the hip bone, the hip bone's connected to...” They are everywhere.
Skeletons stacked floor to ceiling, she has to move them, get them out of the house. She hooks the pick end of the ax around a ribcage on the top of the nearest pile and tugs gently. Again. And again, but more forcefully and as it starts moving toward her she feels relieved, she can get through this. She tugs once more and brings down a thundering avalanche of bones on top of her. She tries to climbs up and over them, to move across the room, get to the door, but she’s so heavy and they’re cracking and splintering and breaking, pulverizing under her feet, under her weight. Under their weight, she is suffocating. She’s being buried under the dead, thousands and thousands of dead. She can’t breathe.
Something’s choking her. Something is strangling her. She reaches up and feels bony fingers around her throat. She tries to wrench them away and hears, “Niece-ie Anne! Niece-ie Annie!” She shrieks. Turns her head and sees the wide gawping maw of decaying Auntie Bev.
~~~
She awakens moaning into the pillow, shivering. She reaches for the bedside lamp and turns it on just as the alarm goes off. It’s six-thirty, her second day at Lakes End and she is filled with dread.
~~~
The day before she spent hours online, on the phone, ordering, inquiring, and lining everything up so that she could just pick up everything, today. Getting everything going to start today.
The sign over the door read “Dump City.”
“Can you just deliver them, please? You’re going to be closed for the next four days anyway, and who does this kind of thing over the holidays? You’re not going to lose anything. That’s right, outside the garage. There’s plenty of room for two. I’ve measured the driveway. I’m more than willing to give you the deposit right now. I went through all this when I spoke with…(she consults her notes)…Benjamin? Your son? Yes! That’s me I’m the one who got the Sommers’ place. Yes! Two dumpsters, please. By the end of business today, please? Perfect. Thank you. Though, before dark would be better. You can? Wonderful. Thank you.”
She hands her credit card over to the man in the buffalo plaid shirt and jeans that would have been too tight on someone twenty pounds lighter and twenty years younger. She pastes a huge smile on her face as he scowls over her card.
“Do I need to run a check on this?”
“I shouldn’t think so, but do what you have to do.”
He decides he doesn’t have to and it goes through without a hitch.
“Call for pick-up. We charge by the day. If we don’t hear from you by one p.m. that’s another four hundred. Got it? Good.”
Next up is the hardware store at the end of Center Street. The nice gray-haired man behind the cash register looks up and smiles at her when the bell above the door announces her arrival.
“And what can I do for you, pretty lady?”
Oh great, she thinks. That’s all I need.
She smiles.
“I called this morning. Anne? I need some coveralls and some hazmat suits. Industrial-strength face masks if you have them.” She looks around the store. It’s neat, tidy, a place for everything and everything in its place. She feels an overpowering surge of envy.
“You have safety boots.” And picking up a pair near her turns them over and examines them. “These look so much better than the pair I just bought at Walmart!”
“Everything here is so much better than at Walmart,” Herb laughs. She knows he’s Herb because the little patch on his blue warehouse coat says so in bright red capital letters. “What size do you need?”
It’s a pleasant exchange. He talks a bit about her aunt, remembers her fondly. He understands what she’s facing. Takes her list from her hand and makes very knowledgeable suggestions that end up saving her a few hundred dollars. He adds some things to the list as well. Safety glasses, a few pairs of thick work gloves as well as the heavy-duty rubber gloves she already picked up at Walmart. “Theirs are okay, but you need stronger ones, thicker ones. Darlin’, you just don’t know what you’re going to be putting your hands into if you know what I mean?”
When she leaves her smile is real and deeply felt. “Kind,” she thinks.
At Macdonald’s, she orders two meals and a bunch of drinks. It’s almost noon and she knows she’ll be deep in it in an hour. There’s a better way to do this, but she can figure that out tomorrow.
“Are you open tomorrow?” She asks the girl behind the counter.
“Yeah sure. We’re open through the holiday. Close a bit early on the thirty-first, you know, but open again first thing. Have to be. There’s a lot rely on us. Construction and city types, mostly.”
Name tag says, Betty. She thanks Betty and gives her a generous tip.
Her order is split when Betty brings it to her table. Half takeout, for later, the other half placed in front of her. Betty smiles and heads back upfront.
Anne smiles at her meal, a big mac, large fries, large iced tea, and an apple pie. Everything in a box, and so bad for her, teen food, she thinks. She opens the big mac box, dumps her fries in the lid, picks up the burger, and takes a big bite.
Mentally she goes over her purchases and errands. She digs in her purse and pulls out the blueprints from Aunt Bev’s house that she picked up from city hall first thing this morning.
She studies them as she works through her fries. The place is laid out almost as she remembers it. The dumpsters will be placed outside the garage on the right side of the driveway, one dumpster in front of the other, leaving the left side clear for her car, giving her easy access to the house and the garage. That’s the plan anyway.
Because she knows the side door will open she’s going to tackle the garage first. Open up the doors and just toss as much as she can in the big bins till it’s cleared. Next, she’ll clear the kitchen and laundry room. She can live in the laundry room if she has to, and she knows she will have to in the next few days. It’s a nice enough motel for the price, but the price is too high for the long term.
~~~
Standing in front of Aunt Bev’s house dressed in her new coveralls, hazmat suit over top, safety boots and a hard hat with a full shield that Herb had insisted she get, she remembers her dream. She closes her eyes for a few seconds and breaths deeply the sweet fresh country air. Then puts on her face mask and pulls down the shield.
On the second try, she gets the lock to turn. WD-40, she makes a mental note to add that to the list. The smell is still absolutely awful, but she’s somewhat protected. She leaves the door behind her open and reaching around without looking in, switches on the kitchen lights. She throws open the garage door, hits the lights, and sighs. Not quite as bad as she thought at first, but bad.
She studies the light bank once she’s inside and flips them one by one, the sea of stuff is illuminated and the garage doors shudder and screech open. Six, maybe eight feet to get to the dumpsters, she thinks she can clear that much before sunset. She doesn’t want to be here in the dark. All she needs is enough room to walk from where she is to the driveway. It's a start. She can do a lot more tomorrow and the day after, and the day after that.
She shoves the bags piled on the stairs over the side rail and makes her way to the floor. “Well,” she thinks, “if worst comes to worst, I can always use my pretty new shovel and just dig it. I’ll be done in no time.”
```
And she would have been if she hadn’t opened the big lumpy bag with the pretty wooden box with the mother-of-pearl inlay poking through the plastic. But she opened it, and what she saw made her crawl into the dumpster and go through every single thing she’d tossed in it over the previous hours.
To be continued….
Individual Immunity Challenge 2 - Dig It
Standing outside Auntie Bev’s house with a pickaxe in her hands, she feels so tiny. But heavy. So very heavy as if her body is made of some gravity-hyped alien metal. Her weight is oppressive, as oppressive as what she faces. Movement is hard, painful, slow, and almost impossible. She is filled with unspeakable dread.
Inside, piled high on every side are big black garbage bags, mountains, and mountains of black garbage bags, the kind with “Construction” on the box. Everywhere she looks, in every direction, bags upon bags upon bags. She shudders. Where to begin?
She pushes her way deeper into the mess, climbing over bags, slipping on the plastic, struggling to find footing, shoving any she can to the side, trying to create a path through the dense, stinking, chaos. “Just start,” she tells herself and reaches up with the pickaxe and gently tugs one of the top ones toward her. “Slowly, slowly, you don’t know what’s in there,” she whispers softly, and then with a horrible rushing grinding noise they come crashing down around her bags, and bags, and bags.
No bones!
Leg bones, arm bones, skulls… "dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.” She is laughing hysterically and singing at the top of her lungs as she pulls them down. “The leg bone’s connected to the hip bone, the hip bone's connected to...” They are everywhere.
Skeletons stacked floor to ceiling, she has to move them, get them out of the house. She hooks the pick end of the ax around a ribcage on the top of the nearest pile and tugs gently. Again. And again, but more forcefully and as it starts moving toward her she feels relieved, she can get through this. She tugs once more and brings down a thundering avalanche of bones on top of her. She tries to climbs up and over them, to move across the room, get to the door, but she’s so heavy and they’re cracking and splintering and breaking, pulverizing under her feet, under her weight. Under their weight, she is suffocating. She’s being buried under the dead, thousands and thousands of dead. She can’t breathe.
Something’s choking her. Something is strangling her. She reaches up and feels bony fingers around her throat. She tries to wrench them away and hears, “Niece-ie Anne! Niece-ie Annie!” She shrieks. Turns her head and sees the wide gawping maw of decaying Auntie Bev.
~~~
She awakens moaning into the pillow, shivering. She reaches for the bedside lamp and turns it on just as the alarm goes off. It’s six-thirty, her second day at Lakes End and she is filled with dread.
~~~
The day before she spent hours online, on the phone, ordering, inquiring, and lining everything up so that she could just pick up everything, today. Getting everything going to start today.
The sign over the door read “Dump City.”
“Can you just deliver them, please? You’re going to be closed for the next four days anyway, and who does this kind of thing over the holidays? You’re not going to lose anything. That’s right, outside the garage. There’s plenty of room for two. I’ve measured the driveway. I’m more than willing to give you the deposit right now. I went through all this when I spoke with…(she consults her notes)…Benjamin? Your son? Yes! That’s me I’m the one who got the Sommers’ place. Yes! Two dumpsters, please. By the end of business today, please? Perfect. Thank you. Though, before dark would be better. You can? Wonderful. Thank you.”
She hands her credit card over to the man in the buffalo plaid shirt and jeans that would have been too tight on someone twenty pounds lighter and twenty years younger. She pastes a huge smile on her face as he scowls over her card.
“Do I need to run a check on this?”
“I shouldn’t think so, but do what you have to do.”
He decides he doesn’t have to and it goes through without a hitch.
“Call for pick-up. We charge by the day. If we don’t hear from you by one p.m. that’s another four hundred. Got it? Good.”
Next up is the hardware store at the end of Center Street. The nice gray-haired man behind the cash register looks up and smiles at her when the bell above the door announces her arrival.
“And what can I do for you, pretty lady?”
Oh great, she thinks. That’s all I need.
She smiles.
“I called this morning. Anne? I need some coveralls and some hazmat suits. Industrial-strength face masks if you have them.” She looks around the store. It’s neat, tidy, a place for everything and everything in its place. She feels an overpowering surge of envy.
“You have safety boots.” And picking up a pair near her turns them over and examines them. “These look so much better than the pair I just bought at Walmart!”
“Everything here is so much better than at Walmart,” Herb laughs. She knows he’s Herb because the little patch on his blue warehouse coat says so in bright red capital letters. “What size do you need?”
It’s a pleasant exchange. He talks a bit about her aunt, remembers her fondly. He understands what she’s facing. Takes her list from her hand and makes very knowledgeable suggestions that end up saving her a few hundred dollars. He adds some things to the list as well. Safety glasses, a few pairs of thick work gloves as well as the heavy-duty rubber gloves she already picked up at Walmart. “Theirs are okay, but you need stronger ones, thicker ones. Darlin’, you just don’t know what you’re going to be putting your hands into if you know what I mean?”
When she leaves her smile is real and deeply felt. “Kind,” she thinks.
At Macdonald’s, she orders two meals and a bunch of drinks. It’s almost noon and she knows she’ll be deep in it in an hour. There’s a better way to do this, but she can figure that out tomorrow.
“Are you open tomorrow?” She asks the girl behind the counter.
“Yeah sure. We’re open through the holiday. Close a bit early on the thirty-first, you know, but open again first thing. Have to be. There’s a lot rely on us. Construction and city types, mostly.”
Name tag says, Betty. She thanks Betty and gives her a generous tip.
Her order is split when Betty brings it to her table. Half takeout, for later, the other half placed in front of her. Betty smiles and heads back upfront.
Anne smiles at her meal, a big mac, large fries, large iced tea, and an apple pie. Everything in a box, and so bad for her, teen food, she thinks. She opens the big mac box, dumps her fries in the lid, picks up the burger, and takes a big bite.
Mentally she goes over her purchases and errands. She digs in her purse and pulls out the blueprints from Aunt Bev’s house that she picked up from city hall first thing this morning.
She studies them as she works through her fries. The place is laid out almost as she remembers it. The dumpsters will be placed outside the garage on the right side of the driveway, one dumpster in front of the other, leaving the left side clear for her car, giving her easy access to the house and the garage. That’s the plan anyway.
Because she knows the side door will open she’s going to tackle the garage first. Open up the doors and just toss as much as she can in the big bins till it’s cleared. Next, she’ll clear the kitchen and laundry room. She can live in the laundry room if she has to, and she knows she will have to in the next few days. It’s a nice enough motel for the price, but the price is too high for the long term.
~~~
Standing in front of Aunt Bev’s house dressed in her new coveralls, hazmat suit over top, safety boots and a hard hat with a full shield that Herb had insisted she get, she remembers her dream. She closes her eyes for a few seconds and breaths deeply the sweet fresh country air. Then puts on her face mask and pulls down the shield.
On the second try, she gets the lock to turn. WD-40, she makes a mental note to add that to the list. The smell is still absolutely awful, but she’s somewhat protected. She leaves the door behind her open and reaching around without looking in, switches on the kitchen lights. She throws open the garage door, hits the lights, and sighs. Not quite as bad as she thought at first, but bad.
She studies the light bank once she’s inside and flips them one by one, the sea of stuff is illuminated and the garage doors shudder and screech open. Six, maybe eight feet to get to the dumpsters, she thinks she can clear that much before sunset. She doesn’t want to be here in the dark. All she needs is enough room to walk from where she is to the driveway. It's a start. She can do a lot more tomorrow and the day after, and the day after that.
She shoves the bags piled on the stairs over the side rail and makes her way to the floor. “Well,” she thinks, “if worst comes to worst, I can always use my pretty new shovel and just dig it. I’ll be done in no time.”
```
And she would have been if she hadn’t opened the big lumpy bag with the pretty wooden box with the mother-of-pearl inlay poking through the plastic. But she opened it, and what she saw made her crawl into the dumpster and go through every single thing she’d tossed in it over the previous hours.
To be continued….
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I'm just tickled pink by your kind words. Thank you, thank you, thank you! <3
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Good work :D
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As for what happens next? I'm dying to find out! ;-)
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This sounds way too familiar to me. *hugs*
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Aww, I'm sorry Alyce. *Hugs* I loved your poem, by the way. Beautiful!
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But what did she find? I MUST know! And you know you've told a GREAT story when your readers absolutely MUST know!
Excellent blend of internal thoughts and external dialogue, as well as descriptions. This is fascinating, friend! *hugs*
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I really want to know what she found in that box, too! ;-)
*Hugs*
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And what a daunting task, mountains and mountains of (most-likely) junk all through the house. And worse yet, smelly and therefore probably unsanitary.
I was pleased she started to look inside the bags, though. While one man's trash may be another man's treasure, even hoarders don't always collect ONLY junk. :O
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I love when a story comes to me that I can pursue like this. :-)
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And that end is deeply intriguing!
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Can't wait to read yours!
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I'm so glad you went back to this! I can't wait to see what she found. With all that stuff, there's got to be something good waiting for her. Hopefully not too many bones — or none at all would be better!
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Thank you for your very kind words. I can't wait to get back into this story again. <3