This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/emnuff on 2024-11-28 23:37:51+00:00.
Fall has always been my favorite season, especially Thanksgiving. The food, the smell of crisp air, the crunch of leaves underneath my feet. I’ve always found comfort in the spirit of Thanksgiving. But now, I can only remember my hand feeling the bitter cold farmhouse beside me, and my feet crunching a hazel eye growing out of the dirt in the garden.
I struggled to push through the backyard as I felt crooked hands pulling me into the ground, and deformed mouths groaning for me to stop moving. After what must have been 2 minutes wading through the rain in a sea of malformed limbs, I could finally breathe in the shed about 200 feet from the back door of my house.
My grandparents left me their farm in the will, and their crops at Thanksgiving were always stellar. But there was something extra special about them- it wasn’t just their taste or texture that made this holiday the highlight of my year. My grandparents had always wished to grow a big and healthy family, and that’s just what they did: the dirt in their garden turned a single seed into an entire field of corn in mere hours, and a lone tomato gave me enough energy to break my school’s cross country record by over a minute. Grandpa Gil always called it a miracle- a gift from god, to make sure their family was always healthy and provided for.
When they passed, my Grandma Betty and Grandpa Gil had their ashes spread in the garden, part of the dirt that gave their family life for so many years. I had always respected their wishes, growing my own vegetables and paying respects to their patch whenever I could. My only mistake was leaving the faucet on last night- how was I supposed to know that the miracle came from the water, and not the ground?
I had barely cut the grass since I inherited my grandparents’ farm, so the sea of weeds behind me did well to consume the fleshy undergrowth. Still, in a flash of lightning, I caught a glimpse of the yard more vivid in my mind than anything I had ever thought of before. There were thousands of heads, pulsing and expanding out of the ground like rising bread. They looked nearly human, were it not for the ones that grew three eyes, or an ear that resembled a clot of blood more than anything else. What I didn’t like to think about was how they were clearly my grandparents- mixed together and screaming as a malevolent tumor, eating away at their miracle.
I grabbed the biggest can of gasoline I could find, and I poured it across the garden. The heads screamed as the foul concoction pooled in one of its mouths, or waterlogged an extra ear somewhere in the dirt. After an eternity, I had covered my entire yard- this organism- in fuel. Then, I took the lighter out of my coat pocket and dropped it to the ground, setting it ablaze.
I watched as the pitch black night turned to hell in an instant, my entire yard glowing red and orange. I shut my eyes and started to cry once I heard the screams of my grandparents- a thousand of them, wailing in pain as they were once again reduced to a pile of ash. I could hear their house begin to crumble and break, falling to the ground. I made my way to my truck and called the insurance agency, barely able to hang up the phone before collapsing of exhaustion.
In the morning, everything was gone. There was just a pile of charred rubble, and a massive patch of burnt grass. The rain had put out the rest of the fire, and my insurance agent, Leonel, assured me that the claim I had filed was sure to go through. We have been going through a drought, and I was far from the first to be paid for lightning damage in the countryside.
“Well would you look at that,” Leonel said, pointing toward the remains of my shed.
“What is it?” I ask.
“There’s a sunflower right over there, you see?”
There I saw it: a lone flower, watching the sun as it peeked over the horizon.
“Oh, there’s more than I thought. Look, there’s 3, 4- no, wait, 5!”
I could see it now- more and more stalks peeking out of the ground. From the distance, they looked tranquil. But something about them put me on edge- I didn't want to get any closer to them. I was done with this place.
“If that’s not a symbol of hope, I don’t know what is. Look, Ted, I know that this is hard. I can’t even imagine what you’re going through right now. But that? That’s a miracle, right there. If that’s not proof this will help you grow, I don’t know what is.”
I shuddered at the thought.
“Thanks Leonel,” I said. “But I don’t know about that. I think I’m going to move closer to the city,” I told him.
“I don’t think I need to grow for quite some time."