"Property Line" by R. M. Bundridge
Property Line
by R. M. Bundridge
Both look at her curiously, tilting away from her hand, the plums which weren’t plums. Her mouth was full of berries (which she was supposed to be saving for the pies), and one traveled down the wrong pipe, making her cough. The ladder she was on wobbled, her arms pinwheeled; the basket of berries crashed to the ground—but she caught herself, receiving a splinter deep in her thumb. A clump of chewed raspberries shot from her throat and landed on the highest rung of the ladder. Organs left by some critter, a stranger might have thought. A victim of the food chain.
Her attention falls back to the plums, thinking it was her imagination. Look? What a peculiar reaction. It was the wind, she concluded. It was odd to find plums here, yes, in woods she considered hers—they existed behind her and her husband’s property, before the closest highway; trees and bushes so rich with fruit for her baking, but plum trees didn’t grow here. She noticed it a few weeks ago, the tree with only two plums; again, odd, but she wasn’t about to turn it down. She’d decided when more grew, the ladder in the shed (which had been collecting dust for the past few summers) would be put to good use. No more grew, however, and she couldn’t miss the opportunity if these were all nature was willing to provide. Her husband placed the ladder, gave her a prompt, deep kiss against it, and made his way back to tend to their garden.
Confident it was just the wind, she reached again, practically tasting the cobbler she could whip up; again, both plums tilted against the leaves. Her entire perception of existence stretched far away from her own body, and she grasped the edge of her ladder. Spit built in her throat; fear mingled with her uvula. It was as if the Not-Plums had shot down her throat, been hands, and yanked everything up and out.
She knocked her berries to the ground: spilled blood on the sodden soil.
Apprehensively, she looked at the Not-Plums, and they...were looking at her? Suddenly, both jerked further up, passing through a ray of sun. In the sun, there were lighter violet pinpricks surrounded by the base amethyst color.
Pupils. The thought appeared like a game of peek-a-boo.
These weren’t plums. They were eyes. And from her on the ladder, they were attached to a grueling figment of the unknown.
The wind tugged away at her urge to scream, carrying it high into the sky; her thought of running was pulled with it; moving a singular ligament existed in a space of hope.
Once more. She needed to try it one more time. Not so much to know for sure, they followed her, she knew what they were. It was fascination, mesmerization, the easy acceptance of what couldn’t be.
She extended her arm out gently, getting closer this time.
Every leaf shook with viciousness, and the image it conjured was of a dog tearing into a rabbit.
She retracted her arm, not realizing until it was too late her body had moved on its own, taking a step back into open air. The ground came quickly. Her teeth chomped down into the meatiest part of her tongue, and she felt blood saturate gums like a spring shower.
The eyes shot from the trees, and with the disconnect between her vision and her brain, the optic nerves appeared as pulsing strips of rope. The left eye sidled up to the right. Blood leaked from the edge of her lips, but she was too paralyzed with fear to wipe it away. It was when the right eye traveled out of her vision, grazing her hair, getting a good look at her, when she shivered.
Both grew tense at her movement.
Before wondering if it would work, if whatever hid in those branches could kill her, she grabbed a scream from the wind and clutched a fistful of dirt and berries in her hand—a rock landed in the right eye with a squish. The tree wailed a human wail, one of disbelief and pain.
Finally, she ran.
On the branches above, it moved; leaves fell, twigs, and the bodies of quick animals—for once, not quick enough.
Her cry for help was bloody, strangled.
Leaves were catching up to her. It was inhumanely fast despite the noise it made, but a part of her knew that moment she blamed its jerking away on the wind, hadn’t she? As it caught up to her from above, a hulking shape smearing shadows across the ground, she realized it was a lure. She had been prey.
She spotted her garden, her cottage.
Her clenched fist felt unobstructed light when a heavy weight dropped on her leg, snapping it forward so fast the shin bone stabbed the dirt like a wedge being planted for a tent. A stake on the edge of her garden greeted her agape mouth with a plunge. It burst through the back of her skull and sprayed both purple eyes with red.
--
From the window, he cried silently. She was running for her life, his gut told him; blood on her face, no basket of berries in her hand, something wasn’t right. He had been seconds away from leaping through their back door and calling her name—LUCILLE—when the body of a deer collapsed on hers. Its color was wrong, though: sickly green and covered in oozing pustules. The eyes rose slowly, twenty feet of nerves coiled in the air, ending in orbs; its sockets and lids held no use. It ground Lucille’s body into the earth along their property line. When one of its hoofs crunched against Lucille’s neck, her head popped free from the stake, and she looked through him. The creature’s eyes, however, settled on him; its left hoof scuffed Lucille’s head clean off.