Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. It's What We'd All Want Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

IT’S WHAT WE’D ALL WANT

We were in our suits, dusty black shoes, and short black ties. The adults stared at us, soft, damp, incessant eyes, convinced that we didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, not at our ages. Impossible. We listened to them fuss over the perfection of this and that, only one chance to get this important thing right. The air inside the house shrank under the weight of the stress behind the message.

We did our best to offer a wide berth to the strained parents, aunts, and uncles until finally I led our parade through the kitchen smelling of pastries and liquor and out the backdoor into the fresh air.

Freedom reeked of opportunity, a breeze blew dry grassy smells over the backdrop of impending cooler October temperatures. ‘Keep clean and stay near,’ both relative demands, both waned and greyed under freedom’s sun.

I am the oldest of the boys, a trio. My brothers each stepping down one year at a time from my ripe ten; children in body and mind. I didn’t think anyone would notice our absence, didn’t think anyone would care since they all spoke down to us and treated us as lesser beings, things to tell ‘keep out of trouble’ and ‘mind your manners.’ The adults, with their little plates and short plastic Dixie cups holding golden whiskey that, somehow, no matter how many sips they took, stayed somewhere around an inch from the bottom.

Although simply reiteration of commands they’d heard too, I explained to my brothers that we couldn’t stray long, this had to be a quick hunt. We always called it a hunt and our hunts always took the same route, for starters anyway. The room for flexibility showed once we’d put distance between ourselves and the house.

Behind the backyard was an old train track, the rails long gone, but sometimes when we were lucky one of us scored a rusty spike—that kind of thing was a good omen. Sometimes we pretended it came from Viking or Native people, but we all knew it was just old railroad junk.

It was cool in the shade and the track ran along a clearing in the bush. The grass stood tall on the edges of the track, a few strands shot up through the gravel along the track bed. I pulled a fair stringer and popped the damp end into my mouth.

A stringer was what we called chewing-grass. Find a good one—along the gravel’s edge always had good ones ripe for plucking—tear away the dirty root sleeve, and pop it into your mouth, pinch it between your teeth. I think we must’ve seen a farmer do it or maybe a TV cowboy.

My stringer dangled and swung, its bloom weighing the far end, creating an arc. I had mine and it would only be seconds before I heard the yanked grass behind me. Being the oldest I was always first to pop a stringer. Not quite the rules, but close enough. I took two steps with that grass stretching two feet from my face before my brothers noticed and plucked their own. I think we figured it made us look older, tough and wise. We didn’t know wise or tough, not until we learned what needed done.

I stepped quicker than normal so as to avoid any trouble, should somebody at the house notice our absence. So we continued up the tracks, double-time. If we stayed on them too long, the path veered right into town and past the old mill, we’d pretty well hunted through that location already and the winos living out there gave us the creeps. They had rotten teeth and always smelled like sour booze and rancid piss. A couple of them used to smile at us.

Which is why, instead of heading for the mill, we took the grassy path that led to a gravel road out to some old farmers’ fields. A creek ran beside and sometimes we’d pick cattails and sword fight—we didn’t stop that morning for a sword fight. Cattails cling almost as bad as burdock prickers and we knew Mom wouldn’t be in the mood to pick us clean, one fluffy quill at a time.

The cattails fell into our past, and we’d been gone maybe twenty minutes, but since I’d quickened the pace, we weren’t seeing time in a proper sense. The distant landscape made it seem a good deal longer. I called over my shoulder to my brothers that after a couple more minutes we’d head back home.

We stepped onto the gravel lane leading to the farmer’s fields. The lane was a lot like the weed overgrowth on the tracks and since my stringer was soggy, I spat and picked a new one. I heard two more spits behind me to let me know that my brothers hadn’t wandered astray. In that pause, I gawked up at the clouds, looking for a sign of a higher power, or probably an animal shape. Picking animals out of the clouds is a good use of freedom. I saw one that resembled a wolf and I was about to tell my brothers when my youngest brother, Robbie, spoke out from the middle in line.

“What’s that?” he asked. His voice full of wonder.

I looked down to where he pointed, took three big steps. A few flies buzzed and a gentle breeze swished the grass around, but other than that, it was quiet. Close enough then, where the breeze didn’t take it away, the stink was bad like a forgotten ham and cheese sandwich.

“It’s a deer,” I said, although I wasn’t entirely certain as I’d never seen one up close and never seen one on its side.

“Is it sleeping?” Hilly asked.

I didn’t answer and I crept in closer. The thing’s vacant gaze was wide and the eyeballs seemed a bottomless pit black, its purple-pink tongue slung out of its mouth, and its head drooped off to one side, muscles too relaxed. I nudged it with my shoe.

“I don’t think it’s sleeping. I think it’s dead.”

My brothers stepped up around me. We stood like that for a while, none of us speaking, the grass in our mouths motionless, the grain tipped ends of our stringers just about touching the animal.

“It isn’t getting up, is it?” Robbie asked.

“Can’t get up when it’s dead. Don’t be stupid,” I said.

We stood in silence a while longer. A shadow passed over us and I turned my head upward, two buzzards circled.

“How do you think it got dead?” Robbie asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, wondering the same thing.

At that moment, something felt very familiar, and I could sense that my brothers felt it too. We gazed into those dead black eyeballs. The flies started in more and more by the minute, hungry straws sucking, and I wondered where we went from there.

“It was a good deer,” Hilly said.

Neither Robbie nor I questioned the statement. It was just about right, felt good and proper, although none of us had ever seen the animal before.

“Had a good family too, I bet,” Hilly said.

I nodded and then Robbie nodded.

“Used to come to the house sometimes in the mornings, nicest deer I ever met.” Robbie sniffed.

“You know it,” I said.

We stood silent awhile looking down at the deer. Although terribly unreliable, my mental alarm clock started beeping at me: time for the hunt to end and get back before Mom took offense to our absence.

“We’ll all miss you.” My brothers echoed my sentiment, and we took a step back toward the train tracks.

“Sure was a good one,” Robbie said.

“Nicest deer ever was,” Hilly said.

“You bet, you bet. Poor family probably heartbroken,” I said.

We’d said all the nonsense that came to mind, stuff pulled from our memory of the morning at the house, as we kept on heading for home. My gaze returned to the sky, my feet knowing the route, and I thought maybe the wolf up there might be dead too and was about to say so when Robbie interrupted my reverie.

“Who’re you?” he asked.

My eyes came down on a tanned woman, skin and bones in a ratty, lime green dress. Fungal green crept around the corners of her mouth and about her eyes. Hilly stepped to my side, tight, and I played the role of protector, although I didn’t feel up to it.

The woman smelled swampy and her hair had clumps of mud riding along the strands.

“Nobody,” the woman whispered. “You were wrong, you know.”

We could just barely hear it over the breeze and hiss of grass buds and strands bumping as they danced.

“Wrong?” I whispered back.

The woman whistled. “Catcha-chicka-commuh.”

From behind us came a rustling. The deer climbed to its feet and bounded away. The woman nodded to us and followed behind the deer.

“Kiss your nanna, she can still feel it and under the ground is a lonely place,” the woman said as she moved into the tall grass, voice plenty loud enough so we could hear it.

None of us dared to look back to where we’d seen the dead animal, none of us dared stare at the trail that the woman left in her wake. Instead, we ran. We ignored stingers and cattails, ignored the salvage of the train track treasures. Not a thought went to the homeless men living at the old mill—the suddenly safer options than where we’d went.

The house came upon the horizon like hope’s beacon. Our father was on the back porch with my uncle Lou. They both had coffees instead of whiskeys. Lou nodded to us. His eyes were red like he’d been crying. The scent of cigarette smoke lingered, but neither man had a cigarette lit.

“You boys best get inside. We have to go to the cemetery soon and your mother’s been running all over looking for you,” Dad said.

“Are you going to bury Nanna?” My breath was short and wheezy.

“You can’t, she’ll be lonely!” Hilly said.

“And there’s worms!” Robbie added.

Our dad looked at his brother and then back to us. “You boys understand that she’s dead, right?”

“Yeah, but you can’t put her underground! You won’t do it, right?”

I turned to see if my brothers held firm with my conviction, they both nodded, Robbie had tears in his eyes.

“Boys, she’s dead. She can’t feel anything now,” Dad said.

“Yes, she can, yes, she can,” Hilly moaned.

I burst into the home. The hearse had arrived and men stood in the living room, awaiting their chance to snatch up the corpse. My grandmother had died in her bed and the next day one of those same men came and fixed her face to make her look more alive. After that, they moved her body to the parlor and the away family came in the afternoon to pay respects.

The box was still in the parlor, surrounded by photographs and dusty old books that nobody would read ever again. The adults talked in low tones, clinking ice in glasses and eating finger foods while I led our parade to the box and flipped open the lid.

We stared down at that face, the sleeping dead face of our grandmother. I looked to my brothers, they gave me the go ahead eyes and I leaned in. Kissed her cheek.

The room had gone silent. My mother cracked into fresh sobs when Robbie and Hilly both took their turns giving kisses. We waited for something, anything. My father came over and put one hand on my shoulder, one on the casket’s lid.

“Bye, Mom,” he said and gave his mother another kiss.

“You can’t bury her,” I whispered, tears spilled down my face. “She’ll be down there forever, alone.”

“Oh, Davey,” he said and turned to me.

My eyes remained fixed on the body in the casket. Robbie gasped, I inhaled a deep breath through my nose, and Hilly fainted, heels making a thump as his body settled. The adults rushed around and my protestations fell onto agitated, but unhearing, ears.

“She’s dead, just shut up about it. She don’t know nothing now,” Uncle Lou spoke quietly to Robbie and me, his voice came out like venom. “Just shut up, all right?”

The casket went into the ground. I stood with my brothers, trying to reconcile what the adults said and what I’d seen.

“You saw her, right?” Hilly asked.

I nodded and turned to Robbie. “Her eyes looked cold as winter,” he said.

That was right, they did. She’d blinked once when our dad wasn’t looking. Cold as winter that blink. Cold as winter and she’d be under that dirt waiting for someone to dig her up. We all knew what we had to do.

“We’ll come get her out tonight,” I said and took the hands of my brothers and squeezed.

“You wouldn’t let nobody bury me, would ya?” Hilly asked.

“‘Course not,” I said.

“Me neither, ‘kay?” Robbie said.

I shook my head, no way. “They didn’t see, couldn’t or they wouldn’t put her down there.” They didn’t see, didn’t want to see. Dead keeps going on long after burial, dead keeps going on forever.

XX