The barren field seemed to stretch on for miles, weeds having claimed the once well-kept and fertile soil long ago. The farmhouse’s lights hadn’t been switched on in what felt like decades to the incandescent bulbs, the filaments aching to feel the blanketing warmth of electricity once more. Of course, they wouldn’t get that privilege again, not for a long time. The walls of the house groaned with sorrow, or perhaps it was the sheer weight of the contents inside pressing against their thin structure causing them to nearly buckle. It wasn’t always like this, they thought. They remembered a time when the farmhouse was neat and tidy, when not even an ounce of dust nor the smallest string of cobweb hung from their corners. They remembered when the quaint brick home was always filled with the scent of enticing fresh baked goods. Now, the presence of waste and debris was a common part of life for the farmhouse, the scent of rot and decay replacing the comforting aroma of warm apple pie. The house had taken those small things for granted. The house missed a delicate touch. 

Outside lay the small jungle that was once called a backyard. Clovers and white yarrow grew alongside the supports of what once was a thoroughly used wooden playset. Milkweed and blue violets added pops of color around the vacant lawn. The playset hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint in nearly a decade, the firetruck red fading and chipping away memories that slip from the world’s grasp as each day passes. Just beside the playhouse sat a small, turtle-shaped sandbox. The turtle could recall the small boy that would often visit, could recall the stories he would come up with as he constructed cities inside of the turtle’s domain. It could recall the boy becoming upset each time he was pulled from his mayoral duties in the sand kingdom, the small tantrums he threw, almost routine. The sandbox was a toy he had begged his parents for since he could speak, circling it in the Toys “R” Us catalog when it was time to make his Christmas list. Naturally, when the boy tore open the festive wrapping paper one year to reveal the turtle shaped sandbox, he was ecstatic. The boy refused to open the rest of his gifts until the turtle was set up in the snow-covered backyard. Despite how much the boy pleaded with his father, he wasn’t allowed to play for very long before needing to return to the festivities. He reminded the farmer of his childhood self far too often for comfort. 

The mayor hadn’t visited the turtle in a long time, his cities now fallen and soggy. The turtle missed its boy.

Inside the barn lay husks of the animals that once resided there, various stages of decay claiming their flesh and bones. They never stood a chance, not in the hot summer months, locked away in the open shed of the barn as if they were to blame for all of this. When the hay had grown sparse, the foal had been the first to go. His desperate groans and squeals seemed to fall upon deaf ears as they tore into his flesh. The foal was too weak to fight back, the emaciated animal simply writhing as the only family he knew feasted upon his flesh and viscera. 

Perhaps it was best this way, the foal had thought. I was not made for the gnashing teeth of humanity.

The foal’s body lay beside its mother, who passed soon after her spawn. 

Her heart shattered, the strain too much for her feeble body to handle. Her body took much longer to decompose than her son’s, the sheer mass of the horse too much for the larvae wiggling in her carcass to finish in a short amount of time. The stench emitting from the barn drew in all sorts of passersby; the unforgiving jaws of nature were here to claim what was rightfully hers. The flies came first, laying their eggs on the carcasses. The meat supplied a good meal for growing larvae. The wolves came after, not having any problem getting into the open shed of the barn. They ripped and tore through the carcasses’ flesh and muscle, gorging themselves on the easy meal. The farmer didn’t notice, nor would he have cared.

At the front of the quaint farmhouse sat a rusted truck, the body and frame dented beyond repair. The farmer swore to himself he would be able to fix it. The farmer would fix his truck. He knew the truck was totaled, of course. He knew neither it nor he would ever be on the road again. He just simply couldn’t fathom parting with it, the last place his family had been alive together. The farmer had always been a no-good drunk. His wife tried to see past that. She told herself he’d get better; he’d stop for her and their son. The farmer’s wife took every hit, every insult slung at her by her drunken husband. It would be better to take it than separate her little family that she worked so hard for, she told herself. Her son needed food; her son needed shelter; her son needed his father. Everything she did was for her son. The farmer knew this. The farmer took advantage of this. His wife was his sheep to herd as he pleased, his punching bag. If his wife wanted to be a family so badly, he’d show her what being a family was like. 

The farmer took his family for a drive in that rusted truck, called it a family road trip. They left before dawn, though the farmer hadn’t slept all night. The farmer shoved his wife into the front seat after she gently put their son in the back. She always tried to be gentle with him, gentle words, gentle hugs, gentle kisses. She knew not of gentleness herself, but she would make sure her son did. Her son would not be like his father. Her son wouldn’t have a chance to be like his father. The farmer, drink in hand, pulled out of their rocky driveway. He swerved onto the country roads with little regard to his wife’s complaints, his foot recklessly pressing the gas more and more. The boy, now waking from his half-asleep daze, could sense his mother’s growing panic. He knew better than to raise his voice, to express his discomfort. His father made sure of that. All the boy could do was imagine his city, imagine he was back in the sandy domain of his best reptilian friend. He had such a vivid imagination. The boy was among his sandy people when his father rolled the truck into a steep ditch after taking a turn too sharp, too fast. 

It was a miracle the farmer survived, doctors told him. It was a miracle the small boy died so quickly, they sobbed. It should’ve been the farmer, most snapped.

The farmer hadn’t touched the truck since the accident, nor had he mowed the lawn nor tended to the animals. Each time a visitor came along, they were met with the groaning home rather than the owner, the farmer having been swallowed whole by the once comforting sheets he and his wife shared. The farmer became one with his bed. He wallowed in his own filth and sorrows, his putrid body surrounded by rotting garbage and empty soda bottles, by his own excrement. The farmer was rarely able to pull himself out of bed; the only thing that got him up was the primal urge to eat something, to drink at times. If he was feeling particularly good one day, he even stood under some running water. That hadn’t happened in some time, however. 

Maggots had begun to crawl out of folds in the farmer’s body, unbeknownst to him. The smell of rotting flesh had only been masked by the foul smell of stale urine and rotted food. The farmer was completely blind to his body’s decay. He wouldn’t last much longer. The house knew it; The turtle knew it, even from its jungle prison. The carcasses in the barn knew it, they had very little empathy for this man, the man who had sworn to tend to them. The mare had even less. 

In its rage, the house began to allow itself to buckle. 

The farmer should be crushed for taking the only joys the farm knew away, the house hissed. The farmer should suffocate under the rubble of the misery he created. 

The house would not stand for the farmer any longer. If the farmer wanted to wallow in his sorrows, he could do it beneath hundreds of tons of brick. The house believed the farmer deserved to have each and every bone in his body shattered. It believed he deserved to live in agony until he suffocated not only under the weight of his actions, but under the home that once welcomed him with open shutters. 

The turtle could only watch from afar as the house began to give in to its rage. The turtle knew the farmer would succumb to his depression one day. It would’ve rather seen him go out that way instead. The turtle knew harming the farmer wouldn’t bring its boy back. The turtle pleaded with the house to reconsider. 

The farmer will pay for what he has done in time, the turtle tried. This is not for us to decide.

The foal’s mother loathed the farmer for killing her son, her son who had hardly known the joys of life. The farmer’s son – who had hardly known the world himself – didn’t get to experience the joys of life, either. The farmer didn’t get the privilege to raise a strong, handsome boy, but he certainly had the opportunity to allow another to have that joy. He didn’t allow that to happen. The farmer was a selfish man, the mare knew. He deserved every ounce of what he got, the foal’s mother knew. The mother encouraged the house to end the pathetic farmer, her venomous whispers slipping through the cracks in the roof. 

The farmer must perish for what he has done, the mother reiterated to the house. He took everything from us. He must die.

The house made its decision.