With the first day of September comes the first excerpt, and an introduction to one our main characters, Eve. Enjoy!

Eve

“DID I SAY TILT IT BACK?” Dad roared. “ROLL IT YOU IDIOT!”

My first instinct was to get the shovel lying nearby and smash it repeatedly over his head until he crumpled on the ground bleeding, after which I would tie I rope around his body, throw it off a cliff, then bring it back up and with much pleasure throw it off again. But instead, I gritted my teeth and rolled the trolley while he held the heavy bag of fertilizer steady on the other end.

Hi there. I should probably introduce myself, because as you’ll see this story moves pretty quickly and we won’t have time for bonding or getting to know each other real well. So, let’s get to it. My name’s Eve, as you can probably guess I’m a teenager based on my intense hatred for my father, and I live in the most boring town ever of Camas, Washington. Like, seriously. There is nothing to do here. But at least I don’t live in Arizona, right? Sorry Arizonians.

I like staying up late at night reading under the covers with a flashlight, roaming the woods that lay not too far from my house and wishing I was somewhere other than here. You’ll come to find that I’m a pretty complex and mysterious person. Just kidding, but I am a freak. Aren’t all protagonists these days? Anyway, we should probably get back to the story. It was nice conversing with you for a little while before everything goes to hell.

It was past midday and my stomach was rumbling, but Dad didn’t care. His first priority was getting work done so he could make money, and his second was questioningly his family.

Dad often made me do hard, back-breaking chores in my spare time. So when I wasn’t getting an education, I was helping him on our family farm. He made me detest the idea of gardening so much that I wanted to run to the city, live in a crowded apartment with twenty other people and use the corn stalks that we grew every summer as tobacco in a pipe. Sounds a bit over-dramatic, I know. But one gets sick of repetitive antagonism from an ass.

“OI!” Dad yelled. “DID I SAY YOU COULD STAND AROUND? GET TO WORK!”

Ass.

You didn’t say anything. You yelled.

Quietly I filled the pots with soil and fertilizer and he planted. The only thing I could think about besides brutally killing him was food. Meat and potatoes with gravy, to be specific. Nothing sounded better.

A few hours later, we finished our work. Our hands were brown and scratchy from working in the dirt and our clothes were pretty much the same. Mom hadn’t yet returned from work at the hospital. She often worked late.

Dad went off to do his own thing, so I decided, why not take a nice, long nap?

But it was later that night that I, for some reason, happened to wake up and look out of my window.

“And CUT!”