Everything Got Worse: a 1990s-era supernatural tale of rural sprawl and eco-displacement told from the perspective of a kid who got eaten by a gator and his mother who will never find out why he died.
Published September 2024 in Heavy Feather Review’s Haunted Passages collection.
Aaaaaaaaand a taste:
The earth-moving machines had long sputtered out and all the workers were eating or sleeping so I got bored and decided to run off to explore the woods behind our construction site. Tall pines and old oak trees covered the floor in dry needles and acorns and when the crunching stopped underneath my shoeless feet, replacing itself with sticky sucking muck, I looked up and saw I’d come upon a section of really tall grass that went back farther than I could see. I noticed the cattails a little too late and that’s when the alligator darted out of the pond and ate me.
Again, head over to Heavy Feather Review for the exciting conclusion of.
Where did the inspiration for this story come from? Well, every kid in Florida is terrified of being eaten by an alligator. We know how it happens, where it can happen, and what happens afterward. I figured I’d rip off that band-aid in paragraph one. Let the kid get on with his…death.
I’ve been a witness to sprawl. Rural turns to ‘burbs, ‘burbs to just part of the city. I’ve been a witness to housing crashes, to dreams going up in flames. To nature in flight. To people who, not innocently but rather unwittingly, kill what they love.
People tell me that this story makes them really, really sad.
Oh, and a special thanks to Hugh at the most excellent blog Turn and Work for the completely unsolicited inclusion of Everything Got Worse in his Halloween vibe list: Five Killer Short Stories.
P.S. Photo above, entitled “I probably got too close to the lake that day in Myakka City, Florida,” by me.
Kelli Dianne Rule: Author 