“Planting” • by C. L. Sidell

“It’ll be the offseason soon,” Pop announces.

Badger’s Bend has one every thirteen years. Winter recedes in February and the ground thaws. Things we plant grow differently—taller, thicker, more nutritious.

“Behave yourself,” Mamma says when the time comes and they head for the gardens. “We’ll be home by sundown.”

Left unsupervised, I consider my favorite doll. “Maybe you can grow big too!” Grabbing a spade, I bury Janey behind the shed. “Sweet dreams,” I say, patting soil.

April arrives, blooming sumptuous edibles… and seven-foot-tall Janey, who bumbles around like a curious puppy. 

“Come here!” I shout, stomping feet.

Janey sniffs trees—

“Play with me!”

—tongues leaves, gnaws branches.

“It stays outside,” Mamma grumbles when Janey continues exploring, unfazed by commands.

I kick dirt while Janey tastes everything green. 

Later, my stomach drops as I see the moonlit doll wobbling toward our town’s gardens—dirty-blonde curls bouncing with single-minded purpose. 

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A native Floridian, C. L. Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculative fiction. Her work appears in The Cosmic Background, Dark Moments, Dread Machine, Factor Four Magazine, Impossible Worlds, Martian Magazine, Stupefying Stories, and others. Her most recent appearance in our virtual pages was “Release Me.”

You can find her on various social media platforms @sidellwrites

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The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.

You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link.

This time the challenge was to write a flash fiction story of no more than 150 words in length that played off the phrase: “the off season.”