The rear axle of the minivan lurched. Jenn stood on the brake pedal with both feet, the ABS throbbing through her sneakers. The ABS didn’t help. The minivan fishtailed off the road and onto a gravel parking lot. She slammed it into park and threw the door open, racing clear of the vehicle as if she had always practiced for this moment.
But Jenn had practiced for this moment, in her mind, countless times. From the time she was a little girl she had known the tendrils would one day try to ensnare her. Somewhere, in her dreams and her imagination, she had always been practicing.
The minivan — her mom’s — sat crookedly in the gravel, the driver’s door still standing open. No other cars were visible on the old two-lane highway that snaked along the river. An old Victorian house, where Jenn’s babysitter had lived when she was a little girl, peeked through the trees over the little cove on the other side of the road. A robin flitted over to where the marina had once been, all traces of its boats and piers long since vanished beneath the too-still water.
Jenn stepped out into the road. The pavement had cracked and bleached in the sunlight, but there was nothing there she might have hit.
There was no tendril, either. Would one be visible?
Jenn pressed her lips together with determination. She’d have to check under the car.
Padding back to the side of the road, she made her way to the rear of the minivan. She steeled herself with three deep breaths, and bent down to look.
Jenn didn’t know much about cars, but nothing appeared to be broken. And nothing was attached to the axle, either.
Jenn’s left thumb dialed her childhood phone number instinctively. Jenn didn’t even remember taking the phone out of her pocket.
“Hello?”
“Mom, I just wanted to let you know, I just had a problem with the minivan. It lurched and skidded.”
“Oh, yeah, it does that sometimes.” Her mom’s voice sounded casual — too casual, as if it was every day her daughter almost died in a car accident.
“Well, I’m on Military Highway near Mill Cove, by where Pop’s used to be.” When she was a little girl, Pop’s was what they called the nameless convenience store and gas station — true relics from the 1920’s — that sat by the cove here. “I’m not sure I want to drive it again.”
“Erickson Park, you mean?”
Jenn noticed the carved wooden sign planted about where the parking lot once began. She had lost her virginity in a car parked right about where it stood. “Yeah, yeah, Erickson Park,” she said, stepping up onto the grass.
“Well, do you want me to have your brother come take a look at it for you? He lives right over there on Harvard Terrace, you know.”
“Yes, Mom, I know.” Jenn didn’t need to hear again about the advantages of living close to family. “I think it’s O.K. I’m going to give it a few minutes and try driving a little bit. Don’t call him unless you don’t hear from me.”
“O.K., dear. Be careful. It’s time for me to take my heart medicine now.”
Jenn disconnected the call and looked out over the cove. There were a lot of tendrils in there. In high school, she had helped her boyfriend dispose of a package about the size of a human body by slipping it into the water off the boat launch. The tendrils would take it, he had told her. The tendrils take everything. His mother had gone missing about that same time. If they ever found the body it didn’t make the glamour-centric news sites out in Los Angeles.
Jenn stepped back towards the minivan. Her right foot didn’t follow.
Something brown and leather-like had her ankle. A tendril, like a claw reaching out of the earth, had entwined itself around her while she stood.
“No!” Jenn grabbed the tendril with both hands. Its grip tightened. Her foot seemed to swell with the pressure.
The grass beside the sign bulged slightly as another tendril shot forward and caught Jenn’s wrists.
“No, please!” Jenn was crying already. “No, I don’t want to die here!”
Jenn tried to stand up, but she had no balance any more. She toppled backwards. Another tendril had her around the waist.
“Please,” Jenn pleaded to the sky.
But even as her brain raced against the idea, she felt her legs begin the fatal transformation. Her feet sank into the earth, and split, roots shooting out of them and anchoring her to the park.
“This isn’t the life I wanted!”
Immobility inched up her body from her roots. Her skin pinched and cracked into bark.
Jenn’s last independent thought was that the clouds were beautiful this time of the year.
When Jenn’s brother came to pick up the minivan, the park’s new tree seemed to weep.
__________________________
©2010 by Patricia Court
Patricia Court never disposed of a body in Mill Cove, but was probably responsible for a few loitering complaints in the area as a teenager.
Tags: Patricia Court
September 15th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Great write Patricia - very moody and evocative.
September 19th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Sean, thanks a bundle! I’ve always been fond of metamorphosis stories, precisely because it’s an excuse to be moody and evocative.