Final Harvest

By Valerie Emerson

The harvest is poor this year, and if something isn't done, the town's blessed existence will come to an end. Sacrifices must be made - but whose?

This is a 5,000 word short story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Valerie Emerson
• Release date: Feb 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201717384

Valerie Emerson

Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, Valerie Emerson grew up with a voracious appetite for fiction. She has been making up stories for as long as she can remember, and finally got into role playing games while attending college at Winona State University. Valerie has contributed fiction to 77 Lost Worlds and Metamorphosis Alpha anthologies and is co-author of the Mystically Engineered trilogy. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Valerie reads like sharks swim, plays tabletop RPGs, and likes to attend her local gaming conventions. She lives in Milwaukee with her number one minion along with their faithful dog and cat. You can find her and links to her other work at www.valerie-emerson.com. 

Book preview

Micah stood on the back porch on the last night of his life, leaning against the brick walls of his house as he surveyed his dying farm. The only sound was his own breathing between puffs on his cigarette. It was an expensive habit and it’d have to go, but for now there was comfort in the smoke filling his lungs and the bitter taste in his mouth. It helped him swallow the sight of the cornfield, where every stalk was blackened with mildew. The corn itself had hardly started before the Waste set in, so all he saw was the limp cornsilk that hung like greasy hair from the stunted cobs.

It smelled like the rotting vegetables in the fields, along with the stink of the garden that’d died in June and now ran wild with nettles and burdocks, the only green things in thirty miles. Everything else was brown and dead, or rotting where it stood. Even the trees were bare. They had been for a year now, and it gave him a vindictive kind of pleasure to see it.

Ann came out the back door with her black robe on, mask dangling from her fingers. She was dressed for the cool evening ahead in a twenty year-old turtleneck and black sweater. If she wasn’t wearing long johns, he’d eat his hat. She still had a sweet smile for him, even if her cheeks were rounder than they used to be.

Where’re you going already? he asked.

Jenny asked for help up at the church. You don’t think the feast cooks itself, do you? She