SATURDAY || JULY 24th || 2021
[One week before the incident]
Elsie De Angelis' POV ~
Death.
That was the first thing to greet Elsie on Saturday morning as she crouched down against brittle grass, her bony knees scraping against hard dirt.
Her disappointment hung as heavy as the shadows stretching long across the yard, and as thick as the cloud-covered sky smothering the first hints of yet another blistering summer day.
She had to use her phone flashlight to see it clearly—the withered leaves, the curled and rotting petals of her latest shortcoming.
She'd picked the plant on purpose. A California poppy—native, resilient, drought-tolerant, sun-loving. Every article she'd scrolled through had sworn it could thrive in the harshest soil, flourish in heat, survive neglect.
It was supposed to be tough and beautiful—and it had been when she bought it—just two afternoons ago, with vibrant sunlit orange petals brimming with life. But now they'd collapsed inward like something frightened, the stems already shrivelled and limp, slumping into dry, lifeless soil.
The flower had taken less than 48 hours to give up on her, but Elsie knew that it was doomed the second she'd returned to 8121 Harrows Court. The colour had drained right there in her hands. As if the property itself had somehow leeched the life from it, slow and cruel.
The flower had come here to die.
It never stood a chance—not really.
The De Angelis backyard was a sun-bleached graveyard of Elsie's failed efforts. Dead grass, dry earth, crumbling garden borders, and scattered memories of things that had once tried to grow.
There was only one thing that had seemed to withstand whatever strange curse this house seemed to carry.
An old California sycamore tree, tall and gnarled, planted decades before Elsie ever existed. Its trunk split low and wide like something out of a fairytale, but maybe not the good kind.
Back when they first moved in—when the lawn was green and the house didn't feel so hungry—the tree had been full and proud, bursting with wide green leaves. It had shaded the entire side of the house, stretching its arms like it was protecting treasure.
Now its bark peeled in long, papery strips. The leaves left were spotted and dying. The branches sagged and twisted toward the ground, like they were slowly collapsing in on themselves. The whole tree looked like it was in pain.
Elsie didn't know why nothing could live here. Why the air felt wrong, like it carried more than just heat. She had tried, truly. Taught herself how to garden, how to water and tend and coax life from the dirt. But nothing ever took root. Not even the weeds dared to grow here.
Somewhere, deep down, she feared it wasn't the soil that was rotten.
It was her.
Maybe the plants could sense it—that she wasn't worthy of their beauty. Perhaps they knew she didn't belong among things that bloomed. Or maybe it was her thoughts, dark and tangled, that strangled anything brave enough to try.
...Maybe she was the curse.
It was a cruel logic, but it made a twisted kind of sense. She'd always been a pessimist—always searching for the worst, and always finding it. That kind of thinking leaves a mark. A residue. A stain that no amount of pretending can scrub clean. She could smile, perform, play the part—but happiness had never lived in her the way it lived in others. Something inside her had always been off. Wrong. Broken.
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