As Below, So Above

Ethel's solitary daily routine is one she's content with--that is, until she can graduate and scrape up a scholarship that'll be her ride out of tiny hometown Trinity. More importantly, graduation will remove her from the oppressive, unsettling way her alcoholic father increasingly looks at her, a noxious reminder that she grows more like her beloved late mother more every day.

Always a loner, she's escaped her father's company by enjoying the well-kept privacy of the old riverside graveyard's gardens. Her 'counting down the days' days are remarkably stable, balanced between dedicated schoolwork by the riverside, interspersed only with visits from the sweet, elderly groundskeeper and his unlikely pets--until the sudden death of a boy Ethel's age prompts a totally unexpected chain of events.

Trigger Warnings: alcoholism, death, suicidal references, themes of sexual abuse.