Entry #10
From The Archive: A Fictional Account of Memory and Myth
If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is an entry from my on-going serial fiction experiment “The Archive.”
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Day 63 – Afternoon
I planted something today. My hands shook as I pressed the seeds into the dark earth—tiny, fragile things that felt like bird bones against my palm. Not metaphors or wishes or prayers, but actual living things. Each one a promise I'm too terrified to speak out loud.
The soil was rich and cool beneath my fingers, still damp from yesterday's rain. It smelled like possibility. Like before.
Demi walked me through the process, her hands moving with the kind of confidence that comes from years of coaxing life from dirt. Her fingers were stained with earth, nails rimmed black like she'd been digging graves instead of gardens. But when she spoke, her voice was soft, almost reverent.
“Give them space,” she said, demonstrating the proper distance between seeds. “Let them breathe.” Her hands carved shallow valleys in the soil. “Let them grow.”
I watched her movements like a student memorizing scripture. In this world, knowing how to grow food isn't just gardening—it's survival.
For a moment—just one crystalline, perfect moment—it didn't feel like the world had ended. The late afternoon sun painted everything in honey-gold light, and the air smelled like earth and growing things instead of ash and decay. It felt... normal. Like I could look up and see neighbors tending their gardens, hear kids laughing, smell someone grilling dinner.
The dogs ran wild through the overgrown field while we worked—Freya attempting her usual failed ambushes on Atlas, kicking up dust and petals from the wild daisies that had claimed the fallow ground. They were radiant in their ignorance, tails wagging like metronomes keeping time to a song only they could hear. Like we weren't just desperately trying to coax life from dead ground so we wouldn't starve when winter comes.
But that's the thing about dogs, isn't it? They exist entirely in the present—each moment fresh and full of possibility. They don't carry the weight of what we've lost, don't wake up gasping from dreams of how things used to be. They don't know that every meal might be their last, that every strange sound could mean death.
I watch them play and feel something crack inside my chest. God, I wish I could see the world like they do. Just for a day. To feel that pure, unfiltered joy again—to chase butterflies and roll in grass without calculating risks or checking sight lines or counting bullets.
Demi caught me staring at them, my hands frozen mid-task. She touched my arm lightly—the first casual contact we've shared that wasn't about survival or first aid. “They remind us what we're fighting for,” she said, her voice rough with something that might have been hope.
She's not wrong.
This farm might be magic. Not the sparkly fairytale kind, but the old kind—earth magic, blood magic, the kind that demands sacrifice but promises renewal.
It's not much, really. The house tilts to one side like a drunk trying to stay upright, its paint peeling in long strips that flutter in the wind. The fields are more wildflowers than crops, nature reclaiming what Demi can’t keep up with. And the greenhouse—that beautiful, impossible greenhouse—fills the air with the smell of dirt and green things and something that feels dangerously like hope. But it's more than the sum of its broken parts.
Day 63 — Evening
Demi's been talking about turning this place into a community. Her hands wave in the air as she describes it, sketching invisible blueprints of a future I'm afraid to imagine. “We could clear the north field,” she says, pointing to where wildflowers have staged their revolution. “Build more greenhouses. Set up rain catchments.”
She's got this fire in her eyes when she talks about it, this fierce light that burns away my doubts. I can almost see it through her lens—people working the fields together, the sound of children's laughter mixing with birdsong, actual food on actual tables every night. Not just surviving, but living.
And for a second—one dangerous, beautiful second—I almost believe her. The vision feels so solid I could reach out and touch it, like the sweet-sharp scent of tomato vines in the greenhouse or the warmth of soil under my palms.
Then I remember. The memories flood back like ice water in my veins—what people become when hunger gnaws and fear rules. How quickly smiles turn to snarls, how easily helping hands become fists. I remember the sound of breaking glass, of screaming, of violence. I remember you, Finn, bleeding out because you dared to be kind.
The taste of ash fills my mouth. My fingers dig into the dirt like I'm trying to anchor myself to now instead of then.
Still... it's a nice dream. The kind that feels like a knife between the ribs—beautiful and painful all at once.
We sat on the porch as sunset painted the sky in bruised purples and bloody reds. Demi brewed mint tea from her garden—actual fresh mint, the kind I haven't tasted since before. The warmth of the chipped mug seeped into my hands as crickets started their evening chorus, a sound so normal it made my chest ache.
She nudged my shoulder, gentle but solid, real. “We can do this, Ari,” she said, her voice steady as a heartbeat. “Together.”
And I wanted to trust her. God, how I wanted to. The word 'together' hung in the air between us like a lifeline, like salvation, like every broken promise I've ever heard.
But I don't know how to let myself trust in things like that anymore. Trust feels like a muscle I've forgotten how to use, atrophied from disuse and trauma. Every time I try to reach for it, I feel the phantom pain of past betrayals, hear the echo of gunshots, taste copper and regret.
Updated Ration Log:
1 pocket vibrator (makes me giggle)
1 water bottle (full — it tastes like minerals and possibility)
1 granola bar (stale but somehow comforting)
3 tomato seeds, 5 bean seeds, 2 pepper seeds in a little plastic baggy (hope, despite everything)
P.S. - Demi says hope grows better than despair. I haven't told her that I've tried growing both, and sometimes they look exactly the same when they first break through the soil.
Oh my gosh that last sentence gave me chills