Entry #11
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 68 – Morning
There’s a slope behind the greenhouse. Nothing obvious. Just a gentle descent toward the wild edge of the farm where the crops thin and the trees start whispering again.
That’s where the shed lives.
It hunkers there like a guilty secret, half-strangled by blackberry brambles and creeping thistle. The thorns have grown thick around it. The brambles flower sometimes, white petals stark against dark wood, like the shed is wearing a crown.
I didn’t notice it at first. Demi’s got a way of guiding your eye to what she wants you to see—the drying racks, the compost, the bees. Not the little lean-to of corrugated tin and barnwood that squats behind luscious blackberries.
I wouldn’t have even noticed it if Bastet hadn’t jumped the fence.
I followed her through the thorns, swearing under my breath as they caught at my clothes, tasted copper when one whipped across my cheek. That’s when I found the path—pressed into the earth, darker than the surrounding soil. The kind of path that speaks of regular use. A little overgrown, but too clean to be wild. The kind of path someone walks just often enough.
The door is sun-bleached, patched with strips of metal that don’t match. The lock is newer than everything else around it. Black and matte, like it’s supposed to disappear.
It didn’t.
I stood there until the silence changed texture. You know that moment when quiet stops being just absence of sound and becomes something alive? When the air itself seems to hold its breath? That’s what happened. The gentle rustle of leaves overhead went dead. Even the bees stopped humming. Like the whole world was waiting to see what I’d do next.
Atlas came trotting up behind me and stopped. Just froze. His muscles went rigid under my palm when I touched him, every line of his body screaming danger.
There’s something in there.
I can feel it pressing against the other side of that door like a held breath. Yet… it doesn’t feel evil… more like… important. Like whatever is behind that door will change everything I know to be true.
Demi’s never mentioned it.
Not once.
And that silence—that careful, deliberate omission—weighs more than all her greenhouse secrets combined. It sits in my chest like lead, making every breath feel like a decision. A choice between knowing and not knowing. Between trust and truth.
There’s a part of me that wonders if it wasn’t a coincidence Demi was at the pharmacy. What if she knew I’d be there?
I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I am the person talking to my dead husband, so who am I to judge?
It’s just…. I can’t figure out Demi’s end-game, you know? Like, she says she wants to start a community, but then I think of the weird shed and get “Warning: Cult-Like Behavior” alarm bells.
Then I remember the world we’re living in now. I think of all she has to lose here… and dammit… it’s what I would do, too, Finn. I’m as much a stranger to her as she is to me, still. And I’m on her turf.
So I admit… maybe I don’t actually know anything at all.
Day 68 — Afternoon
I asked Demi about the shed.
It was casual. (I was casual. I swear.) Just a throwaway comment while we were harvesting nettles and she was lecturing me—gently, witchily—about thorns and oils and the virtue of “paying attention to what bites.”
I said, “So what’s in the back shed? Tools? More scary plants?”
She didn’t even pause.
She went still for just a fraction of a second—so brief I might have missed it if I hadn’t been watching for it. Her hands never stopped moving over the nettles, but something in her shoulders tightened, like a door closing. “Old projects,” she said, the words falling between us like stones.
Old projects.
Like that explained anything.
The way she shifted topics felt like sleight of hand—a magician’s practiced misdirection. Suddenly she was all energy and movement, explaining compost ratios with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for favorite books or first loves. But her eyes never quite met mine, and her fingers kept worrying the edge of her glove, picking at a loose thread like it held answers.
And I let it go. I pretended to let it go.
But those two words, “old projects,” they’ve taken root somewhere behind my ribs. Growing like the darkest of her greenhouse specimens, spreading tendrils of doubt through my chest. Because it wasn’t just what she said, it was how she said it. Like words borrowed from someone else’s mouth. Like a script she’d practiced in front of a mirror until the lies looked like truth.
The shed’s not just locked. It’s sealed. Rusted. The hinges have gone orange with rust, but the kind of rust that comes from rain, not disuse. When the wind picks up, it makes this sound—not quite a groan, more like a warning. Like metal remembering what it’s meant to keep inside. A chain across the handles that’s been oiled recently. Fresh bootprints in the dirt, even though Demi walks barefoot half the time.
Old projects, my ass.
The thing that’s eating at me isn’t just the lie—it’s how easily I’ve slipped into trusting her these past weeks. I’ve eaten from her garden, drunk her tea, let my guard down enough to laugh at her jokes. Even the animals have settled in, claiming spaces like they belong here. Atlas dozing in the sun-warmed dirt by the greenhouse. Freya chasing butterflies through the herb garden. Bastet watching it all from her windowsill throne. But this?
This feels like a missing tooth in an otherwise perfect smile.
Remember how you used to tease me about my “detective brain,” Finn? That restless, gnawing feeling that wouldn’t let me skip to the end of mystery novels or ignore loose threads in true crime podcasts? It’s like that now, but sharper. More vital. That voice in the back of my head getting louder: Look closer. Something’s wrong. This matters. I have it now. I can’t stop looking at that shed out of the corner of my eye.
I tell myself I won’t snoop.
But I’m lying.
And we both know it.
Day 68 — Late Night
I lay in the dark, counting Demi’s footsteps as she moved through her evening routine. The soft clink of tea mug in sink. Floorboards creaking their familiar song. The whisper of her bedroom door. Then, finally, the lantern light seeping under my door went dark, like someone had drawn a curtain across the world.
In the two weeks I’ve been here, I’ve learned Demi’s patterns like a second language. The way she stirs at every sound, how her breathing changes rhythm before she fully wakes. Freya knows it too—I can see it in the way she moves, half-crouched, ears swiveling between me and the house. Her eyes catch moonlight, reflecting back a question: Are we really doing this? Now?
Atlas didn’t even lift his head. Bastet followed me to the porch and watched the whole thing with the energy of a judge about to hand down a sentence.
The length of galvanized wire has been burning a hole in my pocket since afternoon, its thin metal warm against my hip like a guilty secret. I’d pocketed it while Demi was teaching me about branch training - one of the pieces she uses to help climbing vines up the greenhouse walls. My fingers had closed around the pliable steel even as my mouth formed questions about how it worked in “logistical” terms. The irony isn’t lost on me—using her own tools to unlock her secrets.
Each step toward the shed feels like crossing some invisible line, each footfall a decision I can’t take back. The structure seems to sense my approach—a low, wooden moan that might be wind through warped boards or it might be warning. I drop into a crouch, pressing myself against the shadows like I could dissolve into them. The moonlight feels like a spotlight, every silver-touched leaf a potential witness.
The lock hangs against the door like a black tongue, its surface pitted but edges gleaming where frequent handling has worn the metal smooth. Someone—Demi—has been oiling it regularly, tending it with the same careful attention she gives her most dangerous plants. The message is clear: this place isn’t meant to be opened. Not by me. Not by anyone but her.
With trembling fingers, I bend the wire into the L-shape I need, remembering half-forgotten YouTube videos about lock mechanisms. The makeshift pick quivers as I work it into the lock. I’ve never done this before, but my body seems to know things my mind doesn’t—like how to angle the metal just so, how to listen for the subtle language of pins and springs. It’s a test of patience — waiting for that perfect note of alignment.
Click.
It felt like a sin and a reward.
I opened the door.
The door swings inward on silent hinges, releasing a breath of air that makes my throat close. It’s not just the smell—though that hits like a physical thing, a cocktail of mint and copper and decay that coats my tongue. It’s the weight of it. Where the greenhouse pulses with growth and possibility, this air feels processed. Curated. Stale.
The shelves loom in the darkness, their contents a grotesque mirror of the greenhouse’s organized abundance. Jars catch moonlight like cat’s eyes, their labels marked in a code that looks more like witch-marks than Demi’s usual careful script. Dark liquids catch and swallow what little light reaches them. The books on the far wall are bound in materials so old, their pages swollen with damp, that I’m afraid if I touch one, it will crumble beneath my fingers.
The walls are a mosaic of madness and method—notes stabbed into wood with what look like carved bone, sketches of plants that couldn’t exist in any sane world, specimens hanging from the rafters like forgotten prayers and shriveled bats. In the weak moonlight, they twist slowly, casting shadows that seem to move with purpose.
And in the middle?
A table. Clean. Centered. Ritualistic.
The table stands like an altar, its surface scarred but meticulously clean. Everything in the room seems to bend toward it, like plants growing toward light. And there, centered with surgical precision, sits a box. Not large—maybe the size of a bread loaf—but its presence fills the space like a held breath. The chalk marks on its side glow almost blue in the dark: “ARI.” My name, written in Demi’s distinctive hand, but different somehow. Shakier. More urgent.
Just “ARI.”
No flourish. No explanation.
The temperature seems to drop around the box, like it’s pulling heat from the air itself. My fingers hover over the latch—simple, brass, begging to be lifted—but something primitive in my lizard brain screams warning. This isn’t just another lock to pick. This is a threshold. A point of no return. Once I know what’s inside, I can never go back to not knowing.
So I backed out. Each step backward feels like moving through honey, like the air itself is trying to hold me there. The lock clicks shut with a finality that echoes in my chest. My feet remember patterns from another life—how to place each step to avoid creaking boards, how to slide through shadows without breaking their surface. Muscle memory from teenage years, now repurposed for survival.
The loft feels different now, its safety suddenly conditional. Atlas and Freya bracket me like living guardrails, their steady breathing a counterpoint to my racing heart. Bastet kneads my chest with her claws, as if trying to pin me to this moment, keep me from falling apart. The scent of rust and rosemary clings to my skin — evidence of my betrayal.
Tomorrow, I’m going to pretend I didn’t see it.
Or maybe I won’t.
Maybe I’ll just open the box.
And whatever’s inside…
God help me, Finn— I think it’s going to change everything.
Updated Ration Log:
1 pocket vibrator (still haven’t used… yet)
1 water bottle (gloriously always filled)
1 granola bar (still holding on to… just in case)
1 plastic baggy with tomato, bean, pepper, rosemary, yarrow and a bunch of other seeds (worth more than everything else in the bag, honestly)
1 galvanized pliable wire (for breaking and entering also… a weapon?)