Creepy Pastas and other creepy stories

I Planted A Tree When My Daughter Was Born

*Slight sexual content(not that bad really, just giving people a heads up). Read at your own risk*

The year was 1992. I got up in the morning, made coffee, went to work. When I came home, the answering machine was blinking red. Not a lot of phone calls happened unscheduled in my home; in fact, there were only two potential callers. My doctor, or my lawyer.

The lawyer had been hired because I wanted to file for divorce. My husband, Ron, was always a drunk. He would come home late at night, tip-toe his way upstairs, roll me onto my stomach, pin me down and have his way. I tried explaining to him - I would have agreed to have sex with him, most nights. But he didn’t understand. He thought I wouldn’t, so he forced me to. I put up with this for seven long years… since high school, grade twelve.

Ron liked to drink at bars, and he hated to spend money on taxis. We had enough money, he really could have bought a taxi home three or four nights a week; he just didn’t like them. So, every night that he went out drinking, I would hear the sickening crunch of tires on gravel as he maneuvered his way into our attached garage, often hitting the house instead. The faint jingling of keys as he locked the car, fumbled for his house key and unlocked the adjoining house door. And finally, when he kicked his shoes off haphazardly at the front door, and half-stumbled, half-crawled his way up to bed, the muted thump... drag of heavy feet on carpeted stairs.

Yes, I could have stayed at my sister’s house, and yes, I could have locked myself into the bathroom. But the former always resulted in angry, drunken phone calls and messages that, frankly, I knew my sister was getting tired of; and the latter resulted in Ron screaming and pounding on the bathroom door until he passed out on the floor and I slept in the tub, knowing that he would be that much meaner, rougher, and angrier the next night. So I stayed in bed and endured him.

It was one such night, actually, in January, when it happened. Ron, as usual, pulled into the garage, dinging the side of the house, knocking over a few paint cans. White seeped out over the garage floor. I cursed silently from the shadows.

The garage door closed; Ron was too drunk to notice. Or maybe he did, and was too drunk to care. Either way, it was closed, and I was able to slip a padlock through the latch I had installed earlier, while Ron was out drinking.

Click, the sound of the door locking in his car.

Jingle, the sound of him fumbling for his house key.

I crept up behind him as he tried the key. Of course, it wouldn’t fit. I’d changed the lock to the house earlier, as well.

“Wha’ the hell,” he slurred, and checked his other keys. His eyes again settled on the house key, and he attempted to unlock the door a second time. It still didn’t budge. Upside down, right side up. Nothing worked.

In a fit of rage, he roared, not unlike a bear, and pounded at the door. “Helen, I swear’ta God, woman, I’ll beat’cha so hard you won’t recognize yerself!” Instinctively, I flinched back, to protect myself; only to realize, after a second, that he thought I was inside the house.

The pounding stopped. Almost gentlemanly, Ron knocked at the door.

“Honey, lemme in,” he spoke slowly. “I’m sorry… is s’okay. I won’ hurtcha. You know I just… I just says, I says bad things but I don’t mean ‘em. Lets talk, okay?”

I stood up, knees trembling. As he continued to beg me through the door, I once again crept up behind him. In my hand, I held my best kitchen knife. My sister had gotten it for me, along with a knife sharpener, for my last birthday.

Crunch

I froze, looking down. I’d stepped on a leaf, probably in here since autumn. Ron turned around. “Ah, so you was hidin’ in here, huh?” He grinned, and licked his lips. “Come on, then; lessgo, I don’t got all night. Gives me a kiss, sweetheart.”

Hiding my knife behind my back, I stepped towards my husband. His arms were open and his eyes closed. When I was within six inches of him, I screamed, and, revealing the knife from behind my body, lunged toward him. The cool steel plunged into the side of his neck; his eyes opened in surprise. He looked at me in shock, then in anger, then in fear.

I pulled the blade from his neck; he opened his mouth to say something, but could only manage a gurgle. Again, I thrust the blade toward him, this time through his eye and into his brain. When I pulled back, the eye remained on my knife. I wiped it off on the side of his face, and buried my knife in his abdomen, chest, heart, stomach… again, and again, until his hot red blood ran together with the cool, thick white paint on the garage floor.

Heaving, I stood. The iron smell mixed with paint, it was too much. I sunk to my knees again and vomited, over and over, until I was only heaving up air. Then, again, I stood. I wiped my mouth with the corner of my sleeve and unlocked the house door.

I hauled myself up the stairs and crawled into the shower, clothes and all, letting the freezing water wash away the smells and the feelings. Afterwards, I made myself a cup of tea, and sat in the living room.

The answering machine was still blinking red. It displayed one unopened message. I hit play.

“Hello, this is Doctor Richard Blake’s office calling! We have some wonderful news for you, Helen. You’re pregnant! Congratulations, we know you’ve been trying for a long while… we hope you will come in sometime this week to do some tests, whenever is convenient for you. Oh, and bring your husband! We’re sure he’s excited too, and he should be part of the process.”

I threw up again, on the living room carpet this time.

Then, I set about cleaning my mess.

**

I hired a professional to paint the nursery. I had enough to do, I reasoned; besides, the smell of paint always churned my stomach.

My daughter Amelia was born on October 21st, 1992. She had her father’s hands, but thankfully my eyes. The divorce between myself and my deadbeat, no good husband, who had run off after learning I was pregnant, had been finalized. I had installed a deep freezer in the garage, but I hated to go out there, so it sat there, untouched, for the better part of my pregnancy.

A few days after we came home from the hospital, I bought a lovely Sycamore tree. I dug a hole while Amelia napped, six feet deep and six feet wide. In the middle of the night, I brought my husband to the hole; piece by piece, I buried him. And then, I planted the Sycamore, packing the dirt around it lovingly, and watered it. Then, I sold the deep freezer.

The only things that remain of my late husband are the beautiful tree that my daughter loves to sit under and read, when she comes home from university; and the rusty red and white swirling pattern on the garage floor.