Lady J

I didn’t consider the pain that would come along with death. The act of dying was a strange concept in the eyes of someone like me. I had come to realize that being a sheltered teenager left me with no sense of finality. My chest rose and fell like clockwork, my heart maintained its regular, subtle pace under my fingertips and I always counted on waking up with every sunrise. Thoughts like this occurred pretty naturally in my mind as an aspiring author, I was struggling with the idea of a new horror piece. I felt so deeply compelled to write a story based on reality that had no business existing in the real world, yet taking an element of history and turning it into something mystical and symbolic left a pit in my stomach.

I had already accepted the fact that I lacked the experience necessary to make a clear distinction between literary faults and strokes of ‘genius’ - an issue that often led me to abandon my projects. The digital Mount Everest of unfinished novellas and poems taunted me daily as if the characters could come to life and scrutinize me personally. Naturally, my catchphrase had become, “what’s one more?” as if I was the next Stephen King, writing novels upon novels with no regard for a consistent strategy. Although, at least King finished his stories. All I had accomplished in my short life was coming to understand his Misery and Insomnia.

This unnecessarily dramatic inner dialogue transpired while I sat in front of my computer, plastered with countless pages of notes and devastating articles. I had fallen down the rabbit hole as soon as I learned about the Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928. The disaster was nearly a century older than me yet I had formed such a deep obsession with its cultural impact. My hyperfixations as a history buff and hours of research had sparked the novella inspiration I needed yet the idea of using a natural disaster to fuel a fictional story didn’t sit quite right with me. After only a few moments of anxious deliberation, I left my seat in the familiar small town cafe that had long housed those sporadic strokes of ‘genius.’ The image of a powerful 20th-century female character still sat in the back of my mind as I set my untouched coffee back on the counter where I had paid for it.

Jolene would be a nice name, I thought. Something simple and beautiful for the woman who began to live in my head, rent-free.

Before the sun even had the chance to rest early on the cool autumn evening, I found what I was searching for. Physically, that is. My literary anxiety still latched onto this woman’s silhouette and her backstory continued forming somewhere in my absent mind. I made the decision to sway from my normal path home for the first time - possibly with the hope of finding something reasonable to fixate on - and was greeted by an incredibly depressing looking orchard. The seemingly abandoned backyard that sat behind a vacant looking motorhome had been invaded by frail trees, scattered sharp sticks and rotting, smashed fruits that were virtually unrecognizable. The scene was so foreign to me that my curiosity led me farther into the threatening territory until I locked eyes with the queen of the sad excuse of an orchard - which looked as if it had suffered its own solitary hurricane. This tree looked as if it had been planted decades after its neighbours’ collective demise. It stood much taller than the rest and was decorated in tiny white flowers that one would barely even notice with just a glance. I considered how pure it sounded to make Jolene’s safe space a solemn, blooming tree. The story wasn’t much of a story yet but I knew that this woman was meant to have hers heard.

Although I was happy to have named this new character, I didn’t feel very strongly towards Jolene. It almost seemed as if the tree itself didn’t agree either. I cycled through similar options but Jodie, Jamie and Joy still lacked the feeling I was looking for. After nearly a full minute of cycling, I settled on the vague but respectful sounding Lady J. It sounded less like a name and more like a title. It suggested intention and almost demanded that same respect, which was something that seemed to emanate from the tree itself. I had given up and left Lady J behind that night.

I returned to that tree as if we had a special bond. I felt as if leaving would cause it to lose its spirits and die off with the rest of its family, so I came back not even twelve hours later. The early Sunday morning seemed brighter than usual, lending itself well to the idea of bringing my own company. I brought a handsome interest, who filled the rest of my free time, to visit Lady J - forgetting my genetic unluckiness. My enthusiasm for the vegetation was not well received by the man who accompanied me. He was nearly a decade older than me and had little interest in my chaotic inner world and my writing habit. The man barely spoke at that moment at Lady J’s feet as he intended to remind me of how annoying my voice was when it sped up from eagerness and curiosity.

We sat quietly under the tree for what felt like merely minutes before he stood from his place next to me and informed me of just how much my passion bothered him. I was reminded time and time again of my childish aspirations and destiny to fail if I continued pursuing writing. He posed as the fatherly type that cared about my well being while also claiming the right to ‘beat some sense into me,’ - and that he truly did stick to. I became thankful for my skin as it was already calloused and cold, allowing for a disappearing act of sorts for any further damage done.

The man eventually decided to leave me only a little more broken than I had started that morning - but his scarce words were ripped from his lips in the loud rush of wind that awoke without warning. As if with no effort at all, the gust swept him off his feet in the most aggressively romantic fashion. The only tether he had to the ground was through my shirt collar that was still locked in his firm grasp. His expression of panic seemed to freeze in time as he was pulled further and further back into the winding path of trees as if the air had an even firmer grasp on his opposite wrist. The strangest part about what was unfolding in front of me was that I felt virtually nothing other than a delightful autumn breeze on my sunburnt cheeks. It was almost as if I was watching the man drift backwards from behind the screen of my old television. The air was so cool and the breeze was so pleasant on my battered skin that I was entirely disconnected from the man’s suffering despite the fear on his face as I unbuttoned my shirt and let the wind take him away from me. His body violently bashed into the withered old trees that somehow still stood strong enough to take each blow and spun into the air along with the debris around him.

I closed my eyes and the world went black and utterly silent, aside from a faint ringing in my ears. My eyelids only touched for a handful of seconds yet when I set my focus back on the scene, my surroundings stood completely still. No howling wind or flying debris, only the few blood-stained trees in front of me really seemed out of place. The only major difference being the absence of the man I considered my lover at the time. Although I had witnessed such a gruesome and odd crime of nature, it felt like the same tree that somehow sheltered me from this spontaneous violent wind was holding me in a strangely warm embrace. It was as if Lady J was extending her comfort to me in place of the man that should have been holding me just as close.

Much to my surprise, the man appeared once again in his shadow-like form only minutes later. The shadow’s fist rose just as my lover’s so often would and the blackness of his silhouette grew larger and larger against a canvas of old tree trunks. I braced myself in that moment, knowing full well that such a simple action held more significance than I was willing to admit to myself at the time. My eyes snapped open only when I caught a glimpse of the man whose face I didn’t recognize. His eyes were sunken and his upper back hunched forward in a way that looked more like scoliosis than blunt force trauma. It didn’t take long to realize I was locking eyes with an old man with a unique face that I couldn’t for the life of me recognize.

“You’re in my backyard kid,” he stated, casually. The apology that followed was frantic as I had never seen anyone even come near the area, but he shrugged off my concern. “Are you here to meet old Janie? I didn’t think anyone was still talkin’ about this lady.” He patted the trunk of the tree like he was greeting an old friend.

“No,” I said. “I don’t know who Janie is, sir.”

“Cletus.”

“Right,” I said as I racked my brain. I thought I had read about a woman by that same name among the hours of research I had piled up on that big Hurricane disaster. It must have been a small blog or article that mentioned a Floridian woman with a laundry list of ex-lovers and murder accusations. Maybe it was biographical, possibly fictional, I couldn’t know for sure.

Without prompting, Cletus interrupted my thoughts as if he could hear them from inside my brain. “Yeah, old Janie didn’t like rough boys too much,” he said casually as he reached high into the branches of the tree.

“Who’s Janie?” I asked, fairly reluctantly.

“Just about the strongest lady a man could hope to know.” As he lowered his hand, I noticed he was gently gripping a perfectly ripe pear. I sat still, confused as to where the fruit had been hiding within the foliage.

“What happened to my boyfriend?” I interjected.

He laughed. “I guess she thinks the guy could stand to grow a pear.”