The Neatly Dug Life

The suburban town of Hollow Hils was the ultimate utopia—residents lived neatly dug lives, with each blade of grass in place. Everything was just so—perfect in the eyes of all who visited it.

As the town’s status quo coordinator, Ivy Lin marketed the sameness lifestyle with finesse. She was the go-to person for anyone who found it difficult to keep up with the Joneses. “I sell the perfect life.” was her slogan. Even her dinners were curated and carefully photographed for social media.

But keeping up would prove a challenge—especially when Geoff Gopher arrived. He made surreptitious appearances, poking his nose out of the soil in backyards. Appearing near garden hoses.Shoving his knowing nose through picket fences.

It seemed he wanted something from Ivy that she couldn’t give—her silence. He popped up next to the dandelions that Ivy grew and gnawed her toe to get her attention.

“You can’t bury what everyone needs to know,” he cautioned.

“I sell dreams, not dirt,” was her wry response.
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But the gopher just wouldn’t let up. And he went after Ivy like a—gopher after soil-covered groundnuts.

“Everyone here smiles like there’s not a single crack in their China. That simply can’t be,” It thought, gnawing at the edges of her idealism.

He flashed Ivy visions of the perfect life gone wrong—-holes in white picket fences. Stains on too-perfect dresses. Perfect hair that simply couldn’t be combed.

“Your memory’s got claws, Ivy. Be careful they don’t scratch you.”
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The visions grew in intensity, sending Ivy—too deeply rooted in perfection—round the bend. So she decided to follow the scent of the gopher—she dug.

And she unearthed a cover up so toxic it sent her reeling.

The gopher? He wasn’t a pest. He was there to deliver a reckoning.

“You’ve sold Perfection like prime real estate. Your contracts are stacked like an ivory tower—but that’s about to topple. And I’m here to remind you. If you will listen.”
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The town of Hollow Hills began started to cumble under the need for being just so. Everyone had been masking their emotions—afraid to show sadness, anger or failure, afraid to be the weak link in a perfect chain.

The truth knocked softly on Ivy’s door. Then in started to tunnel its way in. She realised she couldn’t build a paradise on a false stone.

Ivy took to the podium in Hollow Hills Square. She bore it all—told the people that they were living manufactured lies.

“You deserve to understand what you’d been sold, ” she intoned, her voice sombre.

“Thank goodness she told us. We don’t have to do what everyone tells us to anymore,” A young college student cried.

“You mean we’ve been living a lie all this time?” A young, bespectacled doctor hollered, his arms flailing.
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And day by day, Hollow Hills filled out, becoming less—empty. Ivy started a new career—she became the town’s motivational guide. Hollow Hills reinvented itself, becoming Sunrise Peaks.

A small nose poked on of the soil near the old Hollow Hills signpost one morning, just as the sun crested over the town. It perked up as Ivy took to the podium, speaking about the authentic self.

Goeff Gopher sniffed the breeze one last time, squinted at the light pouring over the sign. And with a satisfied sniff, he clamboured out of the soil.

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Please check out today’s horror, The Secret of a Man by Veralyn Keach!