PRIDE — The Farmer Who Wouldn't Leave

He worked that land until it was the only thing he had left. No wife, no children, no one to carry the name forward when the sickness finally caught up to him—just soil he'd turned with his own hands for longer than most people had been alive. When he sold, it wasn't for the money. It was because there was no one left to sell it to. He asked for one thing in return: to be buried in the ground he'd spent his life on.

They honored the paperwork. They ignored the promise. The land was cleared, the fields flattened, and a campground went up where his rows of crops used to be—fire pits and tents scattered across what should have been his resting place. So he stopped resting.

The first few survivors called him The Scythe. They never agreed on what he looked like, only that if you saw the blade, you were already too late.

Now the campers vanish one by one, usually the ones who wander too far from the fire after dark. The owners blame animals. They tell each other the missing ones probably weren't really there to begin with, that no one signs the guestbook properly anyway. But the marshmallows always seem to burn a little too long over those fires, as though something is standing just beyond the light, waiting for them to catch. And every night, the ground gives him back.