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PodCastle 673: Jenny Come Up the Well







* Author : A.C. Wise
* Narrator : Amy H. Sturgis
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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PodCastle 673: Jenny Come Up the Well is a PodCastle original.


Rated PG-13.
Jenny Come Up the Well
by A.C. Wise
Jenny come up th’ water
Jenny come up th’ well
Ne’er let Jenny touch you
Or she’ll drag you down to Hell
 
The car had always been there, a 1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass sitting on rotting tires in the woods behind the cul-de-sac where I lived. Even though its manufacture date meant it could only have been there since I was born, it felt older — like it predated the trees, like the woods had grown up around it. No one knew where it had come from, who’d left it there, or why.
It was called the Beater, not just because it was junked-up, tires dry to crumbling, stubborn, whip-thin trees growing up through the frame, but because kids went there to beat off.
A perpetually refreshed stash of porn could always be found in the glove box, which, like the car, no one ever admitted to leaving there.
It was one of the Beater’s many unspoken rules — the magazines were shoplifted, or stolen from underneath older siblings’ beds, but never bought. You never talked about the Beater directly. You never brought anyone to the Beater with you. Nobody went there under the age of twelve or over eighteen. If you took something away, you had to leave something behind. And that kept the Beater’s magic working.
Even though I was an only child and didn’t have to share a bedroom, I still went to the Beater. It was a rite of passage — sitting in the stuffy front seat, light coming through the cracked windshield, leaf shadows throwing patterns on the dash.
I gathered up images there and played them back later in the dark, spinning elaborate stories with the sheets pulled over my head and my fingers between my legs. The Beater existed outside time, outside normal rules. There, I could pretend the women displaying themselves for men were displaying themselves for me, and it felt like it could be okay.


The summer I was fifteen, I worked as an assistant at the local library, which mostly meant cleaning up after careless patrons. It was quiet enough most days that I could keep a book in one hand and read while re-shelving with the other.
The porn in the Beater had helped me figure out I liked girls instead of boys, but knowing what I wanted was miles away from knowing how to get it. All my friends either had boyfriends or at least crushes on guys. If there was anyone else like me, they kept it as secret as I did. As far as I knew, I was the only girl who liked girls in my town.
As I devoured books from the library shelves, I kept hoping I would come across a story with someone like me in it. A story of two girls meeting and falling in love, just to know it was possible. But every story I encountered was just like every movie and TV show and other piece of media I came across — boy meets girl, falling in love and living happily ever after.
The more I read, the more it felt like the whole world was telling me that I should be alone, or worse, that I was a mistake and shouldn’t exist at all.
“Emily? Could you come here for a moment, please?” Ms. Hartman, the librarian at the circulation desk, called to me, breaking into my reverie.
I jumped, guilty, tucking away the time-travel romance I’d been skimming while I worked.


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 April 6, 2021  46m