The Garden

Had I known what I know now about The Garden, I would have done anything to stop her transformation. I imagine myself digging into her body, pulling her ribs apart, cutting open her abdomen, my hands searching through the blood and the earth. I would find whatever root had taken hold deep inside her, and I would tear it out with all my strength. Would it have saved her? Perhaps the seed was always meant to grow, and I would have simply delayed the inevitable.

It is too late for such thoughts now.

I saw the transformation occur in front of me. Gradually, I watched her change. Her iris would appear to twist around her pupil, the yellow blades of a flower sprouting where her hazel iris had once been. Her fingers grew longer and more frail. She had become obsessed with standing in the sunlight of our apartment’s balcony window. She would stand there for hours, silently contemplating the light I now know she was consuming.

And I ignored all of this. I had a myriad of excuses: work was more stressful than usual, college had ramped up for midterms, my own creative endeavors were failing. There were so many reasons for me to sit idly by as something inside her began to change. Perhaps the only moments when I truly was attentive to her was at rest, when we would share a bed for the night. She would quietly tell me that she could feel something inside her changing. She no longer felt like the joys of life, instead feeling a singular, obsessive demand in her mind: “Bloom”..

Again, I neglected her emotions. The guilt I feel will never subside. It will remain a permanent millstone around my neck. I will spend the rest of my days dying to know what I could have done differently.

It was a dim winter Wednesday evening when I found her. She was half lying on the couch, her legs carelessly stretch across it. I greeted her, but received no response. I set my things down to join her on the couch. Finally, I found her, what remained of her. Her abdomen had erupted into flora. She had finally succumbed to The Garden. Green stalks of flowers had broken through her skin, forming a sickening kaleidoscope of color across her body. Her ribs suddenly cracked apart, blood pouring out on to the carpet, watering tiny sprouts that immediately began to grow. Most disturbingly, her face had been horribly deformed. No eyes rested in their sockets, replaced by even more flowers pouring through the holes in her skull. I wailed in horror and sickness. As I picked up her body, her legs snapped off like dead tree branches. The wounds where her legs once were began to pour out soil rather than blood, a deep brown dirt covering our living room floor.

As I turned my head back towards her face, it began to move as if attempting to speak. Her jaw went slack, opening much wider than any typical human jaw should. Flowers poured from her mouth, seemingly endlessly. As the fauna escaped her mouth, she made a sound I will never forget. A shriek of agony erupted from her. Finally, as the flowers stopped flowing from her mouth, she went limp in my arms. My apartment was covered in blood and soil and flora; stains I would never truly be able to wash out.

I know that The Garden blooms within me now. I feel it in every moment of my life. Every minor joy is subverted by its growth. I find my thoughts wandering to that of The Garden. No matter where I am or what I am doing, my synapses erupt with thoughts of that night. How she was taken from me by The Garden. I wake up from nightmares of my her. In them, she is alive, her eyes glowing with her usual joyful temperament, not noticing the flowers that have begun to grow from her skin. The plants grow leaves and vines that tighten around her body. The most horrifying though were the flowers. As she turned to look at me, I saw dozens of multicolored flowers burst forth from her eyes and mouth. The Garden slowly consumes her. She reaches towards me, her palm facing upwards, her fingers curved slightly back towards herself. A tiny red rose sprouts from her palm. She whispers to me.

“The Garden blooms within you now. Please, spread the seed.”