"Seeds" by Daniel Webre
Seeds
In retrospect, I never should have planted those seeds. I should have burned them. At the very least, I could have taken them to the local agricultural extension for analysis and proper disposal.
The packet arrived in the mail. There was no picture letting me know what to expect. Just a scrawl of foreign writing. No one in their right mind would have even opened it. But I wasn’t feeling my best at that time. I guess you could say I was starved for any sort of human contact. Even if the packet had arrived by mistake, I was hoping for a happy accident. Part of me believed this was no mistake. Someone sent it to me. Whether the intention was well-meaning or malign could not be known just then. What was not in question was the fact that my curiosity demanded that I open it. If only I had stopped short of placing them in the ground.
*
The contents were an assortment of shapes and sizes, ranging from the very small and spherical to something several times larger and star-shaped. It reminded me of the variety pack of annuals my mother and I would plant each spring. A few weeks later we would have brilliant asters, daisies, even a hollyhock or two. Maybe nostalgia, then, informed my present actions. That and innate faith in nature’s benevolence.
I was actually quite purposeful in my preparation of the seed-bed. I selected an area with direct sun and dug. The site was still slightly elevated and the soil enriched from the last time I’d tended a garden, though this was years ago. It did not take long to disrupt the top layer of grass and shred it with the blade of the shovel until all the clumps were converted into something uniform and inviting. I even added half a bag of potting soil that I’d lost all hope of using for any productive purpose but that didn’t seem to be hurting anything and would be a shame to waste (though in truth, I’d forgotten all about it until I went looking for the shovel).
Since the instructions—if that’s even what they were—were indecipherable to me, I got down on my hands and knees and poked holes in the Earth with my index finger. I spaced these into a grid, several inches apart, and carefully placed one seed per well. I wish now that I had thought to record which kind went where. Maybe I didn’t expect them to actually sprout. But sprout they did, and within days, signs of new life were beginning to show.
Weeding the garden was out of the question, as I had no idea what I was expecting. Anything green was treated with respectful anticipation. I watched and waited, placing personal bets on which shoots looked most promising.
One ambitious newcomer soon revealed itself to be a vine, and I culled it. Maybe this was a mistake, but I did not want any one plant covering the ground and choking out the others. The ones that grew upright had a chance. If they later revealed themselves to be weeds or undesirable, then I resolved to deal with that later. As it was, I felt a little ashamed of myself for taking out the vines, though I felt my reasons were as rational as any governing the cultivation of the unknown. More watching, waiting. Anything with a tendril had to go.
Since we got plenty of rain that summer and I wasn’t doing much weeding anyway, I sometimes let the garden slip from my consciousness, only to be astonished by the new developments upon my return.
Things were progressing much faster than I expected. An unpromising-looking specimen could suddenly seem to double in size, towering over its neighbors. I watched in fascination, certain that I was witnessing new growth right before my eyes.
The way a leaf could uncurl from a green bud I’d barely noticed before was nothing short of miraculous. I longed to see this happen in real-time, spending a whole day staking out one such individual from earliest dawn to well-past dusk. But the crafty plant proved more patient than I. Reluctantly, I conceded and went inside, only to find a cluster of three new leaves waving a greeting in the morning!
Aha, so that’s your game, I said to myself. But the next time I noticed a new leaf bud on its stalk, I flipped the script and started my watch at sunset. All through the night, I lay there watching, even whispering words of encouragement, figuring the extra CO2 from my breath might be just the boost it needed. When I dozed, I woke up cursing myself, certain it would be my undoing, but no—nothing. Even once dawn arrived, the bud was as tightly wound as when I’d first observed it. With a sickened feeling, I went inside, and returned later that afternoon with the certain knowledge that the new leaves would be there. And so they were.
All of which is to say that Nature has her secrets. I made what peace I could with this and carried on. Nothing could have prepared me, though, for the next day’s developments.
I knew that some buds made leaves and others made flowers, but nothing in my experience prepared me for the glowing orbs that began appearing on a plant that previously struck me as rather leggy and undistinguished. I thought at first perhaps my lack of sleep was catching up with me. I ignored the radiant golden orbs in hopes they would go away.
I slept well that night, refreshed and confident upon my return to the garden. But there they were again. Only now there were more of them. Beneath the customary birdsong, I listened to a new sound. There was a humming—low but steady, almost musical, though there was no tune to speak of. It was not a sound I was prepared to hear and I went back inside. For the first time, I fretted about those seeds of unknown origin. I genuinely worried. But then I got hold of myself.
How silly I am to fear my own garden, thought I. The idea of it all made me laugh. Softly at first, but then uproariously. I continued laughing, had the best laugh I could remember in ages. But then there was the garden to attend to.
I went back with hose in hand, determined to give it all a good dousing. There was the glow, the hum, and I loosened the nozzle until a light mist descended on my charges. Yet even this was disastrous. I began to hear popping sounds, bringing to mind similar sounds of protest from the coffeemaker in the morning if I disturbed it, lifted its lid to add more water before it had finished its brew.
But if the pops were similar, the flashes that accompanied them were not. Here were thunder and lightning, albeit on a miniature scale. And before long, all the lights went out.
It had not been my intention to extinguish the plant. Indeed, watering a garden still strikes me as a perfectly reasonable thing to do. And yet, to see the once proud plant turn droopy made my own spirit slack. I cut off the water at once.
*
That particular plant did not recover. However, closer to ground level, I noticed a kind of ornamental cabbage taking hold. It was a brilliant purple. I watched it grow in bulk, and was horrified to discover it had been watching me.
From the center of all those curled leaves, a single, monstrous eye, about twice the size of a human’s, stared back at me. There was an intelligence to it, and an ease. It was not afraid to blink, and once I recovered from the initial shock, I felt comfortable enough in the seeing-eye cabbage’s company. I brought a folding metal chair outside and sat there, contemplating.
The eye looked at me, but not exclusively. Granted, it had a limited range of motion, but it exhibited an innate curiosity, rotating as it could within its socket to inspect the passing birds, the clouds, me, and who knows what else caught the attention of this sentient cabbage.
As I sat in the garden, a chill overtook me, and I shivered. I dare say it was over ninety degrees and the sun was glaring, but a stray thought had just occurred to me. What if I had not assigned to this cabbage ornamental status? What if I had designated it, say, to a coleslaw instead? What then? The shiver became a shudder, but this felt cleansing somehow. The cabbage and I resumed our intermittent gazing at one another, amiably, for the rest of that afternoon.
How could I have predicted my response, though, when I returned the next morning to see red lines crisscrossing the delicate white of the eyeball? Did this imply that the cabbage had kept an all-night vigil awaiting my return? I had asked for nothing of the sort. I, for one, had slept quite soundly and had assumed the cabbage, too, would rest its eye.
I thought of the artificial tears I stored in my medicine cabinet. Then, almost immediately my thoughts pivoted to the extinguished orbs and the trauma I had caused them. True, the circumstances were different and not necessarily transferrable. But I deemed it a risk, nonetheless.
I spent the better part of the day with the cabbage, at its side. Other plants were developing, but none had developed what I’d call a definite form or any other distinction for that matter. The cabbage alone possessed what I’d call character at that moment, but as the day progressed, I noticed the red spreading and taking on a definitive blush instead of diminishing.
I began reconsidering my choice of plots. Perhaps not all the plants in the mix were sun-tolerant. I considered intervening with a parasol. With the sun at its apex, I shielded the tender eye with an umbrella, at first giving no thought to how unbearable this posture would soon become. To give my arm some relief, I propped the umbrella like a makeshift lean-to. But with dusk settling, I noticed my cabbage’s leaves wilting and the eye showed no signs of relief. What’s more, a new layer of fuzzy mosses had begun to take hold—imperceptibly at first, but without a doubt establishing a grey-green carpet across the zone of shade.
Unacceptable, I said aloud and removed the umbrella. If the eye showed no signs of improvement by morning, I would chance a single tear drop.
*
As I feared, the once white surface had turned mauve, barely distinguishable from the purple leaves in color. There was a sadness to the eye, but also a kind of stoicism I recognized and admired.
I carefully explained to the eye the full course of action I had in mind. I also held up the bottle of artificial tears for its inspection. Mind you, I had no idea whether a cabbage, even a sentient one, could understand what I was trying to communicate. And though the eye seemed to focus, paying special attention to the text on the label, it might have found it to be so much gibberish, as I had conceded of the foreign letters on the seed pack.
The eye blinked—knowingly? I hoped. Perhaps, this too was simply another expression of patience. However, it stared straight out, off into the distance, unflinchingly, as I applied the single drop.
Nothing happened at first, which was something of a relief after the orbs. But then I wanted the drop to work its magic, and the lack of change became disappointing at best. Still, I was unwilling to risk more than one drop at this point, so I waited. And the cabbage waited.
I wanted the cabbage to rest its eye, savor sweet dreams of who knows what. But all I could do was stay by its side, hoping I had done some good.
A metal folding chair is not the most comfortable of beds, but I slept even if I can’t say the same with certainty about the cabbage. When I awoke, it was daybreak, and I was happy to see the eye’s lid closed. But as is so often the case, the very thing I thought I had been hoping for now transformed into a source of alarm.
“Wake up!” I called to the cabbage, but it did not stir. Without a further thought, I reached out and tried, gently as I could, to rouse the cabbage by shaking it. I had not anticipated the lack of turgor, the once tightly curled leaves were wilting and a pallor set in.
Rather than a thriving, living organism, the cabbage had felt like any other expired lettuce, left too long and forgotten in the produce drawer.
I waited anyway. I apologized for the tear drop, artificial or otherwise. To my surprise, the eye opened again, albeit halfway. We looked at one another. The eye blinked and opened again—this time slightly wider than it had before.
I will not try to hide my grief, my utter despair. I wasn’t able to conceal it from the cabbage that day, so why should I omit it from these pages?
Then a single source of consolation set in. The redness had cleared, I noticed. But the rest of the plant could barely support it. As the shadows lengthened, the eyeball settled to the ground, where it closed once more for good.
Needless to say, I was no longer sure what to do with this strange garden I’d planted. I fear I may have overreacted when I brought in the lawnmower. I shredded without mercy, but the garden pushed back. No more than a nondescript thicket of brambles, the stalks, thorns, and waxy leaves of the survivors coordinated to take out the mower with them.
My ecstatic throes of vegetable violence turned to alarm as the mower sputtered out and refused to restart. The garden looked like pictures I’d seen of the aftermath of Argonne, though here before my eyes in other-worldly color. I could neither go forward with my task of destruction nor quite loosen the hold of the mysterious visitors. I mourned for my cabbage, leaving the mower right where it had stalled for the time being.
I thought that might be it for the garden. Though incomplete, the havoc wreaked was approaching the end of the growing season. Whatever seeds there were to germinate surely would have done so by now, but I was wrong. The vines returned, and I lacked the will to uproot them this time. They spread out across the surface of the former seed-bed and scaled the thorny remains that had stopped the mower in its tracks. They covered the mower, too, for that matter, since I hadn’t bothered to remove it.
The vines created their own forms, looking as though a padded green quilt had been draped over the remains of a tattered collection of furnishings—peaks, valleys, contours. I judged it was too late to take back the site now, and I was right. That’s when the voices started—a chorus of them. They sang in a language, perhaps the same as the writing on the packet. It was melodic and dissonant, alarming and soothing, all at once.
At first, I sat in my chair and listened. But it didn’t take long to realize that the chair would go under, too, soon.
I retreated to the house, taking the chair with me. I leave a window open now so I can listen, but in truth this is unnecessary. The chorus is getting louder—still a murmuring mostly, but I can pick out individual voices. The language is still one I do not understand, but the timbres are familiar. One reminds me of an ex-girlfriend, another is stern and commanding like that of a particularly unpleasant supervisor.
That supervisor would be no match for the vines, either. Reaching, grasping, they will find their way toward the house one day. I do not worry, though. I will not let them in. I suspect they, too, are susceptible to the cold.
Daniel Webre’s short fiction has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Kansas City Voices, I-70 Review, Allium, Permafrost Online, New Limestone Review, and other places.