Genre: Mystery/ Fantasy

He rather liked his garden, it was calming, to sit in the leafy shade, watching the breeze sway tree branches, it was calming, in exactly the way a storm calmed just before. This, he imagined is how it must have felt for the pilots who flew high in the skies and had the vantage point to see the earth in all its glory and then drop nuclear bombs on it. The swaying branches dropped leaves as if in commiseration;

“Wounded by the wind the trees wept dead leaves”

Yes, a storm was coming and he was brewing it. He plugged in a pair of headphones, they fit snugly over his ears and music trickled into his head as if he had sub-woofers directly in his brain. Rock music no less, no wonder they called it the devil’s own, the beat seemed to invade your very chore and take over you. He closed his eyes and gave himself to the music, nodding to the infectious rhythm. Everybody wants to be a rock star, or at least live like one.

He must have dozed off, because when he opened his eyes the sun was much lower in the sky and the temperature had noticeably dropped. Were he a lesser mortal he would have shivered but he was cut from a different cloth, and there had been no left over fabric. It could be said they had broken the loom, and executed the seamstress after he had been sewn. He chuckled silently to himself as he visualized himself as an all-encompassing fabric cloaking the entire world in darkness. He had never been one to be moderate, he operated in the realm of the extreme, because otherwise what was the point.

He got up from his reverie and carelessly brushed away the leaves from his coat, with hands that left smudges of dirt; gardening was dirty business one really had to get down to earth and dig deep; from the dirt you were born to the dirt you will return, to bloom again. He looked at the freshly covered patches he had dug earlier, he had dug twelve, but two were still yet to be filled; he would leave it a task for another day. At this rate he would need a bigger backyard soon, he had already helped himself to his neighbour’s  dog and garden plot, after all his neighbour no longer needed it. What’s his name, the neighbour, could not even remember his name, had been like that pesky ubiquitous mosquito, buzzing in your ear;

“Oh you want to sleep let me sing you a lullaby, oh, you want to just relax let me sing you a soothing symphony, are you just gazing at the moon, let me serenade you with the beautiful fruit of my vocals; Oh you are gardening let me____”

And that was how he had become the first to be planted, the first to sprout and soon he would be the first to bloom. That was the thing with mortals they were resilient, they bloomed where they were planted, even in the harshest environment you would find a plant blooming; defying all reason and logic; it was beautiful. Its pity a flower’s beauty is lost on it, it has no eyes, it cannot see itself and no one is kind enough to hold a mirror next to their favourite flowers, nothing blooms faster than a flower admired.

Mortals have such a toxic admiration they see a beautiful flower and they pluck it so they could admire it in a favourite vase and yet just succeed in watching it wither and die. Couldn’t they have just admired it from the garden, or a pot plant? Some things he could never understand, just like their need to possess things in order to be happy.

The possession he understood was of a different sort though, he had possessed a few souls careless enough to dabble in realms they did not understand. Would you reduce your lifespan for possessions and status? The answer should be a clear no, because life is precious, but believe it or not, quite the number are willing to trade their life for fortune and fame, to be rock stars.

He had recruited a number of people to help him distribute flyers for his business, he called himself; The Doctor.

The front part of his house had been converted into a waiting area like a doctor’s waiting room and there would be a receptionist soon, business was booming; he could not keep up with the increased volume of calls and consultations. His latest recruit X had been quite the catch, he was influential and came from a royal lineage, a shame they had paid more heed to wealth than to their heritage and now X was indebted to him; when he would have been one to save the world; he would help brew the storm that was coming. After the storm, all this world would be a beautiful garden once again like it had been, in the beginning.

Without realizing it he had walked round to the front of the house and was now gazing at the street, watching a young couple arms linked; walking past his gate, he marveled at the purity of young love, and was about to turn back and walk into his house; until that is, he noticed that the young man’s lady friend; in her left hand, she held a single red rose delicately by the stem…

He waved at them and cheerfully accosted the young lad;

“Hi there young man, what a rare beauty you have there; if you would like I can show you a flower that’s more worthy of her radiance, a purple rose, it’s in my garden…”

The young lad hesitated, although his lady had taken a step towards the gate.

“Oh do come in and I will even give you a vase for your rose you don’t want it wilting before you get home now do you?..”

He opened the gate for them and they hesitantly followed him down the path to the garden, again like sheep; to where two new garden patches lay; dug open____

That would make today 12, the magic number, a wizard’s dozen, not a bad day’s gardening……

He whistled to himself a nursery rhyme he once heard from an old friend;

Reaper Reaper Quite the creeper How does your garden grow?

With neighbors, strangers stopping by And pea pods all in a row

The End

~B

My BlogBattle Entry for this week.

Continues the story The Doctor if you want to play catch up you can read;

Of Needful Garden

Of Needful Things

The rhyme at the end of the story is from  Sarah in comment to a twitter thread which the character in this story is based.