OKIES, was feeling particularly in a short storyish mood, and have a couple more to write. ONE DAY i really do hope to get some of my crap published, as it is one of my ultimate dreams.
HOwever, this story as of yet remains un-titled. If anyone can think of a name, or give me any suggestions, that would be realy spiffy, as its annoying me having a file on my computer called "Um... what started off as comba fic but turned into some wierd gardenything.doc"
okies. Hopefully slightly less bleak than my "original Alice" thing.
He was a stranger to the land, but not a stranger in the sense that the word was used there. The Strangers were something quite different. However, he did not know the land and its ways, and so everyone he came upon was a mystery. Today he walked a long path, which had taken him far from where he had been, wherever that was.
The landscape here was bland and without atmosphere. For miles, fading grass was all that covered dry earth, silent and empty. Ahead, a concentrated path of life bloomed freely. On closer inspection, it appeared to be a garden. Plants and flowers of all shapes and sizes densely covered a round area, separated only by chalk paths. As he moved closer, he saw there was a small house at the very centre. At first it seemed overgrown, along with the whole garden, but if close attention was paid there was a pattern; a rhythm almost, that kept the plants in place. They grew in dense clumps, never out-stepping the boundaries put in place by the many chalk paths.
They were well trodden but in pristine condition, giving the impression of well-kept age. The sheer amount of life here, and the variety was quite astounding. From tiny seedlings with pale stems and blue tinkling flowers, to six foot giants with tremendous crimson blooms which beckoned for their audience to come, breath in the perfume which is dispensed by such exotic beauty.
And indeed, the air was sickeningly sweet with fragrances uncaptured, scents of desire and of lust and of greed. The sheer force of sensory pleasure was overwhelming, and he felt the need to touch these beauties, before they might disappear, just another mirage of a tired mind.
Reaching forward, he was stopped by a hoarse cry. Snapping round, he was suddenly in the presence of another figure. He has seen not another soul for a great time, although the precise measurement, he would never know. However, this creature was uncanny.
Male, he assumed, and tall, at least seven foot tall. He stood with a stoop and seemed uncomfortable and yet graceful on the long spindly legs, which kept him upright. In a tattered suit, he appeared vaguely reminiscent of something the visitor remembered from his past.
"A visitor, eh? We don't have many of them about anymore." His speech was dry; implying the owner had not drunk a thing in many years. His parched voice matched his parched face; water deprived, shrivelled and thin. His cheeks were sunken, his hair was shoulder length and messy, full of twigs and dust and grime. Beady eyes watched from under a straw like fringe and the rim of a large and patched top hat.
"I… I'm not from around here." Was all that he could muster in reply, the information escaping his lips and causing no reaction from those dark and twinkling eyes.
"I'll say you're not. There's some weird folk about. People stopped visiting a while back" Thin lips drawn into something which may have been intended as a grin, but out of lack of practice seemed almost menacing, old brown teeth bared for all to see.
But who was all? There was nought but the visitor and the plants to see and to witness this gesture of unsure meaning. Shifting his wiry body on those stilts of legs, he grin/grimaced once more.
The visitor offered a hand to shake; his own gesture of good will. The figure took this hand.
"They call me Lumberscractch. It is not my name, but they call me it all the same."
"Who call you that?"
"The plants mainly. After all, who else is left here, as I said, there are few visitors since the lands became changed, and plants will whisper in the wind."
Pausing for a second, taking in the information, and unsure of how to react. Lumberscratch seemed strangely fitting somehow. It was a summation of the figure's appearance, and apparent character.
"I am… A Visitor, like you said." For it was all that the Visitor could be sure of. He had lost many a thing on his travels, and sold his name for a fair price when the time occurred. There are nameless things about the land who crave for such things to and to hold, to stroke or covet and to keep for their own. So now he was a Visitor, and that was all. "Do you… is this your garden?"
Again, he had become aware of his surroundings, and the richness of it all, like the darkest most intense chocolate ever imaginable, it was taking him in once more.
"Mine?" A voice like sand and tumbleweed, an epitome of dryness, answered with thought and deliberation. "No. The garden is Hers. I just keep it. I keep it well. In case she should return to be loved by it once more."
She? Who was this Her? The visitor was not sure. He had inquired on previous occasions, but the answer never seemed clear and nearly always came at a price. Those who say they have nothing left to give are lying. You learn that in the lands. Everything is barter material. The shoes on your feet. The tongue from your mouth. The sanity from your head. If you can keep it as yours alone then you can trade it for someone else to keep.
"This place is beautiful." The Visitor felt stupid using such an inadequate word. Beauty did not cover the sheer magnitude of what the garden incorporated. He felt if he were to sleep now, just beneath the leaves and the colours and the scent, he could sleep forever, warm and contented, safe from it all.
"I wouldn’t advise it." Rustling parchment papers, dry from the heat. Wood bleached by the desert sun.
"Excuse me?"
"Sleeping. Though I myself on occasions find the seduction of unconscious bliss hard to resist. However, consciousness can be exchanged, and it would be sad to give it away for free, even to an expanse of splendour such as the garden." The Visitor noticed, all a sudden, that the silence. It surrounded him was almost as think and suffocating as the perfume. He would have expected wildlife… little creatures, insects, birds… such a utopia should have been filled with an abundance of life, both zoological and botanical.
But only the plants and a lonely and dehydrated old man were out here in the middle of nothingness. Yet the beauty was incandescent. It seemed that every inch of space was covered in a leave or stem or petal.
"Where is everything else? The animals I mean?"
"I don't know what animals they might be. There are only plants here. It is a garden after all." And this logic was comforting. It was a garden. And gardens had plants. The Visitor tried to think back to his memories of gardens, but he had sold so many thoughts, ideas and memories, it was hard to distinguish what was true and what was not. However, this garden seemed all that gardens should be… except the silence.
…Carnivorous… The word floated into the Visitor's mind like a feather lost then found. He had long since forgotten the word's meaning, but was sure it was relevant.
"How do you keep it alive, out here?" It was a mystery… so many plants, and only a Lumberscratch to care for them. For a second, he wished he could remember gardening, but alas, all that remained was vague feelings that care and time were involved. Besides, it was pointless to wish for things now lost.
"Oh the plants know what they are doing… you treat them with respect and they will treat you the same. Though it cost me two fingers to learn that." Holding up a withered hand where both bones and tendons were clear beneath thin skin, he demonstrated his lacking of two fingers. "That I learned though. Have never had any trouble with them after that. Except sometimes at night when they whisper in the breeze."
It was this that the Visitor found very odd. There was no breeze, or wind of any kind in the lands, or so it seemed. Everything felt still out here, unmoved, untouched. It was beautiful in its way. In contrast, the garden seemed darkly active, stationary though it was. As if it were waiting for you to turn your head, just for a second, as a second was all that was needed. This sinister trail of thought was lost swiftly among the oppressing aromas of the garden.
Lumberscratch waited patiently as his visitor surveyed, once more, the lavish visual feast of botany. Vines climbed here… exotic grasses, delicate flowers, fragile as premature foetuses and loud plants, screaming with colour - violent reds and brooding purples. There was something almost addictive about the presence of the garden. It drew in every sense until all that could be thought of was the choking beauty.
The Visitor blinked and shook his head. Dragging his mind back to the here and now, as he had attempted to do so many times before, he asked
"You live here, in the garden?"
"As much as I can." Again, the voice of a desert, dry sand grains running through a hand that is cracked from lack of moisture, leaves at the stage of death where they are crisp and brown, yet to become soggy begin decay. "The garden lives among itself, I live in the hut of stone. As their keeper, not even I can trust the garden once the sun goes down."
And the visitor understood. The lands became different places at night, and as dark places got darker, odd folk became odder. Night was a time to be alone or among friends, and in the lands, friends were hard to come by. The Visitor was alone, and for the moment he was savouring the presence of another being. He wondered if possibly he could stop wandering, and stay in the garden, the glorious Eden…
"'Fraid not. You are no keeper, you cannot love a garden such as I do, such as the garden loves Her!" Lumberscratch now looked defensive, as if he would fight for this garden, fight and die… but who wouldn't? Before more could be said, the rain started.
When the first tiny spat of cool liquid hit the Visitor on the shoulder, he looked up and the sky. It was always in a constant state between over-cast and beautifully clear - a thin a translucent layer of cloud covering almost all the sky.
Now water fell slow at first, then faster, until the silence was at last filled with sound, the patapatapata of rain as it fell gloriously downwards. Lumberscratch wailed loudly, and ran into his hut, emerging seconds later with a large and battered umbrella. Opening it wide, he raced from plant to plant, attempting in vain to shelter them from the rain.
They stayed motionless, as the shield of the umbrella covered them and then left them alone, moving on. It was a futile game, the umbrella could never cover every plant, and they would all get wet. Still, the frantic rushing continued, plant to plant, murmurs of dismay forever escaping the thin and chapped lips of that Lumberscratch.
And the Visitor knew it was true. He could only wander and visit until forever. Though he did love the garden, as he concentrated, he saw this love to be superficial, just a desire to hold all that the garden was, to be enveloped in all of its existence. Lumberscratch's love went beyond that; it was dedication, obsession, madness. He would stay for hours, attempting to keep the flowers dry: an endless and impossible task. But keeping the garden was both rhyme and reason, and needed no justification. He loved the garden with passion and devotion, and as the plants would grow forever, so would he tend them.
Looking upon this spectacle, and understanding it as little as he did anything these days, the Visitor began his travels once more. There were other places to stumble across and to leave behind, other parts of him to trade, other things to acquire. To wander is to forever be lost, and to be lost was all that he asked.
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Another short story by a short person
Wow i am without words....but i'll say one thing, you have quite a talent. Ppl, we have a future bestseller in our midst. :D
Another short story by a short person
EEEEEEE! fankoo Saadia, glad u likes!