Jakey never understood the atrocities that grew in his mother's
garden. Nor did he understand his strange fascination with watching
the bugs burn in the light outside. The fact that his mother planted
only during the full moon meant only to him that she didn't like
the sun or was avoiding the black flies and mosquitoes. He never
once questioned how food was put on the table.
The sharp crackle of electricity
woke Jake from a dream. The spiders had been after him again.
Coming to wrap him in silken fibers and suck out his blood. The
stench of burnt insect carcass floated in through the window screen.
He stood for a moment, drenched in sweat and moonlight. Cautiously
he peered around the small bedroom, with a curtain for a door.
The corners were empty, the shadows were still, and the spiders
weren't there.
Soft humming filtered in through
the mesh screen. Jake rushed to the small window to see his mother
in the garden again. She reached her gloved hand into the leather
pouch at her hip then sprayed the ground with the seeds, retraced
her steps, then covered them in soil. She took great care and
patted them under, then dragged the hose over to spray them. His
mother always took care of the gardens. They were their livelihood.
Jake watched while his mother walked
between the rows, deftly plucked out weeds and cast them into
the surrounding high grasses. The purple glow of the crackling
light again drew his attention away. He stared intently as a beetle
came to a fiery end. The flaming remains plummeted the few feet
to the circle of stones around the post. Jakey inhaled and captured
the smell of burnt wings and sizzled hairy legs.
Not even the full moon could drag
his gaze away. When the great shadow spread across the yard and
covered the bug-light in shadows, Jakey broke his gaze away. The
moon was black. Even his mother had stopped her duties to look
at the skies. The stars seemed more brilliant than usual.
He stared as the shadows seemed
to dance and flow around her like a stream. She lowered her head
to the ground, patted down the last mound of dirt and headed back
inside. Jake saw the entire garden, all the pinwheels that sounded
like an army of roaches running across a stone driveway when the
wind hit just right. But in back of the pinwheels was something
he'd never noticed before.
Hidden away
at the end of the garden, past the corn stalks and tomato plants
tied to wooden stakes, was a row of brown paper bags turned upside
down, covering something. Must be lettuce or cabbages,
he thought. But his mother hadn't tried either of those vegetables
in years. She always defaulted to the stores— something wasn't
right with the soil. The tomatoes were always the biggest take.
Jake snuck from the house while
his mother shuffled around the tool shed with a candle. He walked
through the dew-wet grass in his old brown slippers and airplane
pajamas. He stood under the comforting glow of the bug light for
a fleeting moment and stared at the purple death behind the wire
mesh. He looked down at the ground with his sharp brown eyes,
it was littered with hundreds of dead carcasses.
The pinwheels exploded with a gust
of wind that sounded like a thousand chattering teeth, the burnt
remains rolled across the lawn while his blonde hair whipped in
the winds. Jake stepped carefully into the moist earth of the
garden. He walked through the rows, caked mud on the edges of
his slippers, and slipped past the pinwheels, almost afraid that
the plastic blades would shred his flesh.
Jake stood in front of the bags
with trembling fingers and reached, ever careful that mother might
hear him. He couldn't hear her anymore, which meant she was inside.
Or watched him from deep within one of the shadows of the sheds
he wasn't allowed to go in. The eclipse shifted over the moon.
His fingers brushed against the paper of the bag and slid along
the brown wrinkled surface. The print on the front was lost in
the darkness. The front door squealed noisily as it shut. Even
a dragonfly caught in the light couldn't peel away his attention.
His fingers closed, paper wrinkled,
and muscles tensed both to lift and to flee. The bag slid from
the dirt, moist soil clung to the edges. Jake closed his eyes
and then squinted to see beneath. It was big and round, stuck
out from the dirt, leaves poked out at odd angles. Was it a cabbage?
He walked the rows, ignored the clatter from the pinwheels and
plucked off each bag.
Jake looked at one carefully. Do
cabbages have eyes? He leaned in closer, examined the large black
eyes that stared lifeless at the skies. The skin was peeled back
from the face and neck, and resembled leaves. The mouths were
opened and showed rows of yellowed teeth and black bloated tongues
through brown dried lips.
Jake stifled a scream, stepped
backwards, and felt the crunch of plastic under his foot. A scream
erupted from inside the house, his mother's scream. One of the
heads turned and stared at him, the mouth contorted as a foul
wind emitted from its howl. Jake turned, twisted, fell and crushed
the pinwheels. More heads swiveled. The soil churned, as rotted
hands pushed through to the surface.
He scrambled backwards, dug his
hands into the dirt, and grasped for anything that brought a grip.
The moon slipped back another small bit and bathed Jake in light.
Arms with rotted clothes erupted from the ground, brown bones
with black rot showed through the ripped sleeves.
It
growled, and a foul wind oozed forth. Jake ran into the garden.
One of the hands grabbed him and pushed him into the soil. His
mother turned, flung a handful of bones from her pouch at the
hand. Its grip loosened and the massive digits slipped back into
the earth. Jake ran to the other side and covered the heads as
his mother removed the broken pinwheels.
The final zombie walked into the
moist dirt, hissing when its dead flesh came into contact with
the soil. It screamed as smoke erupted from the spoiled skin.
The hands, as if guided magically, grabbed hold of the animate
and tore it apart. With the remains of the zombie in clenched
fists, the giant arms sank back into the ground.
Jake sat at the edge of the garden
as the Earth's shadow uncovered all of the moon. The yard was
bright, awash with the red tinted moonlight. His mother stood
near him and tucked the broken pinwheels into her pouch. He turned
as another beetle flew into the light.
"Mom," he sighed. "What was that
all about?" She sat on the ground next to him. They both looked
up into the sky at the strawberry colored moon.
"Harvest
time," she said, and rustled his hair "Harvest time."
