By: Daniel Kendle

*Note: The following story is a work of horror. It contains graphic imagery, and depictions of violence including self harm.

Vines coiled. Leaves flitted. The world was at pause, yet the jungle roared in praise at its newest creation: the very thing I watched in horror from across the garden sanctum.

It was tall, with the body shape of an average man, yet constructed from what looked like peat and various flora mashed together in an unholy amalgamation of death, one that looked an astral god in the eyes with malice. It was slightly bent, the bark and mud groaning from their new roles. It was a monster. It was alive.

My clothes, no longer splendid and clean from the garden’s chaotic innards, looked like rags compared to the creature’s rake-like claws. Huge and strong, they were the type of things one would expect out of an extinct animal, something ancient in look and primal in sound. Yet here we were, watching one another from opposite ends of the glass facility. What was once a folk story was real, breathing, eyes twitching. It was silent, but internally I could feel it screaming, hissing in a rage that could only emanate from a beast burdened by the eventual stroll of time.

It took a step forward. Plants rattled and shuffled, the flytraps adorning its left shoulder – or what could be seen as one – contorted ever so slightly. They were the creatures voices, part of a hive mind.

I was in a state of paradoxical stasis. I was afraid, like I imagined anyone would’ve been, yet I was also entranced. Delusioned, yes, but nonetheless intrigued by the immortal shape that skulked towards me. It was halfway across the garden’s square by now, its chrysalis now resembling a broken egg.

It reached me. Spores danced like angels in the aether. We stood, only feet away from each other, trying to make out what the other’s intentions were. Mine were of fearful lust. Their intentions, meanwhile, were something beyond this world’s mortal coil. Something beyond my stupid brain of a mangy ape.

I finally stepped back, then ran.

I didn’t leave my apartment for a couple of weeks. My fridge was full, but my stomach wasn’t. I couldn’t think straight, talk right, move like the hedonistic wretch I used to be a month ago. The monster plagued my mind. It was as if a demon had burrowed into my throat, then my stomach, and then my lungs. I wanted it out.

But even after a few hours, the feeling wasn’t gone, that emotion that called from inside me like a bat rising out of Hell. The fictitious demon continued to coil around me, its snaking body squeezing my neck like a python. I wanted to vomit in retort, but my lame throat forbade it. I curled up on the couch, breathing heavily. I finally tried to sleep.

In my trance of anguish, I found again that sensual desire from my encounter with the creature. I was stunned at this rediscovery, and blushed. For the first time since that fateful night I smiled, bashful. I imagined the creature, now not under the umbrella of fear, but under one of compassion. This umbrella was one of lust, of an attraction towards this false human.

Just before entering my tired paralysis, I toyed with the creature and I like dolls in a house. I could imagine their thick vines and bark claws raking across my face. Embraced in celestial love, I dreamed of us together. I wanted, needed their touch. Why, in that moment I could almost picture the pair of us in their nighttime world again, vines allaying my worries as they ensnared my naked skin…

My world was slowly becoming one of flora and fungi. My cat was slowly morphing into a tiger; a beast that wanted to eat me alive. Its cries rang out through my concrete jungle, thick and drenched with sweat.

My mind was blotted with an incurable smog. The end was before me. Time was no longer on my side.

Days later, my fingernails were on the bathroom floor. Blood was shed, as were tears. They reminded me of its eyes: apricot, with hints of deep coral pink littered around the edges. The difference was red strewn about my hands – and the wall.

I wanted to scream. This apparition lurking inside me hadn’t left. The thing in the garden was the only thing keeping me sane, though at this point my love for it had blossomed, for lack of a better term. A name had been endowed onto it. I didn’t just crave it anymore; my faith in it had reached its climax. It was now less of a physical want, but instead a psychological fix that festered in me.

A parasite.

I bashed my head against the wall. My cat scratched at the door in a desperate attempt to calm me. It was an intrusion, and in response I continued bashing. Bashing and crashing and bashing until…

Red.
Blood.
Relief.
I was panting, smiling. For a moment, the parasite left me, abandoning my vessel that had become polluted with the deranged clouds of the deceased. Smoke filled my lungs. Acid filled my gullet. My brain was like a hurricane that had subsided, only to return in a new form.

The cat was becoming a distraction.

Desire balled up inside me. That longing for demise, that need for the creature ate me alive like animals to rancid meat. I was that meat. I needed to die by their hand.

My hands were laughing at me, snickering at me, jackals basking in the glow of a kill. My knife joined them. My blood joined them. My cat joined them.

The garden was my fix. My mind couldn’t take it anymore; I needed to return. By crawling across my apartment to the door, grabbing my coat and wrapping it loosely around my ragged body. I stood up, bent at the knees, joints knocked together, and left my home.

The walk was quick, even though it took a half hour. I couldn’t remember much after; my blurred vision made seeing difficult, memory impossible. Humans and humans walked past me, some staring, others more direct in their traveling. I was like a lost ship at sea, until I found my lighthouse.

The park where I’d found the garden was just ahead of me, who was flailing in desperation at the sight. I sprinted – or “hobbled,” to be accurate – towards a thicket near the eastern quadrant of the fields. There it was: a bramble of shrubbery that stretched high above the oak and aspen trees, a cloud of doom. My sanctuary.

I tore through the vegetation. My stumps of hands bled out once again, but at this point my mind was dulled enough to barely notice. My brain, burdened with evolution, was escaping its chains and about to be set free.

Breaking through the final wall of foliage revealed the garden once again. The same chain-link fence, derelict gate…it all came back to me. I ran into the sanctum a moment later.

It was relatively-simple finding my way through the garden again. A left, right, two lefts, then straight. The dead architects had done well in the maze’s design.

Finally I ran into the square. It was night again; the sky’s complexion was almost identical to the fateful night weeks before – just like the monster’s.

It rose. Bark snapped against other bark; vines knotted around other vines. An air of dread was exhaled by its green, meat-hungry servants. The beauty ascended, slathered in a coat of moss and love. I felt weak. The monster was awake.

My hands were fighting at my sides. I couldn’t take it anymore. I rushed towards it, tears streaming down my cheeks, demons roaring in raucous excitement. I leapt towards it, hands outstretched, body wide.

As my life was sucked away, I began to resist. The vines around me began to prick my skin, and the leaves sliced through flesh. I struggled a bit, my mind free. The parasite was gone, only now, I was too. I began to scream; the forest as well. For once, the monster let out a cry of anger, of rage. It shrieked, desperate for me as I was once for it. We struggled for a moment, a cage of bones starting to encircle me. Now that I was with it again, the world had changed. The body of a human gave way to a thinly-veiled structure of mud and dirt. Thinking jaws of flytraps wilted, alongside the rest of its body.

The pair of us were sinking, down, down, into the soil below. I yelled, hoping someone special would hear and be my ally. In the moment, I felt that recollection of consciousness. My vision sharpened, and my trance was broken. I was alive again, the monster dead.

Embraced in eternal love and death, the plants and I sank into the Earth, silent as the forest night.