A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre: Halloween Is Going to Be Jealous

THE GREENHOUSE GARDEN OF SUICIDES

by Kirk Jones

Doctor Bryukhonenko’s Experiments in the Revival of Organisms, and the accompanying footage of a small canine head severed from its body, its life sustained with the help of machinery, now flashed in Dick’s mind as he watched the severed head of a middle-aged woman in the same condition. Like the dog in Bryukhonenko’s tests, the woman reacted to various stimuli. Her eyes lazily followed his hand when he waved them before her. She squinted under heavy lighting. She was, in a scientific capacity, alive.

As he scrawled the results down in his journal, the woman’s eyes spun like a roulette wheel, darting from one corner of the room to the next. Then the scattershot movements slowed, and she settled on him.

He dismissed it as chance and continued in his journal until a rhythmic clicking drew him back to the head. Her jaw fell agape as she continued looking at him. Then it snapped shut. Her features distorted to a look of terror. She opened her mouth again. Only a faint gurgle issued forth, but he saw the movements of her lips, and knew what she was trying to say: “Where am I?”

SWEAT BEADED AND STREAMED down the phone as Dick waited for his contact to answer. Finally, Sands picked up.

“Agent Sands here.”

“She looked at me,” Dick stammered.

“Dick?”

“That woman, she looked directly at me and tried to speak.”

“Then the experiment was a success?”

Dick wiped the sweat away from his receding hairline. “I think she’s conscious.”

“That’s great!”

“I can’t do this.”

“Dick, you need to calm down. Tara’s a suicide victim.”

“Please don’t use her name.”

“Sorry. She was clinically dead for nearly two hours before we got her up there. She’d be six feet under by now if you hadn’t revived her.”

“I can’t test a live specimen.”

“Look, it’s probably just muscle reflex. You were the only thing moving in the room and her eyes responded to the stimuli. Jaw spasms are normal as well. You know this.”

“I don’t think I can go back in there.”

“That’s fine. Your contractual obligations have been met. You’ve tested her reflexes and the results were more than we had hoped for. I’ll send someone up tomorrow to clean up, and you can get back to the university.”

“Thanks, Sands.”

Dick hung up the phone and looked out past the garden to the greenhouse where the suicide victim’s head rested in a large plastic dish. He thought about the eyes, a deep green clouded with death, reverberating with fear. A few days earlier, he imagined she would have stirred something in him long since gone, a rekindled sense of purpose, of youth perhaps. But now she was incapable of inspiring anything but fear. He shuddered as a wave of cold washed over his back and trailed down his spine like a slug scrolling down the leaf of a maple. Sleep wouldn’t come easily for him, and the nearest liquor store was over twenty miles away. The neighbor had been watching his movements closely during the past few evenings, and leaving the greenhouse out of range seemed like too great a risk for a bottle of scotch. So he decided to go through the motions, the ritual to prepare for sleep that would never come.

As he opened the toothpaste on the bathroom sink and squeezed the innards onto his brush, he thought about the girl in the greenhouse opening a bottle of prescription tranquilizers and filling her stomach with them. He spit, let himself fall into bed, and writhed beneath the blankets, thinking of the aging woman doing the same, only uncovered on her bathroom floor. The paramedics had found her naked, completely exposed to the world.

He wished Sands had left her veiled in anonymity when he delivered the head. At the same time, he found himself wondering what her body looked like. Did she groom herself for the suicide, knowing she’d inevitably be found by someone, or had a plant-like mesh of hair rested between her legs when the EMT walked in? That was something he dared not ask Sands, nor think about until now, though the thought of her naked body had chipped away at his conscience. He hadn’t been with a woman in almost three years, so long that sexualizing the bodiless head of a woman was not beyond him. He wondered where her body was now, and the idea of her headless corpse sickened him. Strangely, though he had always considered himself an ‘ass man,’ it was the face that allowed thoughts of her body to blossom, and not a headless body that brought his arousal to peak.

It was about that time that his panic diminished enough to allow him a few hours of sleep. His dreams were not so kind. Since he was young, sleep paralysis had gripped him from time to time. But the fear of asphyxiation always manifested as something else within, a dead body with its arms wrapped tight around him, a heavy beast crushing him underfoot, or sucking the breath from his lungs. Tonight it was the head, staring into him from atop his chest. He woke swatting at the woman’s face until he realized he had been dreaming, and then ran to the window to make sure the greenhouse door was closed. He had left the lights on.

Reluctantly, he put on his slippers and walked to the greenhouse. That familiar chill ran through him again as he stepped inside. He avoided looking at the head on the table and turned the lights off, rushing back out and closing the door behind him. As he walked back to the house, the sound of shattered glass echoed in the distance. He turned and walked cautiously back to the door. In the moonlight, the head seemed less foreboding. He could see just enough to confirm that it was still on the table. He edged closer, noticing something large atop the table near the head. He grabbed a hoe in the corner and gripped it tightly, taking a hand off it quickly to turn the lights on.

He expected to see a cat, or a feral dog perhaps. Instead, he saw the root system he had used to sustain the woman’s head. It had sprouted a mass of foliage so thick that it had knocked a beaker from the table. And it was moving.

The woman’s head turned towards him. Again, it mouthed the words, “Where am I?” Only this time he swore he could hear her.

He tried to swallow the fear that welled up inside him, but could not. “Vermont,” he replied.

“What happened to me?”

He took a step closer. “You’re…you tried to take your own life. I’ve managed to keep you alive.”

He was close enough now to see the plant life attached to her heaving. She began to cry. “Is this hell?”

“No.” He put his hand on the tangle of leaves and small branches, pulling away as quickly as he touched it. There, under the surface, he felt a heartbeat, or plant life emulating a heartbeat. He inspected the plant closer. It was forming a torso. Thick branches sprouted from where the shoulders would be. Somehow, the plant was attempting to reproduce her body. “Is… is there anything I can do to make this easier on you?” he asked.

She closed her eyes. “Kill me,” she said. “I don’t want to live like this.”

He turned for the door. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’m sorry.”

“Then stay with me,” she said. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“I…” he now longed for the comfort of his bed more than ever before, not to sleep, but for a semblance of safety. “Okay.” He pulled a chair towards her and sat down, careful not to look her in the eye. “Do you want to hear more about why you’re here?”

“I don’t want to think about it anymore tonight.” She closed her eyes. “Just don’t leave me alone.”

THE NEXT MORNING HE woke tangled in a myriad of branches obscuring the daylight. He tore at them until he realized he was not confined, but simply covered. Her body had grown significantly over night. Her arms were now almost completely developed, with thick veined limbs extending into five separate digits. Her legs were beginning to sprout. She moaned and the body began to move. What he recognized as a crude rendering of hands moved towards him. “Thank you,” she said. “For staying with me.”

He pulled away. “You’re welcome.”

“And fuck you for doing this to me.”

“What?”

“Who the fuck do you think you are? Look at me.”

He turned away until she sat up and turned his face to meet hers. She stared into him. “What kind of sick shit are you doing up here in the mountains? Am I the first?”

He nodded. “A firm paid me. I didn’t know you’d end up like this. You were clinically dead.”

“You should have left me that way. Look at my body.” She looked at the hand that cradled his chin. “I want to see my face.”

He walked to the far corner of the room and brought back a small mirror plate. “Your head was the only thing the firm gave me. They asked me to reproduce the results of my thesis experiment. I thought they’d bring a finger, or a hand at the most. I never thought they’d ask me to do this.”

She looked at herself in the mirror. “I want to be alone.”

“Can I bring you anything?”

“Go.”

He complied, returning to the house to check his messages. Sands had called. Dick played the message:

“Dick, I’ll have someone up there this evening. It’s the best I could do. They’ll bring a ticket for your flight back to Indiana and clean up for you. Hope you’re holding up all right.”

He deleted the message and tried to wash himself of everything in the shower, the evidence and the memories of the last few days. In less than twenty-four hours it would be over. The head would be in Sands’s custody and he would be on his way home. He rinsed the soap from his scalp, holding his eyes shut to let the water run over his face. Then the shower curtain opened.

It was her, body fully developed. Large flowers emulating the pigment of her original skin tone had blossomed across her torso.

“Jesus!” he shouted.

She grabbed him by the throat and pinned him to the wall, stepping in beside him. “I want to feel human again. I want to be human again.” She kissed him forcefully. His hands worked their way around her waistline gently. She reciprocated, drawing him close to her. She pulled his arm away from her waist and guided it between her legs, pressing his finger inwards.

He pulled away. “Shit!”

He held his hand up. Blood spat from thorn-covered wounds. When he looked up again, she was gone.

After searching the entire house, he dressed and made his way to the greenhouse. He found her crouched in the corner. She cowered. “Stay away from me!”

He knelt down beside her. On the floor, the mirror he had given her earlier lay shattered. One of the pieces was covered with thick mucus-like strands of green. A puddle of the same substance gathered nearby below her wrists, which were riddled with deep gashes.

She hid the wounds. “You should have let me die.”

He lifted her off the floor. “Come on.”

They went back to the house together. He wrapped the wounds in gauze and led her to his bed, where she slept throughout the day. He sat at the edge of the bed watching her grow, not larger, but she was beginning to fill out. The thin vines that had made up her appendages were now of greater substance. A thick, white moss began to grow over them like skin.

Her body continued to develop as night drew in. Dick watched until he heard a car pull into the driveway. Sands’s man had arrived.

Dick met him at the door.

The man handed Dick a plane ticket scheduled for departure the following morning. “Agent Brody. I’m here to clean up.”

“What are you going to do with…with the head?” Dick asked.

“I’ll take care of that. You just pack up. I’ll take you to the airport first thing in the morning.”

Dick pointed to the greenhouse. “It’s in there.”

As soon as Agent Brody started for the greenhouse, Dick ran upstairs. “Wake up,” he whispered.

“What’s wrong?”

“Someone’s here. They’ve come to take you. They don’t know what you’ve become though. They still think you’re just…they think it’s just your head.”

She sat up. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“We have to go.” Dick rose to check the window. Brody was already on his way back to the house. “Shit.”

Downstairs Agent Brody let himself inside. “Dick?”

Dick hurried down to meet him. “What’s up?”

Brody eyed him suspiciously. “There’s nothing out there.”

“Really?”

Brody waved him to the greenhouse. “Come on.”

Dick followed him, looking back at Tara through the upstairs window.

Brody waited at the entrance for Dick to open the door. He passed through the threshold and turned the lights on. “She’s right over here.” He pointed to the dish, feigning surprise. “She’s not there.”

A familiar sound pierced the air behind him, like the subtle, singular snap of a jaw closing. Brody had drawn his gun.

“Where’s the head, Dick?”

Dick slowly turned around with his hands in the air. “I buried it.”

“Bullshit. Sands said you wouldn’t go near that goddamned thing after the experiment. What happened?”

“You want to know what happened to her?” Dick asked. “Look behind you.”

Brody turned around and fired one shot into the wiry humanoid before him. She didn’t flinch. He fired again and her hands encompassed his, crushing them around the gun. As she loosened her grip Brody’s arms dropped to his side. Tara straightened her fingers and drove them through his eyes, deep into his brain. They danced on the back of his skull, eventually piercing the other side. As she held him there suspended above the ground, she drove her other hand into his entrails, spilling them onto the floor.

“Stop!” Dick shouted.

She dropped the agent’s body and started for him. “He was going to shoot you.”

“You didn’t have to kill him.”

“What would you have done?”

Dick shook his head. “They’ll send more now. I’ll never be able to go back to the university.”

“Don’t you want to stay here with me?”

His head continued to shake. “We can’t be together.”

She started towards him. “What do you mean?”

“Look at you. You’re not even human anymore. We’d have to spend the rest of our lives in hiding. You can’t be seen. They’ll kill you, or tuck you away somewhere and keep you alive to experiment on you.”

“Like you did?”

“I didn’t know it’d turn out like this.” He backed against the wall. “You were right. They should have let you die.”

“It’s not so bad, Dick. You’ll see.”

She lurched over him and drove her hands into his chest. He felt her gnarled fingers work through his heart as she drew him close. Blood pumped through the holes forged by her fingers until everything around him went black.

A DAY LATER HE woke face-down in the greenhouse. He tried to lift himself, but found he couldn’t move.

“I followed your notes as closely as I could.” Tara leaned down to address him. “Your body isn’t growing as quickly as mine is, but I think within a few days you should be as good as new.”

Dick’s jaw snapped wildly as he tried to speak.

She put her finger to his lips. “Shhh. Rest now.” She walked to the doorway and turned off the lights. “Tomorrow’s Arbor Day. We’ll celebrate.”