She spun rapidly in place - and so too, did her hair, making a golden halo that glinted ever so slightly in the spotlight. Sarah was beautiful, or so most men would say. He, he thought it was a mockery, an outrage, his heart breaking with every spin around the pole.
A flurry of green flew at her - and in an instant she was on her feet, twirling and tossing her top off. There was a roar from the crowd as she hovered inches from some poor man's face, covering his field of view with her bouncing breasts.
"Why am I here?" he muttered, and made to turn away - but he couldn't. There was something special about this one - the way she moved, she didn't seem dead. His faith was soon rewarded as she made a slight bow, leaped up into the air, and did a spiral - twirling more clothes off all the while, but a difficult move to pull off.
"Finally decided to enjoy yourself, eh, Chad?" A burly man next to him punched him in the arm and grinned smugly.
"Shut the fuck up," he muttered, moving a strand of brown hair away from his eyes and tucking it back under his hat. Trash, that's all they were, trash. And he didn't mean that as any sort of an insult - he included himself, as well. Remainders of things that were once great, tossed aside and left to collect in the gutters.
He sighed. She was doing a lap-dance. Maybe this one was dead as well. As dead as him, maybe. He got up from his stool and slapped a five dollar bill down on the table, then picked up his cane. It was a plain wooden cane that made a slightly resonating echo when tapped against the ground. He leaned against it heavily, despite his healthy-looking - if not muscular - legs.
Trash. All of them. And dead, too. Or at least, they would be.
As he closed his eyes, visions of a beautiful garden behind a large mansion came to mind. Two children sat in the shade of a large tree, with a trunk the size of a small room. It had been there for over 600 years, if not more and its many branches were weighted heavily with apples.
Arranged in rows around the ancient tree were dozens - no, hundreds - of young saplings. A kindly man wearing a wide-brimmed gardener's hat was going from sapling to sapling, checking each branch.
"You see, not all trees can grow to be like this one without help," the man said. "This tree - this tree was lucky. This tree was strong, and was darn pigheaded - just feel its bark! Go on, touch it - you think something that strong comes by every day?"
The left child, a young girl with her hair in chestnut ponytails, shook her head.
"That's right, Danielle. They don't... we have to help them." With those words, the gardener took his shears to the tree he had just been touching. One of the branches bended a little stiffly. "This branch is dead, and if we just leave it here, it will keep this little one from being strong like the old one over there," he nodded back towards the ancient tree. Not a second later, there was the clang of metal on metal, and the branch thudded against the ground.
The gardener tossed the branch over at the children. The golden-haired boy next to Danielle touched it. "It looks fine to me, Mr. Vee," he said, looking at the man strangely.
"No Chad, it's not." He shook his head. "If you try to bend it, it will crack."
"But why does it hurt the tree if you leave it on there?"
"Because it takes away the food the tree could use for its other branches, silly." Danielle shook her head and broke the branch over her knee.
"Exactly," Mr. Vee had nodded. "When you get rid of the bad branches, the tree has better fruit."
Chad had always hated doing that. But it was something that had to be done. He found himself outside the back entrance to the club. He placed his cane in front of himself and leaned forward, slumping over. The last performer was always the first one out - it was a tradition at this club. Superstition if you will. It served his purpose.
Another vision flashed in front of his eyes. They were a little older now - Danielle and Chad still sitting in the same positions, though. Chad leaning back lazily against the tree trunk, while Danielle sat as upright as a bolt a few feet away. The old gardener was stooping a little now, but didn't look much the worse for wear. This time, however, he was relatively quiet as he walked about the trees, sprinkling them with a limp-necked garden hose. He only broke the quiet to whisper in a gentle voice to the trees.
Chad stifled a laugh. "Why is he talking to them?"
Danielle shook her head, as if dealing with a wayward child. "He told you why, silly. How they grow depends on you talk to them... if you're nice, they'll grow. If you're mean and yell, they'll die."
Chad snorted. "That's just dumb. If that was true, he'd just yell at all the bad branches."
"Maybe it depends on how hard you yell."
"Maybe he's just a crazy old man," he retorted, but there was a smile on his face. As though he knew he was being just a little bit dumb himself. Danielle just sighed and shook her head, only to catch Chad patting the old apple tree with one hand and saying something encouraging under his breath. She raised an eyebrow.
"What? It can't hurt."
Just in case, he wasn't just going to yell at them - he was going to scream. He would destroy all of them, with just the power of his voice. It was so much more efficient. And the voice would be so loud. It almost made him smile. Unconsciously, he looked behind him. The fire escape was still there. Good. He shook his arm to make sure it was limber, then threw his attention forward. He thought he heard something.
His attentiveness was rewarded. As the door cracked open, the man lunged forward, grabbing his cane and pulling it apart in one swift motion - only to reveal a thin blade inside the wooden pole. There was a flash underneath the yellow streetlight, and a cry - then the door slammed shut. The man wasted no time but headed for the fire escape, eyes closed, and leaped upwards. He felt the smooth, cold metal in his hands, and grunted in satisfaction, then hoisted himself up onto the staircase. Under his trenchcoat, his paunch seemed to move just a bit - instinctively, his hands bolted to the sash and pulled it tighter as he flew up the staircase. He could hear shrieks from inside - the other plants were scared. As they should be.
"Requiescat In Pace."
"You're leaving me for... for a whore?!" she spat out the words.
"Sarah's a hell of a lot cleaner than you. And I was never with you." He turned around coldly to pick up a suitcase. His blond hair seemed more intense than usual, radiating with all the color of the sun. By contrast, Danielle's brown hair was sprayed all about her face, wild and spiraling, and a little sickly. As she trembled with rage, for all the world she looked much like a rat.
"But... but I love you." she looked at him, her eyes now pleading, searching. He shoved her aside, dropping her to the ground.
"I used to love you too. But not like that. Never like that. I'm sorry. If you want to talk, you know where to find me."
"At that whorehouse?" she muttered, her eyes narrowing.
"I'm sorry. But this is wrong." Chad took one more look at Danielle, and shook his head, his golden locks flying across his face, then he turned around and ran out, leaving his sister naked, laid out across the floor. She crawled out across the floor, only to be stopped by the slam of the door in her face.
Using all her strength, she struggled to pull herself up, grabbing onto a nearby potted plant. As she slowly rose upwards, the bush snapped in two and pot flipped over onto her, flinging dirt everywhere.
She sunk down into it face first and watered it with her tears.
He sat and watched the police cars drive up. Alarms blaring, but it was too late, much too late to sweet-talk and comfort the branches back to life. He shook his head and calmly wiped the blood off of his blade with a handkerchief doused in rubbing alcohol. After carefully inspecting the blade for any blood, he walked over to the alley on the other side of the building and carelessly tossed the handkerchief below. He then carefully re-sheathed his blade and walked over to the door leading downstairs. Adjusting his hat carefully, he swung open the door and walked inside.
The building was old and run-down - not to mention conveniently located. That was why he had picked it in the first place, after all. And the smells would mask anything... that, and right to privacy, as well as a careless super. Cautiously avoiding the holes in the wooden floorboard, he made his way to an apartment door marked 525, and underneath, in smaller letters: Minnie Tekel. He suppressed a slight giggle. Sliding the key into the lock, he struggled for a moment, then wrenched the doorknob open and came inside.
There, he tossed off his hat, letting his chestnut hair fall free - down to his waist. Then he walked over to the grimy sink and turned the water on, full thrust, dipping his finger in once or twice to test the temperature. Once it was hot to his satisfaction, he cupped his hands and splashed water over his face. Instantly his face practically deformed, as though it were clay. He scrubbed away at his features - first his chin, then his nose, then his temples - slowly, slowly chipping away until it was apparent that it was the soft face of a beautiful woman. Danielle. Only while the face was beautiful, the eyes were as hard as marble and the hair that framed her face was as messy and droopy as a weeping willow.
Danielle tugged once on the tight sash keeping her trench-coat closed, and two pillows fell to the ground, with nothing underneath. Her figure was slim for the most part, but there was the start of a gentle curve at her stomach. The young woman smiled bitterly and tossed her used disguise onto the hat-rack near the door. She missed.
She turned to enter her room. The room was completely bare other than the necessities. And a single potted plant in the corner. She was smart enough to not leave the police extra clues. From her closet she pulled out a plain - and worn - set of pajamas, a bland gray. Among her most useful finds at the Salvation Army - the more to blend her in, the better. She slid them on and walked over to the corner - the plant bore numerous cuts and gashes all along its length, sap rising in many places to heal the wounds. It was a strong little tree now. Danielle cooed soft baby sounds at it, then turned around.
She headed for the refrigerator, which she opened briefly to pull out a cup of water. Danielle stepped away, but then stopped as though she had forgotten something. She turned back around and opened the refrigerator again. Inside, various dismembered parts of a human body were coated in white frost. Calmly, she moved around the arms and legs, humming to herself You Are My Sunshine all the while, until she found what she wanted. She pulled out a frost-covered human head. Chad's.
She lovingly kissed it, shoving apart icy lips. Her tongue slid inside, knocking around an unconscious partner. Then she withdrew. When she found herself stuck, she took the cup in her hand and quickly poured some water over their joined lips, freeing her. Danielle smiled at him, a bittersweet smile, and kissed his forehead while her lips were still moist.
"You left me like this. We were switched then. I was on the ground. You left me... but I still love you. I still forgive you. But that branch... was too hard to remove without hurting you."
He had been a beautiful branch. Too bad he decided to grow a bad branch himself. One too big to just remove. She kissed his forehead once more in the same spot, then replaced the head in the refrigerator and shut the door, heading back for bed. As she climbed underneath the threadbare covers, she tugged the bedside lamp's pull-chain, shutting off the light.
She turned to face the refrigerator. "Good night, dear," she called out. Then she turned to the other corner and began humming the same nursery rhyme again and again, until her eyes began to droop. Just before she drifted off into sleep, she muttered to herself and unconsciously ran her fingers up and down the curve of her belly.
"And now the tree bears better fruit." Maybe if she was lucky, they'd be twins too.
Talking to Plants, all related trademarks, characters, indicia, story, art, and the like are Copyright
2004-7 Christopher Rollins