The Gardener

[EXT. A GARDEN, JARED HOPWORTH’S DOMAIN]

[TAPE CLICKS ON.]

[Birds chirp happily, twittering about. It sounds like a lovely day, by all accounts.]

[Someone is groaning in pain.]

[We hear some clothing movements, walking. Then:]

ARCHIVIST

Don’t. Touch. Anything.

MARTIN

I wasn’t planning to.

[He gives a little heh at the end.]

MARTIN

Are they still… alive?

ARCHIVIST

More or less. They’re certainly still aware. But they’re just the compost. The pot from which the trees grow.

[As he speaks, there’s another gasping voice.]

[The birds continue to trill.]

MARTIN

I didn’t think there were that many bones in a human body.

ARCHIVIST

(half a laugh) Normally there aren’t. (exhale) It takes a skilled gardener to get them to grow like this. The curling, cascading intricacies of collagen and marrow.

[Something shifts – a footstep, in dirt?]

ARCHIVIST

It takes devotion –

MARTIN

John.

[Slight pause.]

ARCHIVIST

S-Sorry.

MARTIN

You sound like you think they’re beautiful.

[More steps.]

ARCHIVIST

Don’t you?

[Something creaks or cracks.]

MARTIN

Is he here?

ARCHIVIST

(inhale) Up ahead.

[Someone else cries out. The birds are happy as ever. And, as they get closer, it turns out someone is whistling, a joyful little tune.]

[It’s Jared Hopworth.]

JARED HOPWORTH

(to one of his person-plant-things) Look at this.

[He makes a set of tch-ing sounds of disapproval. You can practically hear him shaking his head.]

JARED

It’s like you’re trying to grow ugly. That won’t do. You’re better than that.

[The man-person-plant-thing groans again.]

JARED

Not to worry friend; no harm done. Just a bit of pruning will set you right.

[He clips something. The person-plant yells.]

[Jared shushes them as they continue to do so. They start crying, over some fleshy sounds. Water burbles.]

JARED

[No real fuss.] Should sort you right out. Soon you’ll be good as new.

[The person-thing continues to whimper in the background.]

JARED

Better, even. You just need to – reach down inside and – really feel that fear. Let it guide how you grow. You’ll feel it in your –

[He stops, snickers.]

JARED

Bones.

[And then he starts to laugh in earnest, the person still obviously in pain behind it all.]

[Something shifts, and he starts the whistling up again, rattling around what sounds like a metal wheelbarrow until –]

ARCHIVIST

Jared Hopworth.

[The whistling cuts off. The wheelbarrow – or whatever it is – rolls to a stop. Jared sets it down.]

JARED

Sure. Why not? If you’re still clinging so hard to names.

ARCHIVIST

You know why I’m here?

[In the background, we still hear the light tinkle of a bell, or a windchime, and some vague moans here and there.]

JARED

I can guess. Took a bit to find out which rib was aching, but when I did – well. Obviously. (shifting the wheelbarrow) Why shouldn’t you want it back?

ARCHIVIST

(puff of an exhale, almost a laugh) It’s too late for that now.

JARED

Not really. But – whatever.

[Pause.]

JARED

(dismissive) Oh, and who’s this? Your boyfriend?

[This is clearly meant to be a diss.]

MARTIN

Um –

ARCHIVIST

(overlapping) Yes, actually.

JARED

(Ah!) Oh. Hm.

[In the background, a flute plays off-key.]

JARED

So is there any way this doesn’t end in me dead? I’m guessing that’s on the docket if you’re here. Unless you’re just here to smell the flowers.

[The windchimes clatter.]

ARCHIVIST

No. I can’t let you carry on like this.

What happened, Jared? I thought you only worked on the willing.

JARED

What? Says who? (realizing) Ohhh, the gym! Ha! I mean, yeah, they wanted to change, but they were still scared. First at what I’d do to them, then at what would happen if the world couldn’t handle their beautiful new bodies.

Not like I was doing it out of the goodness of my heart.

[He snorts.]

JARED

Hearts.

Anyway. Willing. Unwilling. Don’t work like that anymore, does it? You made sure of that.

MARTIN

That’s – not fair.

JARED

And what?

MARTIN

I – I – Mm, uh –

JARED

[S’right.] Don’t really matter now, does it?

ARCHIVIST

No. No, it doesn’t.

[Jared lets out a large pfffft sound. Things crack – he’s definitely restructuring his body.]

MARTIN

(ah!) O-kay.

JARED

Right. So are we doing this or what? I reckon I can get a few good hits in before I go down. Give you a little something to remember me by.

ARCHIVIST

(dead serious) No you won’t.

[Jared huffs a laugh.]

JARED

No, maybe not. But you’ve gotta try, haven’t you?

MARTIN

Please don’t.

JARED

What?

MARTIN

You’ve already made your mark.

[Jared pauses, surprised. Then he huffs a laugh again:]

JARED

Fine. Consider it a favor. But I want something in return. Before he does it.

[Squelch.]

MARTIN

Um –

ARCHIVIST

Alright. Let’s hear it.

JARED

You still do that talk-y thing? You know, drink up all the fear and spit it back out?

ARCHIVIST

Sort of, yes.

JARED

Alright. Well, I’d like to hear about my garden.

[Beat.]

ARCHIVIST

Okay.

MARTIN

Look, if this is some kind of trick –

ARCHIVIST

(overlapping) It isn’t.

[Squelchy-grinding as Jared shifts.]

JARED

Don’t fret yourself, little man. Just thought it might be nice, is all.

[Pause. The birds chirp.]

[And the static rises.]

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

Cultivation notes for Fuertisium reese.¹ Commonly known as the Gristlebloom Orchid.

[As the Archivist begins the statement, his voice takes on the quality of what you might hear on a nature documentary, or a scientific log.]

[Under the statement, we hear the fleshy sounds that might accompany the growth of one of Jared’s person-plant-things.]

A popular feature in any mortal garden, the striking petals that spring from the stems of the Gristlebloom are certainly dramatic, stretched and straining as they are in a kaleidoscope of reds and pinks and browns around the pale cream of bony stalk.

While proper conditions for development can be tricky to get precisely right, caution should be exercised as – should an ideal environment be created – this plant can grow and grow and grow.

[Creak.]

The soil should be prepared first, a rich and earthy cocktail of insecurity and self-hatred that allows the roots to twist and contort freely. The temperature should be kept the steady, humid warmth of air conditioners struggling to cope with the perspiration of a dozen bodies pushing themselves too hard, while the lights must be kept at a harsh, fluorescent glare.

Counterintuitively, growth is most effective when the orchid is suffering from aggressive dehydration, and it is vitally important that the air roots be rarely praised, and only for the flowers’ appearance and growth.

Above all, the deepest fear must be laced throughout what the Gristlebloom Orchid is fed: That they’re not enough. That their inadequacies are embedded all the way into their flesh, and they must always and forever be more.

This unspoken terror can be viewed in the intricate lattices that marble the gory petals of a well-cared for Gristlebloom as it expands and swells and grows to its full and bulbous potential.

Never let it believe itself good enough, and continue always to ensure the body that it is certain it must attain is that impossible, distended mess to which it will endlessly contort itself until it dominates your garden in its sheer, impossible, beautiful mass.

Even if there were mirrors in this place, Reese could not possibly recognize himself. Not because anything that might once have registered as a human body has long since blossomed into sinewy flowers and muscles and burst skin, but because – were he to see himself, the only image in his mind would be the him he was so afraid to be.

And the Gristlebloom Orchid grows.

The agonies of this gore-streaked orchid are pointedly exquisite as it willingly and keenly pushes its physical form past any recognizable point of pain and shuddering anxiety until it towers over your garden, dripping blood and bitter sweat.

[Squelch.]

Cultivation notes for Gristleium patricia.² Commonly known as the Bone Rose.

[More squelching.]

While the Gristlebloom Orchid may be the most eye-catching of the plants that you will find in the mortal garden, the Bone Rose is perhaps the most delicate.

Thin and brittle, it is constantly on the verge of collapsing under its own weight, even as its ossified stems reach and twist and stretch in a desperate attempt for closeness.

The soil for the Bone Rose must be thoroughly rotten, a mulch of corrupted romanticism turned toxic and watered by an uncertain desire that curls back upon the roots and feeds into it a single, constant, pulsing thought, an instinct that fuels every cell within the rose:

To be wanted you must be less.

The temperature should be kept cold for optimal development, the coldness of rejection, of hostile and pitying glances cast over a hated body. A coldness that creeps through the bones and lashes the vicious iciness to the flower’s core.

Light should be unrelenting, allowing every flaw and mark and sag to be stared at and warped and ogled.

With this preparation, the Bone Rose will conceive a grotesque horror of its own flesh, of the skin and fats and all that makes a body present. It will tear and starve and leak until there is nought but bones, the hungry bones so desperate to be touched, to be held. To be wanted.

Patricia is beautiful at last, so sharp and narrow and hard. Her angles and creamy white entirety is the center of the garden for all to admire. But she strains and shakes and fears the wind that pushes and bends the brittle stiffness of the bones.

It takes every drop of her strength to keep herself aloft, to not collapse in a heap of splintered femur and broken rib. There is no moment of her new existence that is not a shuddering, terrified effort.

She is beautiful. And she cannot allow herself to lose that at any cost. She cannot shatter into fleshy ugliness again.

The Bone Rose, properly cultivated, will be a fearful and wonderful centerpiece for a carefully tended mortal garden.

Cultivation notes for Cicadium leopold.³ Commonly known as the Cutaway Tulip.

At the edges of the mortal garden, if one is lucky, one may find the rare Cutaway Tulip, the pride of any diligent gardener.

While easy to grow to a small size with some casually applied insecurities, to create a true masterpiece of carved and peeled and sculpted flesh requires a lengthy and involved cultivation.

Ensuring a properly grotesque blossom, an elegant and graceful flowering, is more in the pruning than in the preparation.

The soil can be anything mulched in hostility to self-worth, and the light and temperature must simply be kept at a level to allow the appropriate growth of an obsession.

An obsession, with the changing and hacking of itself, that from stem to root to petal it cuts and breaks and sticks itself into ever-new configurations and shapes, each a new summit of repulsive symmetry and stomach-churning perfection.

A perfection sought in the blades and the shears of the gardener. All the edge wielded by its own wildly waving roots, eagerly digging into a knotted and knitted form and pulling itself apart.

The Cutaway Tulip’s growth is less reliant than other blooms on the moment-to-moment terror of themselves, the sharpened, pointed fear of a form you are appalled to look upon.

Instead, what must be grown and fed and watered is the lingering, nagging dread of falling short of what could be. At the final, glorious culmination that a body may someday achieve, the ever-retreating perfections that sit always on the tip of a knife.

But also growing with the flower must be that other dread: Not of perfection to be hunted, but of decay to be fled. The wrinkled, graying translucent marks of encroaching mortality, a body that seeks to turn all that look like you into a moldering parody.

And the fearful slicing and desperate stabbing that is no longer to seek the golden promise of an eternal beauty but a tearful attempt to rewind a spring that ticks itself ever looser with every snap of the clock face.

Leopold is aware of what he has become, of the bleeding, twitching caricature of a human body he inhabits, the ribbons of himself that are pruned and broken and woven into dazzling petals.

But as much as he is scared to his roots of the next form the shears will chop him into, even more he fears the spreading stagnation that moves through his skin like rot, the start of decline that can only be postponed by the mutilating torments of his gardener.

He would cry, but he has no idea where his tear ducts are anymore.

While initially a very intensive and time-consuming flower to grow, a well-cared for Cutaway Tulip can stand as a torn and wretched testament to the gardener’s skill, especially if successfully brought to the point where it begins to operate and dissect itself.

Cultivation notes for Sopranium maeve.⁴ Commonly known as the Lily of the Damned.

While a somewhat difficult flower to acquire the seeds for, the actual growing of a Lily of the Damned is a task that requires remarkably little input from the gardener, although, if it is to be a strong feature of the mortal garden, it must be regularly pulled up into fresh air.

Any soil works for a Lily of the Damned, though some contend a rough and damp texture causes them to blossom faster. The important aspect to bear in mind is to never allow the lily to forget its physical existence.

Temperatures can be hot or cold as long as it is uncomfortable, and light levels need only be high if the preoccupation with its body’s presence has a visual component.

Most importantly, the absence of any transcendence or death should always be emphasized when watering or pruning.

Spirituality. Afterlife. Transhumanism, religion – all must be roundly dismissed or mocked, at all times with the clear conclusion that the meat from which the lily blooms is the only form of being it will ever enjoy.

The flowers that spring from a Lily of the Damned are… less predictable than those of other denizens of the mortal garden, being haphazard black growths of calcified fluid and sinuous, dangling nerves.

They can grow very fast, but are in no danger of dominating any arrangement, as they will by nature attempt to retreat beneath the soil, hiding the painful existence that horrifies them so from any that might be watching, including themselves.

Periodically, if you wish to display and grow your lily to its best advantage, you must seize whatever part of it remains above ground and pull, bringing it up into the open air.

Use as much force as you have available without worry of dislodging it entirely. The lily’s roots go deep, and can withstand almost any attempt to dislodge them.

[A cracking, curling growing.]

This is Maeve’s nightmare. There is no other word for it. To be trapped, unmoving, within the body that has betrayed her so often, feeling every sensation as it grows and warps and sprouts, never knowing what new mutation it will visit on her next.

She is unable to even hide. There is no promise of the peaceful sleep of the innocent dead, not the dream of a digital escape of the hell her body has become. She is here, and she is trapped in the same soft prison of skin she has always so despised.

While it will never be a focus piece for a mortal garden, the Lily of the Damned is a popular choice among experimental gardeners, as its almost indestructible nature allows them the opportunity to exercise a great deal of creativity in its cultivation.

The mortal garden grows and twists and screams and bleeds. It is loved by the hands that tend it, but that love sows only misery and fear.

It is the worst place that has ever been beautiful, and it should not exist.

[The static begins to simmer in the background. There are more crunchy rearrangement noises.]

[Jared takes a deep breath. Then he exhales, all juddery.]

JARED

Cheers for that.

ARCHIVIST

Don’t.

MARTIN

John, are you – alright?

ARCHIVIST

Yeah. Um, uh – Sorry.

JARED

Is it really that bad? Seeing what I’ve done here?

Or – (heh) Is it maybe that deep down, you think it’s as beautiful as I do?

ARCHIVIST

(*snapping*) Shut up!

JARED

It’s a shame. Who’s gonna look after the garden when I’m gone? There are a few real pretty ones.

[Windchimes in the background.]

JARED

Who knows. Maybe they’ll uproot and start landscaping themselves. That’d be nice.

Then again, maybe it’ll just grow wild.

[The most bass layer of the Archivist’s static seems to press in.]

ARCHIVIST

I don’t. Care.

JARED

No. You don’t, do you?

[Windchimes.]

ARCHIVIST

I can’t. There’s too many. I can’t save everyone. (small sound) I can’t save anyone.

JARED

If you say so. (beat) So. I guess that just leaves revenge, then, don’t it?

Can’t say I blame you. That’s all life is, really, innit? Just people using each other up.

ARCHIVIST

(snide) Spare me the crude philosophy.

[A noise in the distance. The static begins to build.]

JARED

(to garden) Grow well, my darlings. Grow well.

ARCHIVIST

(gritted) Feel it.

[A scraping-type sound, but distant.]

ARCHIVIST

Feel the terror and despair as your garden grows.

[As he speaks, Jared begins making strange burbling and gurgling noises, his body starting to shift and squelch.]

ARCHIVIST

(intense) Let it flow through you and blossom.

[Jared keeps making noises. The Archivist’s words begin to glitch.]

ARCHIVIST

Just people, using each other up. Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon this thing and drink. Your. Fill.

[Jared groans, deep and low, and the light glitching intensifies, turning into the same final glitch that eradicated the apocalypse of the Not!Sasha and Jude Perry before him.]

[And then, one final bass boost later – it’s over. The Archivist gasps a bit for breath, but –]

MARTIN

(worried) John?

ARCHIVIST

I’m here.

MARTIN

Are you okay?

[One of the plant-person-things groans in the background.]

ARCHIVIST

I’m –

[It groans again.]

ARCHIVIST

(not great) Great. You?

MARTIN

(bit of a laugh) I really thought this one would be messier.

ARCHIVIST

What do you mean?

MARTIN

Well I mean – he’s a Flesh – thing, right? I thought he’d be all meat and blood and gore and all that.

ARCHIVIST

(bit of a laugh) Apparently not.

MARTIN

He didn’t even put up a fight.

ARCHIVIST

No.

[Another one of the plant-people-things in the background groans. More squelching. A footstep in the dirt.]

MARTIN

So what now?

ARCHIVIST

Carry on, I guess.

MARTIN

Yeah.

[The Archivist shoulders his bag, prepares to start walking.]

MARTIN

John!

ARCHIVIST

Yeah?

MARTIN

I need to ask you something.

ARCHIVIST

Okay.

MARTIN

I meant to ask. A-After the fire, actually? But, well – there was the house and everything, and it just sort of –

ARCHIVIST

(overlapping) What is it? Martin.

MARTIN

Why didn’t we go after the landlord guy? In the tenement.

ARCHIVIST

Arthur Nolan?

MARTIN

Yeah. He’s still there, right?

ARCHIVIST

(bit of a sigh) After Jude, th,the fires – I,I didn’t want to put you through anymore.

MARTIN

(sigh) Don’t do that.

ARCHIVIST

What?

MARTIN

Don’t use me as an excuse.

ARCHIVIST

I-I’m not. I just – (inhale) It didn’t seem worth it. I didn’t – hate him like I hated her. (small exhale) He never hurt me.

MARTIN

But all the people inside.

ARCHIVIST

Killing Nolan wouldn’t have made it stop. It would just leave it – unsupervised.

[More gasping groans in the background. Martin hmms.]

[A sigh.]

MARTIN

John – we are doing good, right? Making things better?

[The slightest of pauses.]

ARCHIVIST

I don’t know if that was ever an option.

[TAPE CLICKS OFF.]