UGR: Nose Garden (884 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.93 on 34 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Ballare (View user info) at 2007-08-22 15:59:32 EDT
Did they lock the door behind you? They always do, those sneaky bastards.
Yeah, yeah, whatever. Your name isn't important, not here, and I won't remember it anyway, and you better put your hand in your pocket before you look stupid; we're not allowed to shake here - they say it poses a physical threat to the visitors. Put your pencil and shit away, too. Don't you know you can kill a man eight ways with a mechanical pencil? Don't bother, I don't know any of them, but that's what I've heard.
Well, christ, look at this room - just take a good look at it. You see my cot, my table? You wouldn't suspect they're made out of reinforced plastic, would you? Looks real as anything, but I can't hurt myself with it. And that hole in the door? That's how they feed me, on a little tray, made out of styrofoam so I can't try to kill myself with it. You'd be crazy too if you were locked in here, day and night.
Take a fucking seat, you're making me nervous, standing around like that. Sorry I can't offer you much, I guess you could ask out the hole for a cup of coffee or something but they never give me anything but piss in a cup and you probably won't have much better luck. So sit down, on the bed, on the chair, on the floor. I don't give a shit, just sit down.
Oh... Look at that. Where'd you get that pencil? C-can... Can I borrow it?
Oh, it's not for me, of course. Right. I knew that. You shouldn't have it in here. Didn't you know, there's eight ways you can kill a man with just a pencil? I could show you. And I suppose you could say the same for a pen, but-
Yeah... Right, of course. Common knowledge, that pencil trick.
Why are you here? These days, I can't remember so good, so if you're here for some genealogy family history shit, I'll be no help to you.
A reporter? Jesus, a reporter? I never did nothing, I never-
The... The Gardener? Where did you hear about that? I- I- I... I'd...
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I'd been smudging red baseball dust on my new shoes, my elbows propped on my knees, staring at the peeling paint of the park bench when Joel's younger brother lost the ball. His name was Connor, or something equally stupid, and I don't remember exactly why he was at the park with us on that particular day; probably Joel's mom was out getting her hair done or ha ha Joel, your mom's out buying a dildo, what's a dildo? Joel, you're an idiot, a fucking idiot, and couldn't take him with her. Connor, whatever his name was, was eleven or twelve - just the age where if we made fun of him he would turn into a sniveling little brat, so we had to be nice and let him throw the ball once in a while.
"You little shit, where'd it go? Go find it, idiot."
Joel, too tall, too awkward, - mother's defective duplicate, discarded in favour of the younger, more perfect model, - constantly hassled Connor, and while the kid was a pain in the ass sometimes, and couldn't throw a ball to save his life, he wasn't too bad and didn't deserve the beatings he got from time to time. Not to say we wouldn't throw a punch at him, but sometimes Joel just gave him too much shit.
I looked up, and the kid shrugged helplessly at me, his too-big shirts and his ratty hand-me-down skater shoes - Joel, why your brother always wearing your clothes? You poor? Get your mom to buy you some new fucking clothes, Joel - making him seem even smaller than he really was, and I felt bad for him, I guess, because I stood up and brushed off my jeans.
"Whatever. I'm tired of this anyway."
Ever since I beat up some jerk pushing the Douglas twins around, I was Top Dog. I was leader of the pack, king of the hill - the big enchilada. What I said, went, when I pronounced my degrees, they listened. Oh, it was glorious. I had run of the town with my pack of drooling bitches behind me, ready to ask how high on the way up when I barked, 'jump!'.
So if I was bored, they were bored. The expected chorus came from my dependable goons: 'dude, I'm sick of baseball' 'let's go down to the creek' 'dad'll loan me his truck if I ask-'
I cut them off, "You jerks have lost every ball I've ever brought to the park. So before we go anywhere, we're finding that ball. Connor, did you see where it went?"
He shook his mousy little head, and I stared pointedly at him.
"Where do you think it went, then?"
The kid paused, then, looking distinctly unhappy, lifted a hand to point towards a large white house, the backyard lined with a tall, black, foreboding metal fence. He scuffed his toe into the dirt, and I think I saw his lips move as he muttered a faint apology, but it was lost under the groans and shouts of the others.
"Into the Gardener's backyard?"
"His fucking backyard? We can't go in there!"
"The Gardener is so unhinged!"
"Screw the ball, we're not getting it back."
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Listen, buddy, if you're a reporter, you already know the end to this cheery little tale, so I'd sure appreciate it if you'd ask some different questions. A-Ask whatever you want, just not about that - ask about my mother, my mom was a wonderful lady, she made muffins ever Sunday morning; ask about my ex-wife, that bitch; ask about-
Joel?
Oh, God, please don't ask about-
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"Joel."
He gazed at me uneasily, prepared for what I was going to say, his hands tight by his sides, his jaw tight.
He began, "I don't- I've been in there already, and he almost saw me, I mean, I heard him, and there's... you don't understand..." Do it Joel, you pussy, come on, it's just a hop over the fence, what's the big deal?
"It's you, buddy. Your brother's the one that threw it, and he's too small to get up over the fence anyway." Come on, come on, just do it, how bad can it be?
"They say," Connor's small voice cut through the chatter, "that he eats people."
Joel replied sharply, "don't be stupid. I've been over the fence, and he didn't eat me, did he? I mean, I don't know, it's weird. It's scary. No one's seen him, he doesn't go out, not ever, but- but he doesn't eat people."
I jeered at him. "You hope."
There was no further discussion, no more protest. That was it: when I spoke, they </I>listened</I>. He nodded, just once, turned sharply on his heel, and started marching stiffly. It was less than a hundred feet to the fence, and he was halfway there when he glanced back over his shoulder. There was something bleakly wretched in his sullen gaze that gave me a start, and again I felt a wave of - something. Pity, I guess.
I told the others to wait; we'd be back soon. Call the cops if we're not back in ten, ha ha.
I jogged a few steps, fell to a walk, and caught up with Joel just as he pulled himself up and sat, awkwardly perched, with a leg hanging over either side of the fence. I smiled wanly up at him, and, heaving myself upward, swung with a graceless grunt up and over the fence, landing hard on my knees. Pushing myself to my feet, I moaned softly, rubbing my legs.
Joel tumbled down beside me, and, disregarding my own inept landing, I chuckled at his gawky clumsiness, and offered my hand to pull him up. "So these things back here, what are they? Does he have dogs or something?"
He shook his head mutely. Something had come over him; something I had never seen before in Joel - fearless, dependable, intrepid explorer Joel.
I reached down to shake his shoulder, and he swatted my hand away, staring past my shoulder, beyond anything I could see. There was something terrifying about his prone, limp body on the ground, the way he wouldn't even try to get up, the way he stared and stared and stared and-
Y-you don't understand. You need to stop - you need to go. He's dead, Joel's dead now, been dead for years, and I was there, and the Gardener, the Gardener was-
He was-
"You're not supposed to be here, boy. Neither of you."
He was the Gardener. I never knew why they called him that; my parents, my friends, my friends' parents, everyone on that street - he had no name, no face, no life. He was the Gardener. We weren't to go near his house or in his backyard, that's what Mother said, and Joel, I'd made Joel go get the ball, where's he? He was just here, on the ground, we'd just fallen over the fence-
A hand, incredibly strong, laced through my hair and pulled back, sharply, so that my scalp tingled and stretched and then burned, and I fell over backward, away from Joel. I saw him, standing over me, the Gardener - he must have been, he was so old and immense and dark and his skin was crumpled and fell off his frame as though he'd put it on earlier that morning, his skin suit, one of many suits from his skin suit closet, he was the Gardener, ageless and terrifying and his eyes were black pits with no souls, and he'd moved over to Joel and Joel cried out and struggled but somehow he was pinned, his legs unmoving, paralyzed from the fall, I think, and I could do nothing as the Gardener scooped him up into his thin arms and threw him carelessly over his shoulder, and said to me,
"Come."
I was helpless. What else could I have done? I followed him, followed him and my friend, into his house, the huge crumbling white house that had stood for decades, haunting and silent. As the Gardener reached out to turn the doorknob, Joel's arm flopped horribly towards me, his fingers grasping at air, and he stared wordlessly at me, begging me to help, to do something, anything.
I couldn't. What else could I have done?
I trailed after the Gardener, into his house, and I smelled the putrid smell of fungus in the walls and dying old people and, horribly, meat. It was a vile, overwhelming smell of meat, rotting and cooking and stewing and bleeding out, so strong that I tasted it in my mouth.
He led me to a sterile white room, laid Joel out on a sterile white table, and turned to me. I couldn't look at his lifeless black eyes, and stared instead as inoffensively as possible at his chin.
"You're not supposed to be here," he repeated, and I know, I knew, I nodded.
I think I replied, we just wanted our ball, s-sir.
And he said, Well that's unfortunate, child, because you're here now and didn't anyone ever tell you to stay away from my house?
And I said, Yes, sir, they did, but my ball-
And he interrupted me, Do you know what I do when I find children in my backyard? I shook my head, and I wanted to plug my ears, because I knew he was going to tell me.
"You know what they say. They say children..." He paused, and then held out his hand to me, his finger pinched at the top. "Children are flowers, you see." And he unfolded his fingers, his long, horrible fingers. "And I am a gardener."
"And sometimes, flowers need pruning. Would you like to see my garden? My people garden?"
No, no, I did not, I did not want to see it, but what could I do? Joel was facedown, silent, his face pressed helplessly into the table, and what could I do?
He led me out another door, led me by the hand, and I followed.
And do you know what I saw there?
Oh, yes, do you know? It was a garden, ha ha! A garden indeed! Did you read the papers, did you see the news? Do you watch TV, my friend? Oh yes, Mr. Reporter, of all people, you should know what I saw there!
Bodies - limbs - organs! Shaved and shaped and trimmed down to elegant forms, each a marvel of art both terrifying and beautiful.
He pushed me forward, into the damp room, the air red and hazy, and I breathed in the taste of death. I stumbled into a young woman posing as a sapling, her arms broken in several places, hung high above her head to form branches, her fingers as sparse leaves.
I cried out in disgust, pushing myself away.
Corpses, carved into carnations! Ha ha, do you like that? Put that into your article, you bastard!
I threw up, all down my front, on my shoes, my red-scuffed shoes, and I turned to look up at the Gardener, and he was smiling broadly at me, his red lips stretching into a clown's grin. "It is my garden, my beautiful garden." His voice was soft, almost wistful.
And what could I do?
And beyond his ghastly smile, I remember nothing.
-------------------------
Wait. Before you go.
I have something to show you.
Would you like to see it? It's in this little box here. I keep it under my bed, close to me every night, where the nurses won't find it. Someone brought it to me when I was first admitted, someone who used to have a name, a nice name I think, - would you like to see it?
It is a garden, my nose garden. It little now, but soon maybe it will grow.
User Reviews
Submitted by AllyJeans (user info) at 2007-09-05 16:49:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2007-08-25 13:31:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow.
The description of the scent and sight at the Gardener's house is weird and nauseating in a really good way.
Submitted by azurefroz (user info) at 2007-08-24 07:49:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2007-08-23 21:46:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by azurefroz (user info) at 2007-08-23 21:18:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Let's fuck. I'm drunk, not complaining. I understand uber quite well. I'm not who you think I am.
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Sir, this indecent proposal does not become you. Also it is quite ominous. And how do you know I'm not a dude?
==========
I was kinda hoping you were a dude L:)
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-08-24 07:42:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Great take on a bad title
Submitted by azurefroz (user info) at 2007-08-23 21:18:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Let's fuck. I'm drunk, not complaining. I understand uber quite well. I'm not who you think I am.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-08-23 19:39:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2007-08-23 13:14:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by azurefroz (user info) at 2007-08-23 12:11:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Great use of genre/title.
Submitted by For_Pony (user info) at 2007-08-23 11:17:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Definitely enjoyable, although very odd.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2007-08-23 09:45:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very good...
Submitted by zwerg (user info) at 2007-08-23 08:45:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2007-08-23 03:46:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
you can light a cigarette or start a fire with a pencil
Submitted by Merlina (user info) at 2007-08-23 02:55:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Just read this again.
AWESOME
Submitted by Merlina (user info) at 2007-08-23 02:42:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I am SO sorry but I have to forfeit. I tried and I'd rather not send anything than something decent. I know how annoying that is but am sure it will get read and rated so hopefully not too annoying.
I guess my head is not in the right place.
You would have beaten me anyway - this is superb.
Submitted by sir_cowman (user info) at 2007-08-23 01:20:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
A few typos, and, at times the dialog was a little "off."
But, seriously, with a title like that, and making a story this creative and all around awesome?
I wanna plus +10 this.
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-08-23 01:02:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was really good.
Submitted by SgtHartman (user info) at 2007-08-22 19:47:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2007-08-22 17:11:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I know that. I was talking about the remaining pieces of your REAL teeth.
=======================
Shlongy is a BIG fan of the gummer.
Submitted by Zebra (user info) at 2007-08-22 19:39:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm presuming this is an assigned title.
Stupid fucking title.
Nice story, though. Very nice tone and sense of place.
The ending was a bit odd, though.
Am I to believe that he has a nose in a box? Or does he imagine he does?
The first is not quite believable in this setting, and the second is unsatisfying without a bit more information.
Perhaps he might relate his 'nose garden' more specifically to the horror he witnessed as a boy.
Such as an actual human carving, or even something olfactory.
This was very good, regardless.
Submitted by Deidra (user info) at 2007-08-22 18:35:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by i_can_get_you_a_toe (user info) at 2007-08-22 17:32:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2007-08-22 17:11:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I know that. I was talking about the remaining pieces of your REAL teeth.
Submitted by lover101 (user info) at 2007-08-22 17:04:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:44:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
After you go first, fatass. Here it is! But first, put in your teeth but be gentle.
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what the hell are you talking about? i cant afford false teeth!!
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:55:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by shmack92 (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:53:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This didn't concern noses at all. Damn You!!!
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:44:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by lover101 (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:34:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:07:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
was hoping for a pic of Shlongy
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why dont you just suck his dick and get it over with?
After you go first, fatass. Here it is! But first, put in your teeth but be gentle.
Submitted by rorrim (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:39:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by DirtyHarry (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:39:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:23:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Brilliant.
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and horrifying.
Submitted by lover101 (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:34:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:07:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
was hoping for a pic of Shlongy
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why dont you just suck his dick and get it over with?
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:34:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i may adjust this later depending on your competition and due to the lack of adventure/action but i really liked this so here you go.
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:27:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:07:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
was hoping for a pic of Shlongy
Who wasn't?
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:23:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Brilliant.
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:09:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
some love for ballare :)
+2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:07:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
was hoping for a pic of Shlongy
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2007-08-22 16:01:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Fuck action/adventure. Labels are for pussies.