6 Fantasy Stories (12 page)

*****

Again, Carotid presents me with seeming impossibilities in a place that reeks like I’ll never stop smelling it.

“I’d like you to meet Mrs. Marinade Flypaper,” says Carotid, pressing me toward a shriveled tulip-head in a creaky rocking chair. “She’s got a groovy story I’ll bet you’re itching to hear.”

Ancient Mrs. Flypaper is so crinkled, she looks like she’s been freeze-dried. Her withered purple tulip-head trembles atop a haystick body swimming in a sweat-yellowed dressing gown. I think she will crumble into dust if I breathe too hard in her direction...but the real reason I try not to breathe much is that she stinks like urine, sour milk, and rotting flowers.

In fact, the whole place smells that bad if not worse, filled as it is with decaying running-out-of-timers. In this seediest of low-rent nursing homes, the used-up carcasses of too-late bloomers slump together in pre-death putrescence, regretting that they didn’t save enough money in smoother years to afford a better fadeout.

“Go ahead, Mrs. Flypaper,” Carotid says cheerfully. “Tell Inspector Glisten about Hedgerow Diadem. Don’t leave out the good parts, sweetheart.”

The old tulip-headed woman looks at me nervously. “But he’s a...he’s a...”

“A policeman?” says Carotid.

“A rose,” says Mrs. Flypaper, and as rancid as her odor is, I taste the same whiff mingled with her fear that I inhaled from Gristle Skinbone in the wildflower camp.

Contempt.

“Don’t worry, Marinade,” says Carotid, patting her scrawny hand. “What’s he going to do to you? Put you in prison? Kill you? Like you’re not in prison already! Like you’re not as good as dead right now!”

Mrs. Flypaper’s tulip-head petals crackle as they unfold slightly in a weak smile. “You’re right as always, dear boy,” she says. “What do I have to lose?”

Carotid tucks down a wedge of petals atop one side of his red carnation-head, winking at me. “Can you say ‘recurring theme,’ Inspector Glisten?” he says.

Tempted as I am to say the hell with Carotid’s revelations and give him the shooting he’s been begging for, I keep the cage door closed on my pacing tiger temper and listen to the old woman’s raspy storytelling.

“Hedgerow Diadem was the doctor who provided our medical care here at the home,” says Mrs. Flypaper. “Only he didn’t do a very good job of it.”

“He was a louse!” says an old man behind me with a wretched blue pansy for a head. “He thought he was so much better than us because he was a high-and-mighty
rose-head
!”

“It’s true,” says Mrs. Flypaper, nodding. “We were all terrified of getting sick, because his patients often died...and who’s going to question it when a poor old tulip or pansy in the county home passes away?”

“No one, that’s who!” says another old man, this one with a white gardenia-head with hardly any petals left on it.

“All he wanted was to milk our medical insurance,” says the pansy man, rapping his ashplant cane on the floor.

“One day, a good friend of ours died because Dr. Diadem gave her the wrong medication,” says Mrs. Flypaper.

“Her name was Quartzie Ossobuco!” says the gardenia-head. “I was in love with her!”

“We heard about the Pruner,” says Mrs. Flypaper, “and we got an idea. A group of us cornered Dr. Diadem in the parking lot, and we killed him.”

“With knives,” says the pansy-head.

“We might not look like much,” says Mrs. Flypaper, “but you’d be surprised what seven of us can do when we work together.

For a long moment, I stand and absorb the unreality of Granny’s vile bedtime story. Withered coots and biddies ganging up on a rose physician is nearly as unthinkable to me as an eight-year-old girl helping Daddy cut down a stranger in the park.

And yet, I come to believe that it happened. These people are not roses, after all, or my faithful man-head. As harmless as they appear, I know that they are untrustworthy and capable of anything.

And deserving of no mercy.

I resist the impulse to dole out swift punishment, however, in favor of pressing for more information. “How many others did you kill?” I say flatly.

“Only Dr. Diadem,” says Mrs. Flypaper, rocking in her chair. “But we like to think we did our part.”

“Did your part for what?” I say.

“Pruning’s a team effort,” says Carotid. “If everyone picks up just one piece of garbage, the streets will be litter-free in no time!”

“You’re pretty brave to be talking trash about rose-heads,” I say coldly, “considering a rose-head policeman’s standing right here with the firepower to shut you up forever.”

“Then who would answer the big question on your tiny little mind?” says Carotid, dousing me with a fragrance thick with arrogant spite. “Namely, ‘Which Pruner chopped my family into little pieces, Carotid?’”

With a major effort, I force back the impulse to do what I know is the righteous thing--in other words, capping him here and now. The scumwad is right: I need to know. I need revenge.

“All right then, compost,” I say to him, grabbing his arm and digging in a palm thorn nice and deep. “Since you’re Mr. Know-it-all, let’s quit beating around the bush. What’s the answer to the big question?”

The grinning masochist doesn’t even flinch a little from my thorn-stab. “You’ll see, Cappy,” he says. “Cross my heart and hope you die.”

*****

For the next two hours, Carotid continues to lead me around town, introducing me to one self-confessed Pruner or group of Pruners after another.

The parade of psychopaths quickly wears me down. For one thing, none of them admits to killing my so-very-loved ones, and that’s the Pruner or Pruners I most want a
face-to-face with (though I’m coming back later, make no mistake, to extinguish every other Pruner I meet along the way).

For another thing, I quickly sicken of the toxic anti-rose-head sentiment spewed out by the whole rotten crew.

I hear the same crap from the band of housewives who murdered a rose-head city councilman that I hear from the men’s church group who cut down a rose-head newspaper publisher. The teen street gang who killed a rose-head attorney and his family sing the same song as the janitor who hacked up a company vice president.

This, to say the least, is a real bud-opener. I’ve been a cop for over a decade, dipping my roots over and over in the filthiest shit-pools...and I never knew how far and wide the poison had spread. Until this night, I never knew how much the non-roses hated us.

As an educated man, I can dismiss this hatred as the sour grapes of the ignorant and the unsuccessful, the disenfranchised, unlucky, and unattractive.

What I can’t dismiss or deny is the sheer breadth and depth of this blight. This hatred of the greatest of us all, the benign and divine rosy beauties who lift up all society with our achievements and wise guidance, has infiltrated further than I ever could have guessed.

And I know, in my green and red hearts alike, it has the potential to do far more damage to our precious world than any single serial killer ever could.

Or, perhaps, the damage has already been done. It certainly has been for me.

When my wife and children were killed, my world was flipped upside-down...but at least it was still recognizable. The social order remained intact. People seemed to know their place in the scheme of things.

Now, the only scheme that I see is madness. All that stands between order and chaos is the thinnest of shivering membranes, ready to pop at the touch of a light breeze or a hard look.

This is what is going through my mind as Carotid directs our driver, Chub, toward the last stop on our tour.

*****

As Carotid and I enter the lobby of the stadium, the roar of the crowd is deafening. The mingled scents of many flower-heads in close proximity are overpowering; individual signals are impossible to identify, though a single shared sentiment dominates the chaotic broadcast. Hatred like an avalanche, a tidal wave, a firestorm, out of control.

“Stay close, Cappy,” says Carotid, marching toward the open gate that yawns before us, pulsing with brilliant red light. “This is one place you don’t want to wander off in.”

My sweating hands are tight on the guns in my pockets. Though I do not yet see the full picture of what I have stumbled into, it is clear to me that something terrible awaits.

“Why?” I say to him. “What’s going on here?”

Carotid spins and throws his arms up in the air. “A spectacle years in the making!” he says, walking backward. “The grand finale or brave new beginning, depending on your inclination!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I say, following him through the gate. The roar and fumes of the crowd beyond are so strong that I can barely hear his scent and have to sight-read the flutters of his petals.

“The greatest show under the sun!” says Carotid, silhouetted in flame. “Behold,
Red
Night
!”

As I step out of the gate, all I see at first is fire, leaping up from the green turf of the playing field. An enormous bonfire blazes at dead center of the stadium, orange and red and yellow tongues lashing in the wind.

Staring deeper into the flaring surge, I see a solid form at its core, tall and straight like the trunk of a tree or a telephone pole. I follow it up along its height, rising far above the field into the night sky.

When I get to the top, I realize that it is meant to be more than a tree or a pole. The spar in the heart of the blaze is supposed to be a stem.

Atop it, an enormous effigy of an open rose blossom burns.

Suddenly, the crowd explodes with a roar of clapping and stomping, and I drop my gaze to the field to see what the excitement is about. It is then that I know conclusively that the giant burning rose was not erected and lit as a worshipful gesture.

Gangs of flower-headed men parade onto the turf to the thunderous music of a marching band. At first, I see geraniums, marigolds, begonias, violets, asters, chrysanthemums...no roses.

But as the men get closer, I see roses among them after all. Each gang carries a rose-head, raised overhead like a coffin or a luau pig.

And when they get to the bonfire, the men throw the rose-headed people in with a flourish.

And the flames shoot higher.

Carotid leans close, his petals brushing against mine. “Here are some more Pruners for you,” he says as the men throw another rose-head into the fire. “Aren’t you going to arrest them?”

I flash back to the words of Gravelina Scalding when I asked her who the Pruner was. “The question you should ask, Inspector Glisten,” she said, “is who
isn’t
?

At last, I understand what she meant.

A rose-head drops to the field from above, and I look up into the packed stands. I see roses among the thousands of flowers there, struggling and screaming as they are beaten and tossed over the railings.

Petals of rose red and pink and yellow and white swirl in the air like autumn leaves on a windy day.

“Don’t feel bad, Cappy,” says Carotid, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “You know as well as I that it takes a fire to clear the way for new growth. How else can the overgrown species get their day in the sun?”

Another rose is dumped on the bonfire. The men who threw him high-five and hug each other in celebration.

As I watch, I realize that I recognize them. A chill shoots up my spine as the last flakes of sanity peel away from my world.

They are cops out of uniform. Not just any cops, either, but cops from my precinct.

They are my coworkers.

The six of them are non-roses all, but I never doubted their devotion to the law and to me until now. I always thought that we were on the same team, though I as a rose was of course the leader.

“Friends of yours?” says Carotid, following my dumbstruck gaze. “Let’s not be antisocial.” Before I can stop him, he detaches his arm from me and jogs forward, waving at my supposed teammates by the fire.

They turn and look. At least two of them, I am certain, look past Carotid and see me.

For an instant, I am frozen in place. One thought blazes in my mind like a desert sun.

Did one of them kill my family? One of my own
colleagues
?

Or, worse, was it a
team
effort
? Did
all
of them do it
together
?

Hearts jackhammering in my chest, I turn and run. As I charge through the gate, I hit the Chub Signal in my pocket and draw my guns.

*****

When I bolt out the front doors into the parking lot, I feel the start of true panic build inside me like a bud about to burst. My secret weapon who has never let me down and who I fully expected to see waiting at the curb in the revving Chubmobile is nowhere to be found.

By far, it is my darkest moment in a night of nightmares. After seeing my fellow policemen front and center in the cold-blooded murdershow of Red Night, I guess I should have expected that even stalwart Chub might turn against me...but the thought never crossed my mind. Now, it seems, betrayal is the only explanation for my partner’s absence, and death by kill-crazy mob is my only likely destiny.

As the stadium doors crash open behind me, I run straight ahead into the parking lot because there’s nowhere else to go. Stealing a look over my shoulder, I see the six traitor-cops hurtling toward me, and that’s not all; flower-heads of all description swarm out after them, shaking knives and scythes and ball bats and fists in the air.

I run for my life between lanes of parked cars, barely outpacing the onrushing army. Feet thunder across the pavement like the pounding hooves of stampeding cattle; a cloud of choking stench rolls over me, scents mingled in a single transmission of murderous rage.

How far I’ll get, I don’t know, but I know if I stop I’ll be dead in an instant...or worse, dragged back to the stadium alive and conscious.

Unfortunately, just as I know too well the fates that await me if I stop running, I know that I can’t keep running forever. Eventually, I will run out of steam, and they will get me.

The heat and pungence of their stench-cloud intensifies as they gain on me. I begin to think that I won’t have to worry about losing steam after all, because they will overtake me long before that happens.

Then, just as I have consigned myself to a terrible Red Night death, I hear the screeching of tires.

Looking over my shoulder, I see the glorious Chubmobile leap out of a parking space, directly in the path of the oncoming mob. As the car jolts to a stop, the machine gun turrets on its roof and hood chatter away, spraying the crowd with a shitstorm of fiery bullets.

As the nose of the mob explodes with blossoms of red and green fluid, I bolt toward my beloved savior-buggy. The door handle jitters in my grip with the supersweet vibrations of the stuttering guns.

“Couldn’t you park any closer?” I say as I dive into the passenger seat.

“I was in a towaway zone,” says Chub. “The asshole parking attendant would’ve made his own crippled grandma move.”

It’s not like me to give with the mush, but I pat Chub’s shoulder as he keeps firing into the mob. “Thanks,
man-head,” I say. “I knew you’d never let me down.”

“How can I,” says Chub, “what with all the dirt you’ve got on me?”

“Works both ways,” I say, watching the sap-and-bloodbath beyond the driver’s side window. “What say we make like bananas?”

“Where to?” says Chub.

“Given recent developments,” I say, “I think we ought to pay a visit to Miss Carionette.”