Chemical Gardens

by Gina Ranalli

  “This sucks!” Whey cries from his plant, his boobs bouncing in his tie-dye tank-top.

  Pawn and I ignore him and keep climbing. I don’t stop until I’m a good thirty feet off the ground and certain that the rabbits can’t hop that high.

  In the plant next to mine, Pawn also stops climbing and yells, “Bombs away!” She kicks out at a tomato and sends it hurling to the ground where it narrowly misses a rabbit but explodes directly in front of it, splattering the animal with juicy red guts and startling it enough that it bounds away through the garden and out of sight.

  Whey and I follow suit, knocking tomatoes loose from their stems and bombing the rabbits as best we can. Unfortunately, only I succeed in a single direct hit; a tomato nails a rabbit’s hind quarters as it leaps out of range of one of Pawn’s tomatoes and into my line of fire. The rabbit snarls and rears up like a wild horse, its front legs slashing the air with vicious black claws, its long ears still flat against its skull.

  Much to my dismay, however, the rabbit doesn’t follow its brethren and take off running. Instead, once all four of its legs are back on the ground, it looks up at me, black eyes gleaming like new knives. Its eyes seem to shine with knowledge born of hatred and then the rabbit looks at the bottom of my stalk with what can only be interest. Then it proceeds to begin gnawing on it.

  No dumber than the rabbit, I know immediately what the vile rodent is up to and I glance over at Pawn. Our eyes meet and it’s obvious she also knows what’s up.

  “Uh oh,” I say.

  “Uh oh,” she agrees.

  Below us, as if they are all robots programmed by the same maniacal master, the rabbits swarm as one, three at the base of my plant, three at Pawn’s, two at Whey’s, and all begin chewing frantically through the stalks.

  “Oh man, we’re fucked!” Whey wails and bursts into tears yet again.

  We don’t have much time to come up with an alternate plan, perhaps only seconds, and I’m drawing a complete blank. I watch Pawn desperately, hoping against hope that something in her newly acquired computer brain will click and get us out of this mess, but her face shows nothing. I can tell she’s thinking hard, but still…nothing.

  Suddenly, a loud cackling cracks the air around us, seeming to come from everywhere at once, almost deafening in its volume.

  The three of us look around, searching for the source of the insane laughter, and despite being unable to visually locate one, we know just the same who it is: Wanda, of course.

  “I should have known she was behind these dastardly beasts!” I exclaim, then immediately want to bite my own tongue off. Dastardly beasts? Where is this stuff coming from???

  The disembodied voice of the demon shouts, “Give me that guitar or die! My pets will chew you up like carrot-meat sticks!” She laughs heartily again and I want to scream at her, tell her to get lost, but the words seem to catch in my throat, as if even get lost is now too offensive for me to utter.

  “Fuck off, bitch,” Dose yells from the ground. “You don’t scare us!”

  I look down, hoping to catch a glimpse of his shimmering substance, having nearly forgotten all about him, but he is nowhere in sight.

  Sobbing, Whey screams, “Speak for yourself, Dose!” Then he sniffles and adds to the air, “Please, your holy demoness, don’t kill me!”

  My stalk starts to sway from side to side and I wrap my arms and legs around the thickest part of the trunk, yelling, “Whoa Nelly! Whoa!”

  A quick glance to the side shows me that the rabbits gnawing on Pawn’s tomato plant are also making some headway. “Maybe climbing this high was a bad idea,” she shouts over to me.

  Whey answers for me, his voice cracking with hysteria: “You think so?”

  The stalk sways back and forth even more dramatically and I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing for my plummet to the ground, but a gentle swooshing sound causes me to peek again and I’m amazed at what I see.

  Floating in the air in front of my plant is Chad, the surfer dude Underlord. He’s standing on his hoverboard which rocks peacefully to and fro as if resting on calm waves. He’s also grinning and holding up one hand in greeting. “Hi, Ro!” he says cheerfully.

  I scream as the stalk bends to one side and then the other.

  “Wanda is a major bummer, huh?” Chad asks, shaking his head. “She’ll try anything to get her way.”

  “Any advice would be appreciated, Chad,” Pawn says, her own stalk teetering precariously.

  He laughs and says, “Oh, yeah. You guys better start climbing.”

  “Climbing?” I squeak. “Are you serious?”

  “Sure thing.” He must be able to see the panic in my eyes because he adds, “Dude, trust me.”

  Without hesitation, Pawn begins doing as suggested, climbing higher and higher up her stalk, which I notice for the first time, seems to tower into infinity.

  One last glance into Chad’s smiling face and I begin to follow suit, scrambling as fast as I can, certain that we’re committing suicide but what the hell. I’d rather have the fall kill me than the landing.

  A little ways below me, I can hear Whey’s continued weeping and Pawn soothingly repeating the phrase “Don’t look down.”

  Good advice, I think, as I climb ever higher, vaguely concerned that I might get a nosebleed from the altitude.

  With the tomato stalk still swaying, I notice my vision beginning to blur. Everything around me takes on a hazy quality and there is a noticeable drop in temperature. Obviously my strength is weakening. Probably the stress of the last several hours is finally getting to me and my body is shutting down. A new fear gallops around my heart on dark hooves and then I do something I haven’t done in I don’t know how long: I begin to whimper. Just like a small, terrified child or a particularly emotional hippy-punk drummer boy with big tits.

  “Ro?” Pawn calls from her own stalk. “What’s wrong?”

  I pause with my hands gripping two leaf stems above me, my forehead resting against a firm grayish-green tomato. “I don’t think I can go on,” I sob. “I think I’m going to faint. Everything is getting dim and I’m cold. So cold…”

  Pawn exhales loudly, perhaps due to the strenuous exercise of climbing too many stories to count. Or maybe she’s annoyed with all the blubbering going on around her and just releasing a huge sigh of impatience.

  “You aren’t going to faint, Ro,” she says. “Nothing is dim and you aren’t cold. It’s getting foggy. We’ve climbed into a cloud.”

  “What?” I sniff, blinking tears out of my eyes, looking around. “Oh, yeah. I guess you’re right.”

  “Keep going,” she says, climbing higher. “I think we’re almost there.”

  I release one stem in order to wipe my nose on the back of my hand, watching her ascension. “Almost where?”

  22

  Somehow we manage to escape tumbling to our deaths and make it to the top of the stalks, hopping off onto a narrow platform suspended in mid-air and for some reason, shifting back and forth, making balance difficult.

  From seemingly nowhere, a choppy electronic music plays, loud and obnoxious. It immediately begins to give me a headache and I wish I could locate a MUTE button.

  Before us, also suspended in mid-air, is an oval-shaped building of some sort, its surface rutted with shallow channels snaking all around it in every direction. At first I think it’s a spaceship, though it appears to be organic, pinkish-gray and pulsing. An oblong opening of some kind faces us, almost directly opposite from our floating platform, obviously an entryway.

  Leaning over, Pawn squints into the opening. “Looks like a tunnel.”

  “This is fucked up,” Dose says and we all turn, surprised to see him.

  “How did you get up here?” I ask.

  “Took the elevator,” he says.

  Whey sniffs loudly. “What elevator?”

  “That one!” He jerks a phantom thumb behind us but there is nothing there but the tops of the tomato plants. “Oh,” he says, sounding surprised. �
��That’s weird. It was there a second ago.” He shrugs his vapor shoulders and then gestures at the building/spaceship-thing. “So, what do you think this is? Another freak-a-zoid fun-fest?”

  None of us answer, just stand there studying it for a while.

  “Well,” Pawn says finally, “I guess we have no choice but to go in and find out.”

  “I don’t want to,” Whey says, visibly shaking.

  I’m inclined to agree with him. “Me neither. Something bad will happen. If we even make it inside.” I point to the churning cloud beneath us. “We’ll have to jump from here to there.”

  “Oh, great,” Dose says. “Ro, I think those orange pigtails are too tight on your fucking head. They’re cutting the circulation to your brain and making you a bigger pussy than him.”

  Whey starts to express disdain at being labeled a pussy, but Pawn cuts him off abruptly. “We don’t have a choice, guys. We can’t stand here forever and we’re obviously supposed to go in.”

  “Isn’t that what you said about the vegetable garden?” Whey asks. “Where we were almost gnawed alive by man-eating rabbits?”

  “Did I?” Pawn tilts her head, trying to remember.

  “Oh, who gives a shit,” Dose groans. “It’s not that far and there’s that little ledge in front of the doorway. We can make it, easy, so let’s just get it over with. Peroxide, remember?”

  “Easy for you to say,” I tell him. “You probably can’t even die since you barely exist.”

  Whey snorts. “Nothing new about that.”

  “Hey, fuck you!” Dose yells. “If I had a body, I’d beat your fucking ass so bad—”

  “Everyone, shut up!” Pawn shouts. “How did I ever become involved with you inferior life forms? Sometimes I don’t think the three of you combined have the brain capacity of a box of Cheerios!”

  We all look at her, stunned silent for approximately ten seconds and then all hell breaks loose. We start screaming at each other, flinging insults back and forth with such intensity that not a single one of us can be fully heard or understood. The only clearly decipherable words are the curses, because those are the ones spat out with the most venom attached. Fingers point and spittle flies (for those of us who are still in possession of such things) and we’re probably only a few more offensives away from throwing fists when an odd rattling sound comes from behind us.

  As one, we turn to see the tops of the tomato plants shaking violently. Whatever it is that’s doing the shaking, however, is still invisible, hidden below the platform we stand on. When Pawn takes a step closer to the edge to peer down, the platform teeters forward dangerously, threatening to toss us all off. Quickly, I reach out and yank her back by the arm. “Don’t do that again!” I say.

  “Something is climbing up after us,” Whey whines.

  “The rabbits,” I say, though I’m not convinced of this fact at all.

  “Something bad,” Pawn says.

  “Something very fucking bad,” Dose agrees. “And, I don’t know about the rest of you losers, but I’m not waiting around to find out what it is.”

  We’re all in agreement that we’re really not that curious about what is currently climbing the huge tomato plants and we’re pretty sure that whatever it is, it was sent after us and it most likely is not the Green is the Enemy fan club.

  Dose is the first to jump the six-foot gap between the platform and the ledge of the spaceship-thing. Pawn goes next without even the slightest prodding, completely fearless, and lands effortlessly.

  Seeing the ease with which she made it gives me confidence as she is the smallest of us, with the shortest legs. If she can do, then certainly I can as well.

  But I hesitate, my heart pounding hard. “I’m scared,” I whisper, looking to Whey for assurances. Of course, he gives me none, his steady stream of tears flowing even faster than before.

  “They’re coming!” Pawn yells, giving me a heart attack.

  I take a deep breath, one step back and then throw myself forward, my eyes squeezed shut. I make the jump easily but hit the ledge stumbling. Once again, Pawn is there to steady me and for a second I love her more than I’ve ever loved another synthetic being in my entire life.

  “We never should have had him go last,” Dose says.

  Back on the moving platform, Whey is squeezing his breasts in each hand and looking back and forth between us and the shaking tops of the tomato plants.

  “Just jump, Whey!” I tell him.

  Dose lets out an aggravated sigh and says, “Fuck this. I’m going in.”

  I look at Pawn helplessly. “We can’t just leave him there.”

  “It’s not far, Whey,” she tells him. “I did it. We all did it. Jump!”

  A sudden snarling roar from below causes us all to flinch and then Whey is flying through the air one second, crashing into me with a full body slam the next. Both of us are propelled through the strange doorway and sent sprawling to the floor with loud grunts.

  “Ow!” I yell. “Get off me!”

  The “floor” beneath me feels soft and squishy and more than a little damp. Almost slimy.

  “Are you okay?” Pawn asks looking down at us.

  Whey rolls his body off mine and lies panting on his back, his eyes screwed shut and sweat beading on his forehead.

  I grab Pawn’s offered hand and pull myself up, looking around at the pinkish-gray tunnel we’re standing in. Tentatively, I poke one wall with my index finger. “It’s…spongy.”

  “Let’s just get the hell out of here,” Dose says. He is waiting further back in the tunnel, his posture impatient.

  Pawn and I help Whey to his feet and then the three of us follow after Dose, who has already disappeared around a curve in the tunnel up ahead.

  Once we round the curve, we see Dose has stopped. “Which way?” he asks.

  There are a few different choices, new tunnels branching off from the one we now occupy. They all appear to be exactly the same, so Pawn points to one randomly and that is the way we go.

  We’re not walking for more than five minutes when the tunnel bends to the left and we discover a dead end.

  Disheartened, we turn as one and travel back to where the other tunnel choices were. We choose a different tunnel and find ourselves wandering along switchbacks, occasionally coming to places where there are yet more tunnels and more dead ends.

  “It’s a maze,” Pawn says when we find ourselves staring at yet another grayish wall.

  Dose is already turned around again. “We have to go back to the beginning. Come on.”

  Growing more worried, we jog along, retracing our steps, but when we come to the place where we’re sure we started, the doorway is gone. What’s there is instead an empty paper bag, brown, like a grocery sack, its opening folded closed, lying on the spongy floor.

  “That’s weird,” I say.

  “And big.” Whey nods, his voice trembling.

  “Big enough to hold those mondo tomatoes,” Dose adds.

  The bag quivers slightly, as if ruffled by a breeze but, as far as I can tell, there is no breeze. The four of us stare at it, unsure of whether to be fascinated or filled with dread.

  “What are we gonna do?” Whey asks.

  The bag rattles again and I remember the apple that nearly ripped my face off. “What if it really is filled with something?” I whisper, nervously fingering the key chain in my pocket. “Like…oh, I don’t know…apples for example.”

  “Or baby rabbits,” Pawn says.

  Whatever is in the bag, it seems to rise up and shake itself, bulging the body of its confines as if intentionally confirming for us that it is indeed something alive. The folded mouth of the bag pulls open but reveals nothing but darkness within.

  “I think we’d best be going now,” Pawn says and though we all utter some form of agreement, none of us move from where we stand.

  We watch in stunned silence as the sack continues to puff out as if filling with air and then it’s floating off the ground like a helium ba
lloon.

  It hovers over the floor, at first only an inch or so, then two, then three. A ripping sound emanates from within it and what appear to be little feet fall out of the bottom. Little feet wearing little combat boots.

  The bag lifts higher, revealing pale white shins, which lengthen and thicken even as we watch.

  “We need to get the fuck out of here right now,” Dose says.

  I barely hear him. The bag is now drifting higher, with knees and hairy muscular man-thighs.

  Someone—Pawn, I think—grabs my shoulder, pulling hard, in an effort to break my trance but my grim fascination holds me in place.

  A crotch is revealed. The body is wearing tight black shorts and I suddenly know what we’re looking at. “It’s a punk,” I say softly. “A skinhead.”

  “Come on!” Pawn yells in my ear, yanking me backwards by the arm. Together, we spin around, turning our backs on what I start to think of as the Sac-Man. We have no choice but to run back into the bowels of the maze.

  “The important thing is to remember what direction we’re going in,” Pawn says. “I think the doorway was originally south, so this way should be north.”

  “What-the-fuck-ever,” Dose replies, once again in the lead.

  I don’t know if Pawn has become a human compass or not, but I’m willing to trust her on this issue and stay on her heels. A quick glance behind me and I see the Sac-Man rounding a corner, fully grown now, with brawny bare arms and torso, complete with a variety of black tribal tattoos. The only thing odd about him is that instead of a head, the sack grows out of his neck, smaller now that the rest of him has been born out of it.

  The opening of the bag has become his mouth, sucking in and out with noisy paper rattles. I stifle a scream and face front again, just in time to see that we’ve run into another dead end.

  “Back!” Dose shouts, whirling past us in a vapor blur.

  The rest of us follow, darting down yet another tunnel just as the Sac-Man rounds a corner, spots us through the black holes that must be its eyes, and reverses direction to give chase.