Garden of Fiends

by Matthews, Mark

  Where the hell is Dad?

  I scratched T-Rex deep with my nails, right under his ear where he liked it, and he growled in approval. I was his drug, and I was leaving him. “I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

  I paced the room, stopping to check my phone every few seconds.

  Halfway house. What was I doing? Halfway houses seem like jail with their rules, curfews, drama queens. House meetings because so and so ate my cottage cheese out of the fridge that had my name on it and other nonsense that would make anyone living there want to sneak out at night to get high.

  My skull was cracking and everything inside was about to spill out. Mom’s ugliness was spilling out too. How the hell did she hide her crazy all these years? Dad left because it was too much. Where is he? He said he’d be right back. I kept pacing, glancing out the window at the driveway, looking for Dad, for Brett, for Stacey, anybody to rescue me. I couldn’t wait to grab my bags off the ground and bail out of this house. T-Rex’s head was in his paws, and his pupils followed me across the room. He knew something was up. He’d wither and die here, same as me. But I’ll come back for him.

  Finally, a car pulled into the driveway. My mom’s.

  She got out in a rush, backpack over her shoulder, moving like she forgot something inside. The front door opened, the air-tight vacuum of the house broken. I heard her bustling inside as if ready to evacuate, sounds of things being moved, then footsteps down the hall, creaky hardwood shouting out alarms. I could hear her just outside my door, listening for me while I listened to her, finally, the rap of boney knuckles knocking on my bedroom door.

  I didn’t say a word.

  “Oh Tara, come on,” she shouted through the door. “There are things. So many things. Thank God you are here. First, we need to get you right, fix you up, then we need to get the body, after that, there is truth to be told.”

  TAP, TAP, Tap, her knuckles rapped again, but this time, she turned the door handle, swung the door open, and stood in the doorway. Her eyes were ablaze and her skin sweaty, like she’d been in a sauna. The stench from her skin was much worse than sweat, much worse than body odor.

  “I owe you an apology. I really do.”

  An apology was the only acceptable way for her to start, but I wasn’t ready to hear it. She took my silence as an invitation and walked right in.

  “Tara, I am so sorry. Sorry for all the mistakes I made. You were right, and I was wrong. I realize my nonsense. Finally, I know you, I know you. I understand why you get high. It’s this life, it makes us sick, and you had the cure all along. We took it away from you again and again. It was cruel.”

  I looked at my bags on the floor and wondered if I could carry them all in one trip. I wanted to storm out and not come back. Mom was a mess, her hair unkempt like I’d never seen it before. Each strand had its own life and was coiling about her head. Her skin changed shades, and her breath…

  That’s what stinks. It’s her breath. What food had caused it to reek, I could not tell.

  “Mom, you’re fucked, okay. I’m done. I’m so out. Leaving soon, Dad’s coming.”

  “It’s him!” her voice fired hard enough to make me flinch. “It’s always been him. Your dad killed him. I know this now, you wouldn’t believe me, but I know this and so much else. The truth has filled my head, but so has sorrow. Oh, such sorrow for all the suffering I put you through.”

  Mom has Alzheimer’s, dementia—I could hear the cogs slipping. She stepped toward me, her hands reaching out, her fingers all bone, trembling, my face waited to flinch as she touched my cheek. Cold, icy, but the stench that seeped from her was warm, thick.

  Then I recognized it.

  Manure. She smelled like cow shit.

  “It starts with this.”

  She whipped her hand up to my face, just at eye level, and a prescription bottle floated before me. My heart valves fired, black blood shot through my body, bowels loosened, tiny cells in my muscles awaken from their death, ghouls ready to feed. OxyContin. My grandmother’s name was on the white prescription label: Cecelia Snyder. I recognized it in an instant. Just like the bottle I had stolen from before. Just like the bottle my dad tapped into when he wanted me to play in States.

  I looked into my mom’s face, sure that it wasn’t really hers. Someone else was inside her body. Her eyes were no longer ocean blue but arctic ice.

  “We can chop them up and snort,” she said as she shook the bottle, Ca-ching, Ca-ching. “Oh God, it’s been so long, and I know you need this. It’s not heroin, I’m sorry for that, but we’ll be shooting up some dope soon enough. Smacking our veins together, me and you, sticking a needle in our arms, pushing back the pain of this life. A perfect day. You and me.”

  “The hell, Mom,” I said through tears. “Is this some sick test? You have no idea how much I want to, okay, is that what you want to hear? But I’m finally trying not to, I want to live, so no, fuck no, not today. Do I pass your sick test? I’m leaving. I’ll walk.”

  I grabbed my bag, just one, and tried to take a step, but she blocked the door.

  “I thought you might say that. There’s something you should see.”

  She towered in front of me, flung the backpack off her shoulder, and then dumped the contents onto the bed. Something bounced on top of the comforter.

  It rolled like a bowling ball, but it was no ball, but a human head. It was soiled, shriveled from decay, with no hair on top and stinking of manure. T-Rex gave it a sniff, one lick, then turned away. My hand was over my mouth, my chin quivering, my gut aching. My God, the head seemed real. My mom killed someone, and I needed to get out of there. I needed to grab those pills and get high. I needed to see who it was. I needed to end my own life. I needed… to find out.

  With the back of my hand, I turned the head. The empty eye sockets were full of soil, burnt skin clung to the skull. The jaw seemed as if stuck in a laugh.

  It was Brett.

  “What did you do?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t me. Your dad killed him. Buried him in the Garden, and now he’s in all of us who plucked its luscious fruit. If only your father hadn’t killed him, but let us celebrate his life and the way you two lived it.”

  Screams shot from my mouth. The room seemed to strobe light. My feet were heavy but needed to move and finally obeyed. I forgot the bags and dashed. I smashed into my mom, and the bottle of pills fell to the ground. I heard them rain onto the hardwood as I rushed to the front door. I twisted the handle, heaved it open, and took two steps onto the porch. Tears and screams were pouring out of me.

  Outside. Fresh air and freedom to breathe, but my way was blocked.

  I’d stumbled into a mosh pit of vagrants. A pack of beggars were on my porch, certainly there by mistake, and I waited for them to go, to walk off to whatever place they were meant to be. It certainly wasn’t there.

  Instead, their dark eyes grew wide, tore into mine, each one of them sizing me up. They started to pant like wild dogs and moved like hyenas ready to circle me up. A red-haired woman wearing a yellow dress stood behind them, the only one who did not seem homeless. The rest had a stench that seeped from their jackets and oversized sweaters. Their eyes bugged out of their heads, as if they’ve been waiting to see me.

  I saw no safe passage, this was no mistake, this was a sickly disease brought to life.

  I needed to retreat. I took two steps back to my front door, hand on the doorknob, ready to open, and bumped into my mom. A smirk spread on her face, she blinked twice as if to say goodbye, then she shut the door. I heard the bolt twist. I felt six years old again, scared, head burning with fever, waiting for someone to touch my forehead with the coolness of her palm, to bring me aspirin and a glass of ice water, tuck me in, promise to check on me. Instead, I had no one.

  I was locked out.

  The group pounced. Hands grabbed at me, fingernails clawed, mouths speaking in tongues with jumbled insanity. One beast with many mouths and dozens of arms. Fingernails scratched my face, while arms secu
red my neck in a headlock. My leg was yanked so hard it felt pulled from its socket. I kicked and punched until my arms and legs were no longer mine, they’d been seized. I screamed for help until a dirty hand cupped my mouth. Nasty soil filled my tongue and melted inside my saliva. A taste I remembered.

  Next came the weapons. The familiar sharp prick of a syringe poked me in the jugular. The metal was a sharp snake bite. First one, then another, then a third—a complete succession of needles punctured into me, and I howled with each one. I was just a pin cushion with syringes sticking out of me, and the creatures shot me full of dope.

  As they dragged me away, and my last scream shot out fierce into the sky, I saw my dad pull into the driveway. Our eyes locked, but he couldn’t hear me in the air-tight, sound-proof cabin of his car. But it didn’t matter, for this group of fiends was carrying me far away. They loaded me in the back of a rusty red truck with a Meat is Murder bumper sticker on back, and it was all just fine. I was flowing back down the warm river of heroin: the beautiful, lazy river of heroin.

  Chapter Twelve: Gregory Snyder

  My decisions at that moment are replayed often, and I think of possible pasts that could have unfolded. The image of Tara being dragged away will never leave. I see the look of terror on her face, the syringes sticking out of her neck. Her veins bulging, her mouth wide open in a scream–a scream that I could not hear. I knew right away who took her: the group of ghouls who first fed from the Garden of Friends.

  Had I chased them down after they had loaded Tara up rather than run inside the house to where Heather was unconscious in front of a pile of OxyContin, I might have saved my daughter. As it was, I looked about the house, frantically, and found Brett’s decomposed skull on Tara’s bed. Calling the cops was not an option. Instead, I needed to get rid of the skull. I wrapped it up in Tara’s comforter, placed it in the trunk, and then carried Heather to the front seat. A fast drive to the hospital, a quick drop-off for Heather, and then I found a perfectly hidden dumpster to discard the skull. Tara’s down comforter, her resting place with T-Rex for so many years, had become a grubby makeshift coffin for Brett’s now severed head.

  If only I had chosen a dumpster for Brett’s whole body instead of the garden grave many months before.

  Tara was never found, but Heather continued her insanity. She injected dope openly in my presence and nodded out on the couch often. Other times she left the house for days looking for Tara. I searched as well, both of us doing our part to get her back, but if the day came that Tara was actually found, I feared what might happen if Heather got to her first. “She’s sick and I need to get her well,” I heard her say more than once.

  I started driving down the streets of Detroit frequented by the homeless, hoping to find Lorenzo pushing his grocery cart, or I waited in front of the abandoned urban garden, but couldn’t spot any signs of the nomad. Other times, I camped out at Russell’s to see if Tara might walk up. She never showed, night after night, so eventually I started going inside myself to smoke a few rocks. I was not giving up hope that Tara was alive, but I also needed to hear the train whistle, the electric buzz of crack cocaine. The puff off each stem was the shot of electricity that gave me life. Once or twice, I stayed in Russell’s basement overnight, hoping for a number 88 that would never come.

  Heather’s eyes got more and more vacant, her skin dotted with track marks, and when she finally disappeared for good, I barely noticed since it happened in stages. My job suffered as well, poor attendance, bad excuses, disciplinary action, and I eagerly agreed to an early buy-out when offered, and soon after dipped into my 401k. I remortgaged my house to lower the payment, and sold some things on Craigslist for cash. Each time I left home I kept the door unlocked, hoping that Tara or Heather might come back, if nothing else, looking for something to pawn.

  The glorious day came when something went missing. T-Rex, whose eyes had become permanently sad, and who’d become accustomed to pooping in the basement when I left him for too long, was gone. Either I’d left the door open and not noticed him run out, or someone had taken him, perhaps his favorite human, who was out there somewhere, still alive.

  More hope that Tara might be alive came straight to my house one night. I didn’t need to seek it out, it found me.

  I was sitting on my front porch, a dark summer night, the crickets in full concert, when I heard the metallic rattle of a grocery cart on the sidewalk. Rattle-rattle, clank-clank-clank. The noise shook memories loose.

  Lorenzo.

  He turned into my driveway, eyes squinting as if I was an illusion. He’d lost weight over the years and it seemed like each step he took hurt his bones. His beard was thin and now completely white. His grocery cart was still brimming with plastic bags of all sorts, and he parked it so that it would not roll away. I stood tall, open arms, waiting to hear his message.

  “This is where she was born?” he asked, lips flapping over his gums where he had no teeth. “This is where she lived? I have found it and have traveled far. Lots of stops and starts, lots of false hopes.”

  “Lorenzo. Have you seen her? She’s alive?”

  “Amazing what a shot of Narcan will do for an overdosed body, brings the dead to life, and your Sweet-Pea got her a shot of that just in time. Yes, she did.”

  “What do you know? Tell me now. I need to find her.”

  “Indeed. Seems everyone is looking for her. Did you know that? Half the city, it seems, wants to put some dope in her veins. But it is me, of all of them who have looked, it is me who knows the most. It is I who has found the most. Do you have time to hear my story?”

  “Certainly. You need to tell me. Tell me please, I need to know.”

  “I can tell you, that I can, and I can prove that the story is true, for I do know that you won’t believe a word of it. Once I tell you, and then show you, I need you to promise me this: you must let me keep that which is mine, that which I found, for it is a treasure. A treasure indeed, something that the whole Garden of Fiends sprouting about this town would covet.”

  “Tell me. Tell me please. Whatever you say is fine, I just need to know.”

  “Take a seat, then, and I shall. Tara ended up with a man named Jervis Samsa, and this is what happened. Listen to my tale.”

  Chapter Thirteen: Tara and Jervis

  Jervis Samsa lay awake in bed, twitching in and out of detox dreams. Poison sweat ran from his pores and dampened the sheets. He wanted to rip out his muscles that cramped in pain. The lifeblood was gone from his blood. No dope for a day, not since he got high with Tara. He lay there hoping she’d return with some cash but never did. Now he had nothing.

  Millions of tiny cramping cells fought for life in his body. He imagined them as desperate amoebas, squirming in frantic fear before they imploded to their death. Inside his legs the cells were butchering each other, sucking at each other’s marrow like cannibals. But the darkest of pain was in his back. He was sure that if he cut open a vertebra, black burning liquid would boil out of him.

  He opened his eyes and saw Tara’s favorite black hoodie crumpled up on the carpet. He traced the orange letters of “Slipknot” written in flames on the sleeve. He hadn’t seen Tara for days. She was gone.

  Probably got picked up by the cops for shoplifting or possession, he figured, and was spending the weekend in jail. She’d be just as bogue as he was, sick as all hell, wearing her orange smock and wishing she were dead, but forced to live, laying on a concrete floor or a plastic mattress. But Tara could handle herself, he figured, she was older and been using heroin much longer, nothing to worry about too much.

  In days past, they would lie together in his basement bedroom, alone in their underworld and not giving a shit what happened above. She soothed his soul like none other, and best part was, she would always know how to come up with money for dope. Nobody could shoot a move or pull some tricks and get some heroin like Tara.

  Loud bangs blasted from the basement door. Bang bang bang bang. His mother was pounding and it fel
t like a hammer to his brain. STOP, Jervis wanted to scream back, but had no energy, so instead just shut his eyes. The banging kept on, and he couldn’t help but let Neil Young lyrics slip into his thoughts.

  I caught you knockin’ at my cellar door…I love you baby, can I have some more…

  Neil understood how the ugliness of life can only be lifted by the beauty of a heroin high, and Jervis had plenty of ugliness but not a scrap of heroin to shoot it away. Times like these he blamed his mom, he hated his dad, and God did he need his Tara.

  Tara never talked about her family, not her dad, not her mom. She pretended she had no life before him, but she listened when Jervis talked about his own devil of a dad who’d dished out generous beatings. Growing up, Jervis always felt safest when his dad was nodding out from dope or in prison. Jervis felt like a huge burden was lifted after his dad died in prison and his ashes were sent home in a box.

  “He died and left me with nothing but his junky kid. You take him with you in the basement,” his mom had said and handed him the urn. “Both of you stay buried down there.”

  His dad must have shot a million dollars of smack into his arm. Now all of it was burnt into ashes and held inside the gold-colored urn on his dresser. Jervis was a disappointment to his famous dad, the legendary wizard of smack, cause there he was, no dope money, muscles bubbling and boiling, each cell being tortured inside. God he needed a fix but was out of options. Way too sick to rip someone off, no credit with the dealers...nothing. If only Tara could help him out.

  Lyrics from Neil Young kept playing in his mind…I know that some of you don’t understand: Milk-Blood to keep from running out...

  Milk-Blood. He needed to learn how to milk-blood–leaving some blood in the needle with just a trace of heroin inside for moments like these. If only he had a bit of Tara’s dope-filled blood with him, but he didn’t have shit. The chamber was empty.

  His mom was his only hope. Just two days before, he’d hit up her gold jewelry locked in the cabinet. Dug deep for that one. Unscrewed the locks on the hinges and grabbed jewelry that hadn’t been worn in years. He tightened the screws back on good enough so she’d never know. The pawn shop gave him a hundred and twenty bucks for the gold.