“You’re a fucking liar!”
Harold ignored him and went on, “Honestly, I never knew for sure what happened. All I know is that I walked in the house and found you dead, and rotting. You’d been dead for at least a week. The house was hot and it reeked of death. The insects had already gotten to you, and you were crawling with maggots. You were in such poor condition that I had doubts about whether I could bring you back at all, and wasn’t sure I even wanted to. But then I realized you had presented me with a great opportunity. I would have a chance to test the process out on someone who didn’t really matter as much to me before trying it out on Leah. You would be a perfect guinea pig. If you ended up a monster, or an idiot, it wouldn’t hurt so much. Of course, Ohio doesn’t have the right climate to grow one of these trees naturally, so I built a green house, and used certain special equipment to make the atmosphere inside just right. Then I planted the seed, with your corpse, and went looking for someone with the right face, and right body type. I chose a young man just out of med school—same age as you. Not identical, but reasonably close. I drugged him in a parking lot outside an ATM one night, brought him to the greenhouse, and the tree did the rest. It worked just as intended. Afterward, I had to keep the greenhouse going for a while as a cover. I did some rather interesting experiments with potatoes—groundbreaking stuff, actually, and very plausible—just in case someone from one of the security agencies started snooping around, wondering what I was up to.”
Ben took a few steps away from his brother, legs shaky. His whole body felt numb.
Harold continued, “In the end, the trial run with you was very useful because of all the data it gave me. The greenhouse didn’t work very well. It took longer than I expected for you to gain human awareness, and during all of it, your vital signs were weak. There were moments in the early going where I wondered if you would survive at all. After it was over, your mind was still broken. Your memory of day to day events was poor, and for a while your mental acuity was also rather weak. I thought you might stay that way, but you eventually recovered. When I realized you were building delusions about what had happened as a defense for your psyche, I encouraged it. I told you lies and you believed them. Within weeks of your recovery you had completely erased your time in the greenhouse from your mind. You didn’t want to know you’d been resurrected. I decided to be merciful and let you believe something easier and more comforting.”
Ben felt his legs give way and he fell down onto his ass. He looked at Harold’s merciless grin, and then his eyes tracked over to the green thing that was becoming Leah, her mouth smeared with blood, arms outstretched, hoping for another hunk of raw meat.
This is a nightmare, he thought. It’s just a nightmare. Not real. I’ll wake up soon, and I’ll be back in my bed, and everything will be okay.
Harold walked over to him, sat down beside him, patted him on the shoulder. “Sorry I had to tell you,” he said. “I can see that it’s not going over well. Didn’t think it would.”
Harold reached over and snatched the gun out of Ben’s nerveless fingers.
Ben didn’t care.
“I really didn’t want to do this to you,” said Harold. “I had hopes that you might be more accommodating. In fact, I thought you might even decide to help me. It’s a shame you can’t get behind what I’m trying to do here, but I understand. I get it.”
“…a nightmare,” Ben muttered. “Gonna wake up soon, and everything will be back to normal…”
Harold stood, and raised the gun, sighted down the length of it. “Yes,” he said. “You’ll sleep again for a while, and then, perhaps, I’ll give you another chance at life. Later on, when you can’t ruin everything for me.”
Harold squeezed the trigger.
There was a bright flash, a deafening sound. The shot took Ben in the chest.
The bullet just barely nicked his heart, but of course, that was enough.
There was very little pain. Mostly Ben just felt like all the different parts of him were going to sleep, starting at the extremities and slowly moving in towards his center.
In his last moments, a blissful confusion swarmed over his mind, shielding him from terror as his spirit turned to face the dark unknown.
Chapter 6
Ben woke to darkness and the sound of familiar voices.
“Is this really necessary?” said his Mother.
“Yes,” replied his Father. “Harold fed you the same thing. I was there.”
“I’m glad I can’t remember it. Surely there must be a better way to get the nutrition into him…”
“He needs some real meat in his stomach at this stage of growth, and he will respond better to raw flesh. Ask Harold if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you… It’s just… I don’t really know if I can watch him eat it.”
“Don’t do it Mom” said his sister Marianne. “It’s so gross! We should just go home.”
“I know it’s hard honey,” said his Mom. “But Harold says Benny might become aware soon. When he does, I want him to see at least a few of us standing here to support him.”
“Harold can support him” said Marianne. “This is all Harold’s fault anyway.”
“His fault that we’re alive?”
Marianne didn’t reply, and there was a period of tense silence.
Ben opened his eyes and looked out through a greenish film.
His mother was standing over him, holding a strip of dripping red meat. She looked uncomfortable. Behind her he could see his sister Marianne on one side, looking on with disgust, and his father on the other.
They all seemed nervous.
And there was a smell in the air that he liked. A good smell.
Without meaning to, he reached out and took the meat from his mother’s hand, and crammed it into his mouth, chewing with great relish as the warm blood mingled with his saliva and ran down his throat.
So damn good. He was hungry. He needed more.
As soon as he finished chewing, he opened his mouth to ask for another taste, but all that came out was a harsh whisper.
Can’t talk right, he thought. Gotta talk better.
He tried again, and finally made his mouth form the words, “Hungry!”
His mother’s eyes brightened immediately and she smiled. “Are you there, honey?”
“Hungry,” he said. “Food, momma. Food for me! Please more!”
His Dad smiled in a forced way, wiping the sweat off his hands onto his jeans, and then bent over to pick up a big white plastic bag. He reached inside the bag and took out another piece of yummy looking meat, handing it to Ben’s mother who then passed it on to Ben.
Ben stuffed it into his mouth and ate it, savoring the rich flavor.
Marianne retreated a few steps back, staring at him with a mixture of disgust and fascination.
Why you so mean Marianne? he thought. Mean to me!
His mother turned away for a second, cupped her hand around her mouth and yelled, “Harold! Leah! Come see! He’s awake!”
A moment later they both walked into view, Harold with his arm around Leah.
And Leah looked pregnant.
Did she have a big pregnant belly the last time I saw her?
Ben wasn’t sure. Ben’s memory wasn’t working so good today.
“What’s wrong with him?” said Marianne.
“This is how it always works,” said Harold. “This is how you were just a few months ago.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s… It’s terrible…”
Harold shrugged. “It’s temporary.”
“I think I want to go back home,” said Marianne.
“You didn’t have to come,” said Harold. “I told you it would disturb you.”
“I wish I’d never seen him like this.”
“In a few weeks his mind will clear up. Just think of him as a baby. He needs our help, to grow. We have to support him.”
Harold looked down at Ben and a
ddressed him. “How you doing little bro?”
“Hungry,” said Ben. “I’m feeling so freakin’ hungry right now.”
“We’ll take care of you buddy.”
“Yeah,” said his dad. “of course we will. Do you want some more food?”
“Yes please, sir.”
- - -
Around them the swamp sang as mid-afternoon approached, and the tree of life breathed, causing the green syrupy liquid in the little moat to slosh about.
It was a Saturday in mid-summer. The first day of Ben’s second, second chance at life.
THE END
About the Author
Jacob Stanley is a speculative fiction author from northeast Georgia. He developed an interest in horror and fantasy at an early age, reading everything from old pulp fiction works by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard to horror epics by Stephen King and Robert McCammon. Eventually his interests branched out to include a huge number of writers from all the fantastic genres, including names as diverse as Clive Barker, Octavia Butler, C.S. Lewis, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, Anne Rice, and Haruki Murakami.
In his early 20s he became obsessed with cinema and got caught up in the dream of the new indie film boom of the 90s. His first actual attempts to write fiction were all screenplays that he wrote over the next 10 years or so. During that time he watched every movie he could find, from the classic works of masters like Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford, to the strange creations of David Lynch and Luis Buñuel. His fascination with extremes eventually made him a fan of numerous cult filmmakers, including Lucio Fulci, Roger Corman, and Russ Meyer.
His books are an attempt to distill all these diverse influences from the worlds of literature and cinema into a rich soup of epic-horror-science-fantasy weirdness.
In addition to writing, he's also been a guitarist since the age of twelve. In his spare time does a lot of reading, and enjoys hanging out with his family and pets.
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