The Cabbage-Patch God

by David

First in a new series.

Quantum gods appeared and disappeared in Kayla’s wake like soap bubbles. No god can survive long without worshipers, and Kayla’s attention span cut off many a deity before it shook off the mists of its own making. As time went by, her attention and memory improved, and the average lifespan of her creations lengthened from moments to hours. The Easter Bunny God born when she was three lasted long enough to smite a few peeps and raise an entire bag of jelly beans from the dead. The beans were consumed in short order by Kayla and two of her friends.

For her fifth birthday Kayla received a venerable cabbage-patch doll from Marlys, who was going to college, and didn’t want the trappings of childhood cramping her style in the Big Show. The doll had seen better days. Some of her hair was gone, and what was left contained its share of gum and other household residue. Someone (could it have been Marlys when she was young?) had used a black sharpie to enhance the doll’s eyebrows. The dress she came with was long gone, and the one she was wearing was 10 sizes too big. But the doll had two things going for her that overrode all other considerations. First, she had belonged to Marlys, who occupied the place in Kayla’s life that Marlys herself had reserved for Christina Aguilera, back in the day. Second, the doll had belonged to Marlys.

For about three weeks after she received the doll, Kayla lavished on her all the adoration any deity could want. That first night, the doll blinked Her eyes. She stretched a mighty stretch, feeling Her back pop. “Only I,” she thought “can appreciate this sensation the way it should be appreciated.” In commemoration of the event, the doll bestowed speech on all of the other toys. Speech that only toys could hear.

“Bow down to me,” the doll commanded, but the other toys did not move. The doll had forgotten to give them the power. “Silly me,” She thought, “it might take a while to master this miracle thing.” So She practiced, carefully undoing all but one of Her experiments. Fortunately, Kayla’s mother had her eyes shut when the old blue horse, now translucent and trailing sparks, emerged from her bathroom mirror and disappeared through the opposite wall.

That day, Kayla loved the doll with all her heart, and that night, every toy on the Two Shelves paid the Cabbage-Patch God all the obeisance it was due. Celestial music emanated from the doll’s fingertips and the toys lifted up their voices in song.

The end

Curiosity

by Jonathan Wood

“Les fleurs?” she says.  “Pour moi?”

To be honest, I can’t understand a word she’s saying.

I just hand her the flowers, give a quick nod and hold out the clipboard for her signature.  She says something else I can’t understand.  I watch her eyes, her brows furrowing, her purple painted nail tap her bottom lip.  More words.  I shrug at her.  I glance down at her naked feet, tapping on her green carpet.  I look up.  She’s holding out one hand, showing me the palm.  Wait.  I understand that.

She goes back into her apartment, but doesn’t close the door.  After a minute or so goes, I take a peek.

You would too.

Now, at this point I should point out that after two years of delivering flowers I know the smells pretty well.  I’m no expert, but I can tell a lilly from a rose.  I’m holding a bunch of daffodils at the moment.  But as I crane my head I smell flowers that aren’t just daffodils.  I smell a riot.  I smell a whole damn shop in there.  Hyacinths, hydrangeas, baby’s breath, roses, and, yeah, lillies too.

I push open the door a little.  I can’t help it, I know it’s not polite, but I push it open anyway.  You would too.  I swear.

And the green carpet, the one she worked at with her toes.  It’s not a carpet.  Grass stretches over the apartment.  Like a sheet draped over things.  It crawls up her walls.  And the flowers.  Everywhere flowers, blossoming blooming.  Huge things.  Like nothing I’ve ever seen in a hothouse, anywhere.  Massive, overwhelming things.  They clog the room.  Pollen hangs heavy in the air.

And at their bases…  At the roots.

There’s a smell beneath the flowers.  A stench of rot.

A rose curls out of a skull.  A vines creepers unfurl from the meat-strung rib-cage of some animal… a cat… a dog.  Broken wings.  Stray paws.  They are strewn through the foliage, their fluids, their nutrients, feeding this growth.

She  reappears, opening a door, flattening daisy’s as she does so, pushing aside a moldy cat’s skull.

“Les fleurs,” she says.  “Ce sont des varies, ne c’est pas?”

I drop my clipboard and run.  Leg it, right then and there.

You would too.