The foul smell of ammonia greeted his senses as his head was plunged into ice an filled latrine bucket. His cheeks stung as sharp ice began to scratch them into a burning numbness.
I am a stone; hard and unbreakable, he told himself.
His scalp stung then tingled as a heavy hand yanked his head up and out of his own waste. He breathed ready for his next profane baptism.
Cold and unfeeling, he willed himself to believe.
His mouth now tainted, breathed the foulness into his lungs. He spluttered and gagged. His dark torturer forced him down again, with his mouth open to accept in full, the taste of his captive existence.
I cannot be broken, must not be soiled.
And then he was tossed aside, numbed and wretched his body slides to the corner of the cell, skin peeling away unnoticed, to strike his head against the wall.
Soiled! Broken!
*
There was a neat circle of stones around the rich, dark soil. A single seed had germin-ated in the center. A fleshy blossom of crimson and pink bared itself to the rest of his garden. He tossed a pair of sharp garden scissors into a basin of water, next to the car-efully coiled hose. They sank into the clear water through a slowly spreading patch of redness.
*
Tiny specks of sun penetrated the heavy, peach hospital curtains making tiny constellations float in front of his eyes as he woke. Mad laughter rioted from the bed beside him. “Wake up mister Stoney-face, the watering cart comes!” The voice from the bed chuckled. “Water for seeds to grow, but no seeds will grow in a solid rock, will they, Nurse?”
A trolley wheel squeaked somewhere in the room. “Whatever, Randal!” Came an aged and tired female voice. The nurse peeled away the curtains around his bed. “If you keep up with this stone nonsense I might just put something nasty in your IV, Randal.”
He rolled his head toward Randal’s. He sensed more than felt that the fool annoyed him. He tried to hold onto that sense, tried to force it to become a feeling, but all he felt was the ice and the beatings.
*
He lifted a stinking bucket of his homemade fertilizer and emptied it around his beautiful, new blossom. A glass of cool lemonade sat waiting for his parched gardener’s lips, ice floating, and rotating near the surface of his self produced reward.
“Randal will like this,” he whispered to himself.
*
“We can leave, mister Stone-face! I’ve found a way to get us out of the Hospital. Escape! Free! You can learn to grow your seeds, mister Stone-face!”
*
He took a sip, and offered a glass to Randal, who laughed raucously in amused declination. “She is beautiful, Stone my old friend.” A wicked grin painted Randals face and that sense of annoyance returned to him. He glanced at the beautiful blossom and he caught the slightest glimmer of a feeling. It--she--held his gaze, and the feeling grew deeper within him, pushing against his stone walls, pressure building. "There! It's growing mister Stone-face!"
*
They had run for long months, lying and stealing to survive. They ran until they found The Garden; a place of peace within the chaotic world. It had a small log-cabin and was well hidden in the woods. "We are free now," said Randal. "We can plant out own seeds here."
Then they had gone in search of seeds.
*
He stepped towards the blossom, touched her face. The feeling surged up.
The woman's unconscious body lay within the circular flower bed. He replaced the rock he had used to knock her out. Kneeling next to her he hesitantly snipped at her throat with the garden scissors. Blood sprayed out, gushing to make the petals of his first blooming flower. Beautiful!
*
There was a crack--a break--something, then he fell to his knees. The foul smell of ammonia greeted his senses--He cried out. I am a stone; hard and unbreakable--"I am a broken stone!" Cold and unfeeling--"Feeling everything!" I cannot be broken, must not be soiled--"Broken in fertile soil!"
*
"And now a seed has grown to full within the crack. We are whole, stone and soil!" Randal's voice rang in his ears, echoed in his skull. The mad fool stepped toward him, placed a weightless, non existant hand on his back, and they were one man.
The man called Randal walked into his cabin, where he lived alone with his blossoms.
