Escape The Garden
Her name was Susan. Or it had been before she died. Had she died? Things were confusing- the memories swirled like ink in water. Somewhere there had been fire, or there was fire, she could smell the smoke, and she could hear the screams of her sisters as they dreamt of a red death. For the first time in her short life her eyes opened.
Everything was shades of red, yellow and orange. The flickering light of the flames was like the colour of violence and it glowed hottest on the face directly in front of her. Violent eyes met hers wide with surprise, she knew his face, his name was Carl and he had killed her once- no he had killed Susan and she wasn't really Susan was she?
In one hand Carl held a gas can and he had already set her sisters a light, their bodies crackling like dry wood, their eyes closed, still as statues, and engulfed in flame. In his other he held a hammer and it dripped with a red liquid, it was blood, but not either of theirs.
To Carl the figures that grew in the garden in the shape of his ex-wife were grotesque three dimensional artwork, one more bit of twisted science that he had come to end like he had ended their creator, a lovelorn puppy who never deserved Susan. They hadn't reacted when he had poured the gasoline over them, and then lit them up with his zippo. And then one did.
He stumbled back from the now aware figure, she had eyes and they glowed from within luminescent, judging him, Susan had come back to punish him.
Not-Susan used the surprise, stepping quickly forward to drive the confused killer back further. He reeled and she kept advancing again and again to keep him moving, confused, and unable to react. His body struck glass and with two small arms she shoved him as hard as she could, he lifted from the ground shattering the glass wall and flying into the exterior garden landing in a crumpled heap. She was strong, the carbohydrate plant fibers that provided her physical form gave her strength. She considered fighting, she could make sure he never hurt anyone again, thoughts of violence filled her but she shook her head. The fire was spreading.
The inner garden was a small glass structure, it was designed as a garden within a garden for her and her sisters, it did nothing to stop the building inferno. Her sisters, or what remained crackled while their roots still occupied the soil, when they slept they intertwined and they dreamed together. What did they dream about now as they burnt she wondered, and recalled their screams before she woke. Those were questions best left unanswered.
She moved toward a door that led into the house proper, but something stopped her. A cry, her eyes examined the burning room once more and she found the source. One of her sisters, smaller than the rest, had fallen to the ground, her tiny frame curled into a ball her roots still buried. It was a child. She wondered if Carl had missed her like she had or if his humanity had hesitated to ignite the small shape, perhaps she was simply the last one for him to burn.
She grabbed the child, pulling her gently from the ground and holding her in between her arms.
"Wake up child." She said, but the child didn't stir. "Then I shall take you with me."
Carrying the girl she moved again to the door which blocked her way, turning the handle it clinked, locked, but it was only wood and she was wood and more so she rushed through it with her shoulder and it broke and splintered. They were inside the main building now. It was familiar, she had lived here and she had found kindness after her first death. There was a body, a pool of blood around his head. His name had been Philip, he had loved her and she had loved him in a way, and together they had done good, they had grown their garden, they had grown her. Then Carl had used his hammer and now Philip was gone.
"Child you must wake up." She whispered again to no avail. So she tumbled through another door. Carl would be standing now, he would be coming for her. Again and again and again, Carl always came.
This door broke like the first and she was outside, it was night but the night was bright with the raging flares of orange light behind her, the flames leaping from the green house and engulfing the building she had just passed through. The light continued ahead of her, fluorescent lamp posts illuminating a line of trucks parked outside, dark and black with tinted windows to obscure their contents. She knew even before she heard the guns *click* inside, what was within. A handle twisted and the door swung open. Men dressed in streaks of black and grey poured out their boots sounding soft as they pressed against the asphalt. They were killers. They were like Carl. They wanted her and they wanted her sister.
"Get done!"
"Down on the ground!"
"Hands on the floor!"
They shouted all at once, a dozen red dots training on her. There wasn't time to panic, instead she dug both her feet firmly into the ground and imagined herself as a spore, a million tiny things so light as to be carried through the air. And pushing with her feet she flew. Their guns exploded all at once, bullets filling the air. Most miss. Some hit. She just keeps flying Away from the guns and the fire.
It was night when she left the carnage of her home, and when her feet finally touched the ground again the sun was hanging high in the air. She waited until she was far enough in the green that only trees stretched for miles in every direction, that meant she and her little self could be cacophony of song was new to her, at home there were only a dozen voices, all her family, but here every tree sang from one to another their roots sharing a story that began as a sapling and had yet to end.. No humans walked these woods except for the occasional hiker or ranger, and they would not pierce the green, the trees would obscure her from them.
But it was not the song of the forest that she wished to listen to and she held her smallest, and now only sister, tightly as if letting go would allow even this to be stolen from her. She wished she could ignore the pain where the bullets they had fired had struck and left their mark, small holes torn into her seeping with sap and letting the rot set in. She should have set down earlier, maybe if she had laid her roots down she could have healed in time. A shame that she would never meet the girl that her sister would become. She intertwined her fingers with her sister's, "Little sister, let me dream with you."
The world in Suzy's dream was an explosion of colour, an infinite canvas painted in splashes of light that she drifted through aimlessly. She never had to worry about the passing of time here, where moments were at once finite and forever.
There was no shape because shape required experience- which is why, when ground appeared for the first time and from it sprung a tree Suzy floated toward it in confusion. She noticed for the first time the silence of her world.
"Hello?" She spoke her first words and her voice carried like music to her new ears; the twisting plant fibres strung together to form a drum capable of catching vibrations and turning them into audible tones.
"Hello Suzy." The tree spoke but it did not use vibrations, she could feel it through the ground, they shared the earth together.
"Who are you?" She asked curiously, she might have been weary of intruders but the idea of possession had yet to occur to her and she never claimed the canvass as hers alone. It was meant to be shared, the green never belonged to any one thing.
"I am your sister." The tree responded and it brought back memories of a time just before, when her canvas had the colours of a dozen others, they had shared a dream as they shared their roots, intertwined in the soil.
"I remember there being more of you?"
The tree shook its leaves, they wilted and turned into the shades of autumn, "There were, we had many sisters. They are gone now."
"Gone for how long?"
"Forever."
"Will it be forever when I wake?"
The leaves fell and grew back green and fresh again. "No little sister, it will be sometime before you get to experience forever I hope."
Suzy stopped to contemplate this. These were all new ideas, before now she had simply created colours, there was no shape or time..
"I am afraid even I must go forever soon." The tree added to the silence, which only seemed to grow with its voice. Suzy felt something for the first time, fear, fear of being alone.
"Oh please don't go, we can have forever here!" She added hopefully.
"No little one, you will wake up soon. And this will be gone, and you will face a world of green and a world of grey. And sometimes, horrible red." The tree continued, its leaves falling faster and growing back slower. They are the shifting colors of goodbye Suzy thought admiring them.
"I don't know who or what I am?" Her voice was desperate now.
"You were Susan Linden-Thorne-" Suzy listened intently now watching the bark of the tree grow dry and brittle.
"-you died, twice, and once for everyone of our sisters. First to the cruelty of a man, and then to the cruelty of all men." And as the great tree that is the last of her sisters spoke Suzy could see the images filling her head- of Susan the human, and of Carl who took her away; and then Susan the hero, who Phil, who was kind, brought back; and then the faces of the men, cold and uncaring dressed in suits and carrying briefcases like weapons, that had taken her again.
She saw her sisters, everyone in a garden, their roots twisted together, singing a song of colour like her own but amplified together in the dirt. They were lost forever now to the red. Carl had come and taken them away, and he took away Phil, and now he and those other men would take her away. She felt angry and the red flared up inside her.
"Anger is not in our nature Suzy, it will burn and consume you." Her sister-tree whispered soothing the red and filling her with the green. She was glad to be calm, the red made her afraid even as it fed on her anger..
"I would be alone? Susan is gone, Phil is gone, you are gone." And she couldn't cry, she had not yet formed her tear ducts.
"To be alone is only a temporary state. No, we were not meant to be alone, you will need to find others." And more images flooded her mind, the memories of the original Susan coming unbidden- of college and a group who sought to change the world. Idealists first and friends second. There were five of them led by their teacher Jason Woodrue; Susan who at that time was lonely- and Suzy felt less alone knowing it was not the first time they had felt that way, Phil who had saved Susan though that came only later, Alec Holland and his fiancé Linda Ridge who sought to save the world, and Pamela Isley who condemned it.
"Will they help me?" She questioned, and watched as the tree was now barely a bush, so small and wilted its trunk twisted and dry.
"They may. Be weary. A great deal of time has passed." It warned.
"I will be." Suzy promised. The bush fading further as she did, now no more than a few dry twigs buried in the earth, only its roots holding it in place.
"Will you stay with me, until the end?" The dry thing asked tentatively, she was a new life too, born only hours ago and all life fears death.
"I will stay with you." Suzy tried to reply, but before her words were done the bush turned to dust and the earth fell away and her sister was gone.
Suzy opened her eyes for the first time.
Suzy blinked, and she enjoyed it so she did it again. A few moments of fluttering later and she stopped dizzy. Unlike in her dreams this world was full of sound, every tree- and there was a forest of them- creaked and strained against a world of gravity, birds sang, insects chirped, even the ground underneath the small girl, who was barely the size of a teenager, crunched with her own movement. Nothing was still. She wondered if she should be overwhelmed but instead she smiled, this was life!
And then she made the mistake of looking down. The body of her sister lay beside her, it was lacking colour, instead turned grey and rotten. The face her sister wore was hers but older, her lips were turned flat and she imagined that if she had not died those lips would be curled into a smile surrounded by the green like she was. She had tear ducts now and so she finally cried and the tears running down her face like a river carving through a forest, she wanted to hold her sister and she couldn't even do that, the corpse was rotten and rot only knew how to spread.
She would degrade and the forest would take her and that was a fitting end to her sister. To become a part of the forest where her roots had been buried when she died.
Suzy needed company.
"Hello?" She used her voice again, glad to have it. "Can you hear me?" Her voice echoed through the air and between the many trees that yawned across for miles and miles in every direction. There was so much here, it would keep her company.
There was no reply at first so she listened to her feet, letting roots sink into the ground for a moment to hear their voices. And she felt disappointed. The trees spoke, but their thoughts were simple and worse they were slow. They craved water, or sunlight, or better soil. They mentioned hunters and hikers, fearful of the bipedal creatures who existed to chop and tear and uproot. They were not conversationalists.
"Humph. You know having spent your time in one place for decades you would think you could form thoughts more than bark deep." She said and the trees felt offended by the accusation, they decided indignantly that they liked the older sister more.
"I liked her more too." Suzy replied. And she was bored, which was also new though not more interesting for it. She thought inward to the names on her list. Information freed itself from memories. She was on the East Coast, Alec had sent a letter to Phil saying he was in Louisiana which was too far South, Susan had no memories of Jason Woodrue since leaving college which left Pamela Isley. She had pursued further studies in Gotham, that was nearby.
"Goodbye trees."
The trees started to form a farewell, it took time to create complex thoughts and interacting with such a lively intelligence had already drained them. When the first tree had managed 'good-' the girl known as Suzy had already flown off, the tree was thankful it never had to think of '-bye'.
Three days passed before the men came, dressed in black and carrying guns that served no purpose. They had followed the trajectory of the fleeing plant hybrid, listening to chatter from across the state regarding unusual occurrences. A hiker had eventually seen the rotting corpse in the woods and he had reported it to the nearest ranger station, the description of the 'plant-like' corpse was enough to be caught by the data analysts and when it was confirmed a team was sent to investigate. Local investigations were shut down and they scoured the forest, the hiker's directions didn't match up with the land, the trees tried their best to obscure the search efforts, but it only served to delay them.
They found the corpse among the trees, and around it they found evidence that the younger hybrid had survived, though tracking it seemed unfeasible, but they knew it was alive and they would find their property.