Punished & Planted

June 18th, 2051.

Santa Fe was green again. It wasn’t the stale suburban paradise of her childhood. Back then, families of four drove past beige strip malls, stucco houses, and medical offices, and couldn’t see the stars past the city lights. Now, desert brush cracked open cement roadways, and asphalt buckled over the roots of tall trees. Pristine HOA-approved lawns, unweeded for years, grew waist-high. Poison ivy twisted and curved around building corners, carefully threading through broken windows. And Mexican flame vine, with its vermilion leaves and violent orange blooms, crept over garden walls. From certain angles, she couldn’t see a single piece of manmade construction; only an unbroken landscape of plants and trees.

Just another two or three miles to go.

As the woman walked, she glanced at murals of Pueblo villages, Spanish settlers, civil rights protesters, and street dancers. They failed to stir any memories; their pigments blurred by the decades. The graffiti tags, murals, and city beautification projects that once decorated her hometown lay hidden under thick foliage. With each abandoned building she walked past, her return to Santa Fe felt less like the homecoming she had hoped for. Recognizing a sign, she entered an auto shop, hoping to find the supplies she knew she might need.

She stole an old crowbar and drank from her canteen, then set out again.

At last, the Santa Fe County Adult Correctional Facility loomed beyond a chainlink fence. She made her way along the fence, ducking under the boom gate and heading for the jailhouse proper. Two double doors with a rusty lock barred her way. As she levered the crowbar against the lock, she saw blue and red blooms clustered in the gaps between stones. Even after wandering so long, she didn’t recognize them. She prided herself on cataloging every enchanting piece of nature she encountered. As a child, she could never hack it at math or reading, but she had a knack for memorizing every leaf and branch she saw. She felt stupid and small again in the face of these perfectly average, nameless flowers. With a grunt, she snapped the lock off the doors to crash against stone steps below. Instinct urged her to leave. It was pointless to waste her energy on this. But the solemn building and its promise of answers beckoned her deeper into its shadows.

Inside, the jail was a horrible, broken thing. Like most places in the country, the jailhouse had been stripped nearly bare; nobody would be coming here to restock. Dirty shards of glass littered the floors. There was more dust than air and black mold collected in the corners. She saw a rat scurry into a hole in the eastern wall, and flies buzzing around the rotting corpse of a possum against the western wall. Raccoons nested under the tables and perched on railings, chittering at one another. She laughed - a small, coarse sound - and thought that they must not get many visitors. Searching through the admissions desks, she discovered the old prisoner registers. Searching the records was difficult; they were clearly written by someone who had spent so long on the job he could do it in his sleep, and often did. Every entry was written in a particular shorthand that was difficult to discern. Finally, she found the right inmate.

Cellblock 2, unit 46, just 1 inmate.

She absentmindedly kicked a crushed soda can as she walked deeper into the jailhouse. It rattled noisily across the floor, crackling in her ears. Many cell doors were closed. She looked through the small windows into one cell and saw three corpses slouched in their respective corners. Had the guards left them to die?, Or did they choose to stay rather than risk the unknown in the outside world? She shook off the thought - no reason to worry over what she couldn’t know, or couldn’t change.

Still shuddering, she turned to face unit 46.

With a heavy heart, she pushed the door open. She couldn’t tell if it was the exhaustion in her muscles or the wave of emotion just beginning to crest that made the door feel so heavy. When she finally pushed her way inside, she was greeted by an exotic microcosm. Pollen hung in the air, and yellow spiders climbed up the walls, spinning intricate patterns of silk in blackened corners. She let out a delicate sneeze. Sheets riddled with moth holes formed a pile on the lower bunk. She reached to pull back the covers, hesitating as tears welled in her eyes. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to see her father anymore. This man, who stole money, computers, jewels, or whatever else he needed, or merely wanted. This man, who barely kept up his child support payments and always showed up late. This man, who had the best smile and the worst jokes. This man, who was sent here just before the world went to shit. Just before she could say goodbye.

She pulled back the covers. Bits of white bone peeked out where maggots still consumed dead flesh. The last beams of daylight - broken by tight prison bars - fell gently on his corpse. The feeble light illuminated a garden sprouting from brown skin, with indigo blooms, and green and yellow leaves the size of her hand. Around his neck a silver memory, a heart-shaped locket. Just under the necklace hid a snowy bloom. Curious, she reached under the locket and plucked it gently from his breast. A daisy, just one, perhaps the last of its kind in the world. She held the daisy up to the cell’s window and noticed she could open it a little further.

She rose to her toes and pushed the window open, lighting the world just a little more.

The sun was setting and her body was spent. The sky burned orange and purple as creatures settled in for the night. She raced out of the jail and vomited, expelling years of resentment and sadness onto the filthy pavement. She wanted to scream. Scream at the people who died, who saved their own skins, who locked the doors and turned their back and left those men for dead - who left her father for dead. But they were long gone. She punched the brick wall until her knuckles bled, and cried a little longer.

She picked herself up, dusted herself off, and headed back the way she’d come.

It was almost dawn when she reached her camp a mile out of town. She dropped her bag on the ground and gently placed the flower on top of it. Sitting on the floor she looked out at the city - quiet, beautiful, and terrifying. She sighed. It was time to leave, head west to California, and hope there were people somewhere who could help. Daisy picked up her namesake flower and look at it once more. With a peaceful sigh, she held the flower to her heart and slept.