Plant a Seed

“You know, when you swallow a seed, it grows in your stomach,” Max teases me, once I finish coughing. “I sure hope you like pears because a tree is gonna grow right there.” He pokes me in my stomach, making me laugh harder, the tiny pear seed that found its way down the wrong pipe weighing heavy in my gullet like a stone.

“Oh hush,” I say, still half choking, wiping the tears from my eyes, tossing the pear’s core at him. “You should have gotten less seedy fruit.”

He laughs ducking away from my attack, “Don’t blame my fruit, Pear Belly. It’s not my fault you eat like a shark in a feeding frenzy. NOM NOM NOM!” He grabs me around the waist and pretends to chomp my neck and shoulders. “Mmmm!”

I lean into his playful bites, laughing, enjoying our last moments together, even though we don’t know they are our last moments.

We don’t know we will be dead before the day breaks.

*****

I’m sleeping, I think I’m sleeping, dozing on the blanket we’d brought with us. Night had fallen. Just a couple hours before the Pleiades meteor shower. We’d come out here with a picnic, some drinks and other inebriates, planning a sweet night together… together alone…

Not alone…

The bang of gunshots echoing in my ears, even though I hear nothing.

Max screaming, fumbling for his wallet, his cell phone, but that’s not what HE wants. What HE wants…. What HE wants...

*****

Darkness.

Heavy weight pressing down on me. Dirt in eyes unseeing. Packed in my mouth, nostrils, unbreathing. Chest unable to rise. Heart not beating.

I lay in the darkness, trying to reach Max but I can’t move. He lays against me, cold, and still.

As the dirt continues to pile upon us.

Then, the scrabbling scratching stops and HE slumps over the shallow grave that is now my world. “I’m sorry…” HE murmurs, “I’m sorry…”

But I don’t offer him forgiveness.

“I’m sorry, Alisa…”

That’s not my name but HE’s not really talking to me. Even dead I know that, now.

HE stays there until the warming of the dirt tells me it’s morning.

Then, we’re alone and lost in the dirt.

Someone will find Max’s car. Someone will come looking for us. Right? Won’t they? At least to take us home, to my mom, my dad. They’ll put me somewhere in a green field, with a small metal marker. Our Angel taken too soon.

But we’d driven so far to get out of the lights of the city. We wanted to see the shooting stars, to make love under a shower of fireflies from the universe beyond. How will anyone know where to look? How will anyone ever find us? It could be days before someone passed this way...

I hear the peculiar hitch of Max’s car starting, that weird Ka-CHIK sound that he promised me he would get looked at. Dammit, Max, what if it is something…

Wait! No! HE can’t take the car! They won’t find us if the car is gone! No, no please, don’t leave us here, don’t leave us here!

But I hear the gravel spray as HE drives off… to forget us. To find another Alisa maybe.

Max shifts in the dirt as a small crumble gives way, but his closer presence does not give me comfort. He is so cold, even in the warming desert sand, even as we begin to bake in our hole in the earth.

*****

Max and I are dancing under the shooting stars, spinning around and around as they flash overhead, golden rain drops that spark green if they come too close. He kisses me on the priest’s blessing and I am safe, safe forever. We are safe…

Footsteps on gravel overhead. I am again in the dark, Max’s arms not a safe place. The skin is growing tight, purple and blue beneath the filth of dirt and fluid. No animals have visited us, no birds or scavengers have disturbed our rest.

“Alisa…” HE whispers, and I want to scream. If my tongue was not a useless bloated scrap of meat in my mouth, if my throat was not clogged with dirt and stone, I might have. “I’m back. I have missed you, so much, so much…”

Why is HE back here? Has HE found another? Some poor soul to be a roommate to us in our shallow graves?

But no.

This is just the first visit, the first of many. HE will visit us fifty nine times in the next four years.

*****

My stomach is swollen with new life, and Max gently rests his hand there, a smile on his face, “Soon, Mama,” he said, lovingly, “Very soon.”

“I can’t wait, Papa,” I smiled back.

My skeletal fingers stroke the bloated mound of my stomach, tearing at the blackening flesh. From the wound, a green twig blooms, from a seed swallowed how long ago was it… days have run into weeks.

The pear tree pushes its way towards the sunlight, root systems forming, feeding on the dirt we had so helpfully flooded with the compost of our bodies. A branch forces through Max’s unseeing eye. Part of the growing tree breaks a bone in my hip.

The pear tree breaches the earth and starts its climb towards the sky.

Below, we tangle in the roiling roots, overripe flesh steadily feeding the child we have birthed, bones and sinews tangling together.

Where does Max begin and I end?

Does it matter?

*****

“Alisa, what is this?” HE asks as HE sees the small plant that has emerged from his handiwork, “You’ve given me a gift?”

No! It’s not for you! My child is not for you, you son of a--

HIS fingers stroke the soft infant leaves. “What sort of plant are you?” HE murmurs, “Alisa was the one with the green thumb… was… was… is… She is the one….” HE is getting agitated, worked up.

Don’t hurt my child, don’t hurt my baby. Please, I whisper. My flesh and blood… I will be your Alisa, just leave my child...

HE calms then, almost like he can hear me. “Thank you, Alisa, thank you…”

That night, HE spends curled on the dirt, on the sunbleached blood stiff blanket that once I had loved someone on… What was his name? I can’t forget. I need to remem-- Max! His name was Max… My memories are melting into the dirt…

...leaving only my love for the little pear tree…

...and my hate for the man who sleeps next to it.

*****

It takes a pear tree three to ten years to produce fruit. Our child thrives even as the proteins and tasty bits of who we were are used up. The bugs have found what the coyotes could not, and they carefully clean our filth caked bones.

The little pear tree stretches branches towards the sun, and shades our lonely graves at night. Max is no longer with me. He is lost to the dark and the dirt, but I cling.

Oh, god, let me see this through.

HE comes to visit more often these days, tending to the pear tree like it is HIS. HE thanks the mysterious Alisa, and cries beneath the growing sapling. Sometimes HE laughs. Sometimes HE just stares.

I can see HIM, through the branches of my child, the consolation prize for my stolen life and the flesh and blood babies I will never hold. Distorted by the green of the leaves, and the red of my hate. I see HIM…

Overweight, mousey of hair and chin scruff, dirt under HIS nails and at the nape of HIS neck.

Other times, HE seems fresher. Clean clothes, combed mane, less haunted.

But always, HIS eyes are empty, focused inward on Alisa.

*****

Two years have passed

Smoke…

The acrid smell of neglected scrub burning out of control.

No! Please, don't! Don't take my child! It's my only chance, my only hope…

The flames roar towards the little lump where once I lay in the arms of a long forgotten lover…

...and as if compelled by my own will, they split, streaking down either side of the hill, defying all logic, all imagined outcomes.

My child is spared, and when the smoke and soot have settled, HE is there, weeping in relief that the pear tree is unscathed.

I weep with him but for a different reason.

*****

The first fruits have begun to emerge on my sweet little tree. The fire was two years ago, and I've slumbered, awakening only when HE came to call and whisper HIS nasty devotions to Alisa. The winters are long and lonely, but HE is back in the spring, and throughout the summer.

I look forward to HIS visits now. They give me purpose and a reason to stay awake. With my hate renewed, I will lose myself to the dark that has claimed the one buried with me.

I don't remember him, I can't see his face… but I love him, my other.. and I will avenge us both.

My love and hate and fear and longing pour into the buds on the tree. They bloom into flowers, white and soft…

The fruit will come next and I summon every last piece of myself, my lost dreams, my never realized future, the life with my grave lover that was snapped off so abruptly. I force this all into that fruit, that perfect beautiful fruit.

And HE came, called maybe by my longing, by the trap I had so carefully laid.

“Alisa,” HE whispered, in a voice so filled with love and delight that it would have made me sick to my stomach, had I had any stomach left. “I accept your gift.”

HE plucks the pear, this sweet ripe pear, and HE sinks HIS teeth into it…

And, at my will, it must be at my will, that bite, the soft mealy flesh hardens in HIS throat, wedging there firmly, my vengeance cutting off HIS breath, HIS air, HIS life.

Beneath HIM, the roots of my child shift and shake, propelling bone and stone to the surface.

HE falls, clutching, scratching at his throat, his terrified, panicked eyes fall upon what the tree’s roots have unearthed. My skull inches from HIS face, empty orbits staring black into HIS even blacker soul. HE gasps, trying to call for help, or protest, or apologize, I don’t know, I don’t care.

I watch as the life drains… turning HIM into just him, lower case, meaningless, nothing. Just a dead body, blue at the lips, eyes bulging… his hand falls open at his side, and my lovely instrument of retribution rolls free, coming to rest next to the dirt caked bone that was all I was, a sweet touch, a parting embrace.

Then, the darkness takes me.

I am free.