Rodney was a piece of shit; I just wanted to get that out of the way here.
Asshole, thief, brother. His epitaph should have read something like that, but I digress. I’m writing this in my car with two canisters of gasoline, ready to set the woods on fire. But I want to explain myself a little here before the boys in blue come looking for me and I never get the chance.
All my life, Rodney would beat the shit out of me. And my mother, being a single parent and sole provider for our house, was almost never around to interfere. When he wasn’t terrorizing me or the other neighborhood children, he would take his wrath out on small animals. Pulling cats tails, shooting squirrels with his BB gun, etc.
This all changed when I was 11. He was a few years older than me, at 15 or so. He had gone one step too far and had managed to shove a firecracker up the ass of a local veteran’s beloved bulldog, killing the animal. Finally recognized for the monster he was, he was sent to a rehabilitation center for troubled youths for the entire summer.
I claimed this as my summer of freedom.
I didn’t have many friends my age or, really, any in general. I kept to myself most of the time, living in my own shadow, hiding from the terror that was my teenage life. Even with this new-found freedom, I would still catch myself looking over my shoulder for my brother and have to remind myself that I could now focus ahead and continue with life.
With Rodney gone, my mother needed somebody to keep an eye on me while she was at work, and she asked our sweet old neighbor lady, Ms. Rodriguez, to keep an eye on me for a few hours a day while she was gone. I was unenthusiastic at first but quickly grew to love her. We would spend afternoons gardening and pulling weeds, then go inside to bake cookies and other sweets in her kitchen. English was not her first language, and she had a thick accent I could not put my finger on. She would often say things like “put it behind teeth” in reference to eating something.
As the summer went on and the days started to get colder, I started to see the plants in the garden wither and die. It reminded me of how I would have to go back to school tomorrow and how soon my brother would be out of rehabilitation and back home.
It felt like some giant emotional mosquito had zipped by and sapped me.
I started to cry in the garden, tears quietly streaming down my face as I looked over the dying flower bed. Mrs. Rodriguez looked up and shook her head. “No, no, no more bad,” she smiled. “I have a gift.” She slowly creaked her way to her feet and disappeared to her garden shed, emerging seconds later with a little bag of seeds.
“These!” She proclaimed, “They grow with darkness!” She was beaming at me.
I stopped my crying and smiled back up at her. Because of her broken English, I assumed “with darkness” meant the seeds would grow in the winter in the off-season. Which they did, but so much worse.
I went home that night and planted the seeds in a pot. I watered it, then hid under my bed, away from any harm that might come to it, and turned my clock radio to the classical station before going to bed. Ms. Rodriguez once said classical music helps with plant growth.
The next morning I woke up and impulsively reached under my bed for the flower pot to see the progress, knowing it was too soon, but I had to check.
To my surprise, I was totally wrong.
There was the tiniest little yellow bud protruding from the soil, staring back at me. I literally jumped for joy. I thought I must have been the best gardener in the whole world to have a plant grow and bloom from a seed overnight. I ran downstairs to eat some breakfast before I had to catch the bus to school. I decided I wouldn’t tell my mom yet in case she would make me keep the plant outside. I couldn’t risk animals or anything getting to it out in the open. I didn’t even know what kind of plant it was yet! I scarfed down a piece of dry toast and headed out the door to the bus stop.
On my way back home from school, a Kurt fall breeze was tailing behind me. I stopped at the end of my driveway to see my brothers beat up. A mud-caked dirt bike was out of the garage, and leaned against the porch. I knew the day would come that he would be back, but I hadn’t prepared for it.
I took a deep breath and sauntered inside. Nothing was out of place, but I heard a rustling from upstairs and followed the sound; it led me right to my door. I turned the old brass door knob and found my brother ripping through my drawers and cupboards.
“What are you doing?!” I shrieked at him.
“Oh, hey, shitball.” He said, nonchalantly swiping his long, greasy hair out of his eyes, “I need money for cigarettes, unless you got some. Then I need money and smokes.”
“Get out of my room,” I said sternly, trying to stand my ground.
“But I’m not done yet,” he smirked. “Bet you got some cool stuff under here,” he said, getting down on his stomach and reaching blindly under my bed.
“Get out, get out, get out!!” I yelled, trying to pull him up by his confederate flag patch on the back of his denim vest.
“Yea-heeeah! You must have some cool stuff under here if you’re getting so worked up about—” he stopped mid-sentence and ripped his hand out from under the bed, throwing me off of him and letting out the most gut wrenching scream.
“What the fuck do you have under there, my finger?! My fucking fingers fucked!”
I stared at the hand he was holding up above his head, like he was showing off the new little baby Jesus to the world, and saw that the first knuckle on his pinky finger was just hanging by the skin, blood gushing from the boney end and hitting the hard wood floor, making little dime-sized pools of red around him.
“YOU KNOW I DON’T LIKE SEEING MY OWN BLOOD!” He yelled through clenched eyes and teeth, “You’re so fucking dead.”
At that exact moment, my mother got home and came up the stairs to see what all the commotion was about when she saw the blood and my brothers newly shortened pinky and ushered him downstairs into her station wagon to the hospital. I went to get some rags to clean up the blood from my floor when I saw a long, vine-like appendage snaking out from under my bed to the little crimson pools my brother left behind, slowly absorbing them one by one before retreating back under once again.
I didn’t dare put my bare hand under there to meet the same fate as my brothers, so I went to the garage to grab an old hockey glove and stick, along with a flashlight, and headed back to my room.
I got on my stomach and tried to hook the end of the hockey stick around the pot to pull it out. After several attempts, I finally got it and slowly slid it out, holding my breath for whatever Lovecraftian horror awaited me in the pot. To my surprise, there was nothing at all, just a harmless-looking spider plant or something that resembled one.
I took a closer look into the center and saw a bulb about an inch and a half in circumference slowly start to open up, showing off a couple rows of mean-looking teeth. “Some kind of carnivorous plant,” I thought to myself, sliding it back under the bed. “I hope next time it takes Rodney’s whole damn hand off.” I muttered, making a mental note to go visit Ms. Rodriguez after school to thank her and ask just what this plant she had given me was.
Mom and Rodney weren’t home till late that night. I was watching TV in the living room when I heard the front door open and close behind me. I turned around and saw Rodney shoot me the most hate-filled look before taking off to his bedroom in the basement. My mother approached me calmly, took a spot next to me on the couch, and asked what had happened.
“He said you must have a raccoon or something under your bed; you know you can’t keep wild animals as pets; remember when you let the squirrels in a few years ago?”
She said softly to me, her big Bambi eyes were such a nice change of scenery from Rodney’s little beady red balls of hate that roll around his empty skull.
“No, mom, I was little when that happened. I don’t keep pets anymore. I think he cut it on a loose nail on the floor or something.” I lied
“Well, okay, we’ll take a look at that tomorrow; now it’s past your bedtime; no more TV; it’s off to bed.”
I agreed, and she kissed my forehead and sent me off to bed. I did not see Rodney the next morning when I went down stairs for breakfast and assumed he was still in bed recovering from his little love bite my plant had given him. I happily munched on a bowl of corn flakes and got ready to catch the bus, finally feeling as though things were going to be different around here now.
As I made my way from the school bus back to my house, I decided I should pay Ms. Rodriguez that visit finally. Maybe we could bake one last tray of those cookies while she explains what that plant is. I turned the corner to my house, only for my heart to drop. There, in the driveway of my lovely neighbor, was an ambulance loading a stretcher with a sheet over it into the back.
I rushed over in a sprint up to the attendants to ask what had happened. Her daughter, who was out of town, hadn’t heard from her in a couple days and asked for a wellness check to be done. She was found dead in her recliner after an apparent heart attack.
Heart broken I trudged next door to my house to flop on the couch and wait to tell my mom the horrible news. When I opened the door, I saw Rodney with a shit-eating grin sitting at the kitchen table, a baseball bat in the center.
“Hey, you fucking shit.” He grinned up at me. “Been waiting all day for you to watch me kill whatever the fuck you got under your bed. I wanted it to be slow at first, but then I thought messy. A true classic never goes out of style,” he said, tapping the bat gingerly with his bandaged hand. “Rodney, I don’t have anything under-“ I started but was cut off by him grabbing the bat and bolting up the stairs at Mach speed towards my room.
“RODNEY!!” I screamed after him, but it was no use. I heard my door fling open and smash into the wall. By the time I got upstairs, he had already flipped my bed onto its side and was standing over it, breathing heavily.
“Fuck is this?” He said turning to me and pointing at something with the bat. I entered the room to see my plant, now overflowing from its pot. It had grown maybe five times its size since yesterday.
“Where’s the raccoon?” He sounded almost disappointed. “I got more firecrackers and everything!” He said swinging his bat with his good hand at the pot, shattering it into a dozen pieces. “Whatever,” he muttered, “gardening’s for girls anyway, you little bitch.” He pushed past me out of my room, leaving me to look on in horror at the last piece I had to remember my dead friend by, now lying in a clump of soil and broken ceramic.
I ran next door to Ms. Rodriguez’s garden shed, which was thankfully left unlocked, and rummaged around for a new pot or anything to help keep my little friend alive, but came up empty.
Defeated I started to shuffle back home when I remembered the old tree house in the woods; it was by a creek past a little squatter camp that would keep even Rodney away.
Applying the hockey gloves once more and scooping the contents of my plant into a plastic bag, I hopped on my 5-speed and peddled into the woods. I had to leave my bike at the foot of the creek and hop across rocks to get to the other side. The creek was dangerous at this time of year; it was almost waist deep and could pull you under if you weren’t careful. I made my way to the base of an old tree house and started digging.
I dug at the cold, hard September ground with my bare hands for what felt like hours until I made a hole about a foot and a half deep. I put the gloves back on and started to shake the plant out of the bag, putting the roots first into the ground before covering it back up. I think it grew a couple inches just in the time it took me to get to the woods.
I crossed the river and hopped on my bike, content that Rodney could no longer interfere with my green, rapidly growing friend.
In the weeks that followed, I would head to the woods after school every day to check up on my plant, which I dubbed “fern” after his long, shady green arms that hung proudly all around him. He was getting to the size of a large shrub now and was living off woodland creatures or birds that got too close to him; once, I even saw him eat a squirrel up close and personal. He never made any gesture towards me, though, almost like he knew I loved him. I would talk and vent to him about the kids at school, Rodney, or sometimes even just what I was watching on TV.
It had become a ritual that was only broken by the first big snowfall of the year. It was light and fluffy but waist deep. I didn’t know if the creek was frozen over or even if I could find it in the snow. I decided to wait for spring to see fern again. I was convinced he was a tough enough plant and would outlive the cold, bitter winter, emerging bigger and bolder than ever.
The next day, I had just gotten back from school when the phone rang. It was a woman claiming to be Ms. Rodriguez’s daughter. She knew her mother had been babysitting me and asked if she had ever mentioned a hiding place where she kept her valuables. They were cleaning out her house and sorting the family heirlooms, and they could not find her jewelry that had been passed down from generation to generation; some of the items were apparently priceless.
I told her I was sorry; she never mentioned anything like that to me and hung up the phone. On cue, I heard the loud rumbling of an unfamiliar engine pull up to my house and shut off. I opened the door and saw Rodney on a brand new sport bike.
“Where’s the dirt bike?” I asked
“I got a little money, decided to trade up,” Rodney smirked.
“But you don’t have a job…”
“Your point?” He snapped at me, clearly stating that it was time for conflict or that the conversation had ended here.
I started putting two and two together. Rodney had done some shitty things, and I wouldn’t put it past him to rob a dead woman. I waited for him to leave the next day to search his room for more evidence.
The next morning, when the house was empty, I decended the stairs down to Rodney’s room. It smelled of skunk and mold even before I turned the knob to his door. I pulled my shirt over my nose as a makeshift gas mask, gagging as I did so. Rodney’s room was a mess, illuminated only by the black lights hung under posters on his wall. I had only been in here a couple times in the past but knew he hid anything valuable in a shoebox by a bong in the corner of his room.
When I found it and opened the lid, I wasn’t surprised but saddened to find a couple necklaces, rings, and an old golden locket containing two black and white photos of a young man and his bride, which most definitely would have been Ms. Rodriguez and her former husband.
I took the locket, placed the lid back on the box, and ran back upstairs out of Rodney’s Rancid room. I didn’t know what to do; I was just so angry. I decided to get on my bike and confront him about it; I could maybe get him sent back to juvie and out of society’s hair again.
I knew a place where Rodney and his friends would hang out, and sure enough, they were sitting outside on a corner, drunkenly cat calling women and yelling dumb stuff like “damn girl! You shit with that thing?!” Before clinking beers and cackling.
I approached Rodney, who sat in between his two friends and pulled out the locket. “Where did you get this?” I asked him.
He laughed in return, “Okay, cats out of the bag. I just wanted to go through the old bats purse, but she was so surprised to see me she dropped dead.” Rodney laughed again. “I figured at that point, what good is any of her stuff to her now?”
I was shaking with rage. I couldn’t believe he had just left Ms. Rodriguez dead and looted her house.
“I’m going to the police!!” I screamed at him jumping back on my bike and peddling down the street as fast as I could.
Rodney spit out his beer and hopped on his sport bike, kicking it to life. “LIKE HELL YOU ARE!! WHEN I CATCH YOU, I’M KICKING YOUR DICK SO FAR UP YOUR ASS, YOU’LL BE ABLE TO FLOSS WITH IT!!”
I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it to the police before Rodney would catch up to me, so I made a beeline for the woods; he didn’t know them as well as I did and he would have to ditch his bike.
I got to the forest edge and could hear Rodney close on my heels. I tore through the brush and tree limbs in my way and across the still-frozen creek to the old tree house, the rope ladder hanging down like a hand from God just beckoning me up.
I climbed and pulled the rope up behind me just as Rodney got to the base of the treehouse. “You can’t hide up there forever, fucker!!” He yelled up to me, “I got all fucking night!!”
The snow had started to melt but still covered almost all of the ground, and as Rodney screamed threats and profanities at me, the whole treehouse started to shake.
“The fuck is this? An earthquake?” I heard Rodney muttering. Then, without warning, from under the snow, a long green vine shot out and grabbed Rodney’s left arm. He screamed in shock as another shot out and grabbed his right.
I watched from the open window of the tree house as he struggled, his heels digging into the ground as he was pulled ever closer to where the vines originated when a huge bulb of a plant the size of a small car revealed itself from the snow. The bulb opened up, revealing set after set of razor-sharp teeth, each as long and sharp-looking as a kitchen knife. Rodney kicked and screamed as the plant bit down on his head, making a sound like a horse eating an apple.
I felt my stomach flip flop. Is this what had become of fern while I was away? I was terrified and kicked the rope ladder down and descended while Fern was finishing up devouring my brother.
The cops never found Rodney’s body; I assumed he had become fertilizer long before the cops even started searching for him. Years went by, and I moved out of my small town to go to college, then to a new house and job.
Last week my mother died. I went back to my old hometown to get things ready for her funeral. I took a walk around town to reminisce, but my fun was cut short by all the missing person posters of children everywhere. Most had last been seen playing in the forest.
I don’t know if it’s guilt or what; I know I’m responsible, though. Fern exists because of me, and I have to do something about him. I wonder how big he is now. How far into the forest can he reach? I wonder if he will remember me enough that I can get close and try to burn him down. If not, this will probably be the last you hear from me. Take care, friends, and please stay out of the woods.