The Botanist

He only laughed. The spell was broken. It would be difficult, but more rewarding than anything yet.

Heading into his lab he was almost giddy, as if he'd imbibed a bottle of champagne.

He had found that there was no greater aid to developing a new story than working on a specimen in the lab, and he had a new one waiting for him, just arrived by special delivery the night before. He employed people all over the world to seek out flowers and plants to send to him, and this one promised to be very special. He clapped his hands together in delight. It could not have arrived at a better time.

Before he began, he retrieved a large leather-bound journal. It was messy and stained and bulging with notes clipped to the pages. Snippings from various plants, seeds and leaves were tucked into the folds.

He held it, and caressed it. At one time, this was the book he thought would make his name.

He opened the cover to the frontispiece he had created, and ran his fingers over the inscribed text. He whispered the words to himself like an incantation.

-- NATURAE SEXUALE---

--Being a study of the sexual properties of natural things--

For the parts of the plant are the root (radix), the leafy shoot (herba) and the organs of reproduction (fructificatio); the leafy shoot consists of the stem (truncus), the leaves (folia), accessory parts (fulcra, stipules, bracts, spines, prickles, tendrils, glands and hairs) and hibernating organs (hibernacula, bulbs and buds), and the organs of reproduction comprise the calyx, corolla, stamens, pistil, pericarp and receptacle.

He laughed to himself as he read it. Yes, his fame had arrived, and the world knew him now as a writer, but was it really that unbelievable?

When he'd first turned his talents towards erotic writing, he had started by studying all the best stories. He took them apart and analyzed their elements as he did living things. He researched. He learned what seemed to appeal to readers and what didn't. He mixed and matched and reshuffled the parts into different combinations, simplified, or added something new. His acute analytical mind, sharpened from his years in the laboratory, seemed made for the task. A story, in the end, was not that different from a flower. It was only a matter of knowing how it was constructed.

He flipped through to the back of the volume he held in his hand and found two clean pages facing each other, smoothed them down and brushed off the traces of soil, then used a fountain pen to write across the top of each page. On one he wrote, "Emily—" On the other, he wrote the name of the specimen packed into the large wooden crate laying on a table in the middle of the lab.

The box was about six feet by three feet, and so tightly nailed shut he had to use a crow bar to get the lid opened. When he did, he reeled backwards, then coughed and drew out his handkerchief to hold it over his mouth and nose. Amidst the scents of soil and cedar, a rancid odor, like decaying meat, seeped into the room. He had expected this, but it still overwhelmed him.

The "Carrion Flower," named as such for the distinct scent of rot which inhered within its leaves, was a rare and exotic specimen. It grew only in the rain forests of South America, and he had gone to great lengths to have one delivered to him.

He pushed back the layers of wood shavings, torn newspaper and packed bricks of dirt, exposing a huge object wrapped in strips of burlap. Taking a pair of scissors, he snipped carefully at the string which wound tightly from top to bottom, then gently pushed back the covering. When he saw what was there, he gasped.

An immense spadix, mustard yellow in color, grew from the center of the flower. Titanus Amorphophallus was aptly named--the muscular appendage rising three feet from the base resembled nothing less than an enormous, tumescent prick. It thickened at the root and ended in a tapered head, and its flesh was thick and hard. Streaks of red crisscrossed the gigantic shaft like tiny veins. Beneath it, at the base, the assertive column jutted out from a massive spathe of deep purple, whose soft, velvety frills and folds mimicked gigantic labia holding the phallic form in a tight embrace.

He'd seen drawings and read descriptions. He knew what a strange thing it was. But the reality was quite another thing. In three dimensions, real and alive, the forms bulging and curving as if carved by some demented sculptor, painted in colors with no purpose other than to seduce, coated with a glistening, sticky substance that he had to stop himself from touching, assaulted his being, deep within some wordless core in his body, first exciting and then revolting his nerves. An organism like this—so excessive in its display, so exuberant in its corporeality, so brazen in its sexuality, and yet reeking of the scent of death—it was nature in extremis. It offended him to think of it proliferating unchecked in the dark wet depths of a faraway land.

He secured the monstrous thing on the table, and laid his instruments in a neat row beside it.

As soon as he made the first cut, slicing into the base of the enormous phallus, he began to think of Emily, and construct his sweet story of love.

The skin of the gigantic shaft was thick and hard. He had to exchange his scalpel for a hooked blade he could slide inside and then yank backward and forwards in a sawing motion. Tiny strings imbedded in the flesh impeded a smooth movement, catching on the blade and tearing chunks out of the surface. Soon he had worked up a sweat struggling to cut the thing wide open.

Finally, he was able to peel back the splayed skin to expose the interior, where hundreds of scent sacs lined the column. They exuded an odor of decay, but he knew they contained a priceless liquor. One by one, he used a syringe to extract the milky, yellow-ish substance and then squirt it into a waiting flask. The aroma of the powerful natural pheromone was nauseating, but he would know how to use it. This plant would yield a harvest of goods.

As he continued with the dissection, he stopped every so often to exchange his scalpel for a fountain pen as his thoughts began to flow. As he took apart the plant with surgical precision, the structure of the story emerged bit by bit. The calyx, corolla, stamen, pistil, pericarp and receptacle were sketched and labelled in his detailed drawings, then samples were taken. As he cut, and probed, and took apart the plant, each incision disengaged a piece of the plot. Working back and forth between the pages of the book, the fluids, dusty pollen, meaty flesh, and strands of silky floss extracted from the flower found a kind of counterpart in the characters and scenes he scribbled down.

When he was done, hours later, he stood sweating in a room littered with the remains of the flower. Bits of green, yellow and purple, lay strewn across the floor, while nothing but an oozing, hacked stump remained on the table. The valuable parts of the plant were contained in a neat row of vials behind him, while in his book, he had his story. It was only a skeleton, but it was a clear and strong design upon which he would later embellish the details.

A rich nobleman, taken with the beauty of a little girl on the street, brings her home on a whim. He has three sons, and his wife is dead. The little girl brings joy into the ancestral home, like a tomb since his wife's death. She thrives and flourishes under the care of her adopted brothers and father, until they all, knowingly or not, enshrine her as an icon of feminine love in their hearts. But none more so than the youngest, who is her age when she arrives.

She would be intelligent and beautiful, but penniless and therefore, forbidden. She would fall in love with her "brother," and oh what scenes of illicit rapture on the ancestral estate he would devise! He could hardly wait to write it. They would be discovered, of course. Would he give it a happy ending? That he did not know.

He was tired as he left the greenhouse, but he checked on the rose on the way out. It was sleeping peacefully, almost imperceptibly swelling and tightening, drawing in the sustaining atmosphere and excreting oxygen in the eternal exchange of nature. He leaned closer and inhaled the scented air.

My dove, my angel. Such breath you have, such life! In time, my words will swell and fall in the same rhythm, and the world will know your sweetness.

Part Two.

It was night, a week later. He was dreaming.

I am in a garden. Oh, I knew it so well. There is a taste of licorice in my mouth.

I know where the cobblestone path curves to the right. I know I have to duck to avoid the overhanging branch. I know that my shirt will catch on the rose bushes.

I'm getting closer. Circling around, in a spiral of roses. In the center, a sound. A murmur, and a whisper. I recognize the voice, and I'm laughing.

But something's wrong, something's wrong.

My legs, my feet, are dragging on the ground. Leaves and vines are pulling at me. Oh, I am frightened!

Around and around, circling closer, I hear the sounds, the voices! I am almost there. . .

He suddenly sat bolt upright in bed, his heart pounding out of his chest, gasping for breath and disoriented. It took several minutes before he realized where he was.

Outside, a cold wind rustled in the trees, bringing a scent of roses into the room. A faint trace of decay, of things rotting in the ground, clung to the edges of the floral cloud. The full moon shone into the garden, drawing him to the window, where he stood next to the fluttering curtains and gazed down into the expanse of manicured lawn.

He heard it, then, for the first time. A swishing, rustling sound, like the spreading of a great pair of wings. It could have been the wind. He listened, harder, cocking his head, telling himself he was only imagining it. But he heard it again, trailing just a few seconds after the gusts which shook the branches--a fluttering of thousands of tiny wings, everywhere, and then a thrashing of a large body moving through the bushes. Something was in the garden.

He peered into the shadows around the house, listening. The sound was everywhere now, a kind of hissing all around him. The scent of roses had become thick and cloying. He glanced towards the open door of his bedroom, but could not bear the thought of stepping into the dark hallway to go outside. He was paralyzed, his every nerve bent on the swishing murmur around the house. He strained and strained to listen. He thought, or imagined, he could discern a whispering voice, speaking to him.

Suddenly, the door to the bedroom slammed shut, making him cry out before he closed the sash on the window, ran to his bed and hid trembling underneath the covers.

Eventually, his strained nerves could take no more, and he drifted back to sleep.

When he awoke the next morning, the sun was shining into the room, and only after a few minutes suddenly remembered the previous night, as if did he remember the night before. He tried to assure himself it had only been his heated imagination, but he couldn't shake a sense of unease. As soon as he got out of bed, he found himself checking and double-checking the locks on the windowpane, and glancing down into the garden.

The mood clung to him throughout his breakfast, to the point where he asked the servants to look through the house and gardens for any sign of intruders, but they reported nothing unusual before they handed him his weekly bundle of mail. As he began to sort through it, the prickling sensation that had not left him all morning grew stronger. He felt as if something or someone was there, watching him, or sensing his thoughts. He was more nervous than usual when he picked up the Italian papers.

As he always did, he slowly perused every single page. And this morning, he saw something which made him stop.

"New Clues in the Hunt for Killer"

The villainous mastermind behind the notorious murders that shocked our fair city remains at large. The series of gruesome killings has long been believed to be the work of the so-called "Butcher of Florence," whom many compared to the infamous Jack who terrorized London's East End not long before. Our contacts inform us they do not believe the murders were the work of the same man, yet new tips have led them to widen their search to England, where the Butcher is now believed to have fled.

He blinked, and paused, and calmly pushed the paper aside.

It seemed inevitable that it would happen someday, but today, of all days! It seemed like the worst of omens confirming that the previous night had not been his imagination. He thought of that strange midnight visit years ago and—he only now made the connection---the way the Butcher had checked the windows and doors. The fear in his eyes, listening, listening. . . It could not be a coincidence!

Suddenly, he got up, and ran to the greenhouse, furious that he had not thought of it until this moment. The rose, the little rose . . . how could he have forgotten?

His heart was in his throat by the time he opened the locks on the doors and tore inside. As he did, he nearly crashed when he stumbled on some pieces of broken pottery strewn across the floor. They had not been there the day before.

From the corner, he heard a weak mewling, like an animal in pain.

The sounds were coming from the rose, which had burst its confines and lay writhing on the table. Shards of the broken pot were intermixed with loose soil. Overnight, it seemed, full green leaves had sprouted bush-like around the bloom, and the tender roots had tripled in size. They wriggled and squirmed as if trying to suck moisture from the air, and it was from their tiny tips that the crying emanated. He quickly reached for an eye-dropper full of formula to feed their hunger.

The still-enclosed bud, shading from the lightest pink to a deep magenta, had grown and thickened and swelled in its green layers. The petals were still tightly coiled, but he could discern an unusual quality he'd never seen before. They were so translucent he could see through the surface to the intricate web of veins branching off from the hidden stem, and could see the formula being pushed and carried to the tips. He reached out to stroke the tip of his finger to the soft surface and gasped when he found it was warm to the touch, like living flesh. He could swear it flinched away from his touch.

A while later, he had found a sun-drenched spot in the garden near a trickling fountain and dug a deep hole. He decided not to add anything to it. An instinct told him all it needed was fresh air and water and room to grow. He carried it to the spot and gently embedded the clutching roots in the soil, and heard what sounded like a sigh of contentment. The little bush flexed open its branches in the sun, and pushed the bud up to the sky.

He suddenly felt tired. He had had such a strange, restless night. A wrought iron bench layered with cushions invited him to lie down next to the rose, one arm extended to touch its soft leaves.

White clouds floated through a pale blue sky above him. He forgot about everything else that was troubling him and watched their lazy trajectory with half-lidded eyes. To his right, he could discern a blur of orange from the poppies he cultivated.

The clear, pale blue sky reminded him of Italy. He could almost smell the lemon and olive trees. He saw the neat, formal rows of the garden beneath the balcony of the little house on the farm dripping with cyclamen and bougainvillea. He felt the hot sun of a gentler clime and turned over, aching for its warm embrace.

He dozed lightly. When he awoke, he immediately turned towards the flower. He was not surprised to see that it had opened further. It bent towards him, the petals flesh-like and grasping, and now he could see, deep within the center, a dark pink form, beating.

Suddenly, around him, all around him, he heard the sighs, the flutterings, and the whispers which had awoken him the night before, but he was not afraid. It was just nature, waking itself up in acknowledgement of such beauty.

+++

In the days that followed, he felt like he'd been put under a spell. A charm, a trance had taken over his life. At times he was not sure if it was day or night, if he was asleep or awake.

No other fetish had ever affected him this way. He spent all his time visiting the rose out in the garden; he didn't want to leave. Its sweet scent penetrated his every moment. He lay next to it, mesmerized, every day, watching it grow, and thinking about his story.

It would follow a simple arc. He was sure the rose was there for this purpose. It had already been showing him, teaching him. A simple story, a simple plot. Focus on the development of an innocent, childlike love, and watch it grow.

He forgot to take notes or scribble down ideas. He knew he would remember it all when the time came. He was content now just to feed and tend the flower, which was maturing at a rapid rate. Opening and opening, the petals deepening in color and scent.

But his nights were taken over by the dream. Every night, he found himself in the spiral. The fear, growing, and gaining. The voices and whispers, terrifying him while he slept. Circling and circling, always the same, but getting closer and closer each time.

He would awake trembling, sweating, and anxiously alert for any sound coming from the garden, until he fell back into an uneasy slumber.

And then the return to the rose, the next day, for its soothing embrace.

He dozed next to it in waking dreams, every day, taken back to Italy, and happier days.

His father was only a shadowy presence that he never knew. It was only he and his mother on the old estate.

Under the sweet spell of the flower, he immersed himself in his earliest memories. His beautiful mother, with her long black hair, in her garden, tending her roses. How he loved to just sit with her.

He had forgotten all of this. Everything was forgotten when he discovered the science of botany. He read Linnaeus among the same plants and flowers of his mother's garden, enchanted by the taxonomy of names, enraptured with the notion that all of nature could be captured in a book. The wonderful volumes which had first aroused his imagination, thePhilosophia Botanica and Systema Naturaewere as deeply etched into his heart and mind as his beloved pornography.

But these memories were older. Before he had learned to read or write. They came to him drenched in sun and clouds, scents and feelings, like images torn from the depths of a dream.

It was the rose. Lying on the bench, he gazed and gazed into its depths.

What a strange, alluring thing it was. The skin, sensitive with nerves. He was sure if he cut it, it would bleed. The layered petals expanded and contracted with the heart beating its rhythm of love. The forms growing slick with fluid as the feelings it conveyed ebbed closer and closer to a distinct sexual need. There was no mistaking it. The petals grew ripe and swollen and gave off their own heat along with an intensifying musk.

It would not be long now. It was almost ready.

+++

So certain was he that this flower had been made for him, for this, so closely had he become intertwined with it, that when the card came, he nearly did not recognize it. It sat on the top of his usual pile of mail a foreign, obnoxious presence when he sat down for his breakfast in his study a few days later.

He snatched up the card from "Adder's Emporium" and flipped it over. On the back was written the time and date. He was being summoned, that very night.

Rage and resentment roiled uncontrolled in his body. This was his rose. His. He had discovered it, nurtured it, watched it grow and develop, even loved it. The heart beating outside in the garden was as much his own now as the one inside his own breast. The mere thought of it being connected to that,to him, was intolerable!