The Botanist

He held the waiting flask underneath to catch every last drop of the precious liquid which gushed, and then dripped, from the severed branch. The remains of the rose, he kicked aside.

At last, he held the glass up to the light. The liquid inside was absolutely clear—an essence of love so refined and pure it sparkled and glittered like a diamond. His bare foot brushed against the now wilted petals of the rose. What was that to him now? It has served its purpose.

Quickly, he reached for his prepared tinctures, and used a syringe to add them to the colorless liquor. But just he reached for the dye, he hesitated, then stopped. The usual blend of squid ink and graphite would not do, not for this one. No, this one demanded his blood.

Carefully, he held his fingers over the tiny opening and let the fat drops fall with a little splash into the mixture, instantly turning it a deep red. And then, still unclothed, he sat down at the table in his lab and began to write.

+++

He wrote, and wrote, and wrote, with the fury of the winds howling through the garden. The words poured out of his pen and onto the page, fast and hot, the parchment absorbing his passion like a lover hungry for more. The scenes, the characters, the plot and dialogue just as he'd imagined and planned, but inspired, now, with the breath of life. Words of love, words of tenderness, words of pain and passion he'd never imagined he could write erupted forth in a torrent, swept along in the unstoppable current of feeling that flowed from the ink. Rising and falling, through shallow troughs and deep wells, bubbling forth light and airy and then throbbing slow and hot.

He wrote in a state of extreme arousal, his prick rising and swelling along with the natural rhythms of the story, in peaks of burning intensity and languishing through long slow teases of what was to come, circling ever closer in tightening spirals towards the ecstatic climax. He labored through the night, never stopping, crafting an exquisite balance between tenderness and lust. His carnal flower demanded that his love story would be unlike anything ever written. He would not fall into sentimentality or romantic cliché; he would use love to guide the reader gently but firmly towards erotic depths as depraved as anything he'd written. His lovers would fuck in the garden until the morning light came, and he would spare no detail.

By the time he neared the end, the sun was just beginning to rise. The glittering vial was empty, and the paper was stained with his sweat and blood. But it was there. Every word. His rose, transposed into written form, eternal and everlasting.

+++

When he finally stopped, and laid down his pen, he leaned back, spent and exhausted, drained of every last bit of effort. He knew it was great. He knew it had all been worth it. It was a masterpiece. Everything going forth would depend upon it.

He lay still and quiet, absently stroking himself, as he watched the dawn send forth its pale rays into the sky still shining with stars.

And then, in the still and the quiet, he heard a noise.

It came from the corner, where he had flung the thing away from him. He'd entirely forgotten it was there, until he heard a kind of slurping, squishing sound, and a little "pop," like something being sucked out of a drain. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and slowly turned around. He got up, and walked towards it. The thing had transformed itself into something round and white, wriggling on the ground.

When he saw what it was, he backed up, to get far, far away, but it didn't matter. The eye had fixed him in its gaze.

It was only a moment before his world imploded, but it seemed to last forever. The scene, before him, shrank to a point, surrounded by a cone of blackness, where the eye looked at him. It knew. It knew him. It knew what he was. He could not look away, and he could not stop the memories, like lightening, from flashing clear and vivid into his mind.

The eye flashed green. And the Master was looking hopefully into the eyes of the Director of the Medical School. See what I've done? See what I've accomplished? In the dissection room, up to his elbows in gore, holding up the excised sex organs of the person, still alive, he had tied to a table. But see what I've done!

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.

It was all there, drawn and labelled in his book. Samples contained in neat little vials. Liquids, cells, bits of flesh. He had accomplished so much. Already his experiments were proving wildly successful. People begged him for more.

Then why was the Director, his idol, looking at him like that?

"What are you doing?"

To his utter horror, the Director choked, spun around, and vomited all over the floor.

"Pop." The eye, blinked, and the one that looked back at him now was a vivid, beautiful blue.

He tasted licorice in his mouth, and he saw his mother, his own mother, in the garden of his dreams.

Her eyes, looking at him, as he happened upon the scene.

The squishing, slapping sound, the murmurs and sighs.

Confusion and fear. His mother, happy, with that giant thing in her mouth. The man's voice, murmuring, groaning, and a gush of milky liquid. Her eyes, horrified, looking at her son. The bitter bile, rising in his throat, as he spun and heaved violently onto the rose bushes.

"Pop." The eye, rapidly accelerating, as it changed from brown to black, flashing back and forth between his own eye, and the beady eyes of the Thief.

The cone of black around his peripheral vision shrunk and he felt himself fading, fading, sounds and colors and images edging to gray. He remembered, now, he remembered it all. The scenes clung to the rays of light coming from the eye, and now it was all he could see. No. No. No. He would not. He would close his mind. He would fall into the fading cone of black. His body grew slack, and the pinprick of light to which his consciousness clung began to dim.

CRASH!!!

The roof of the greenhouse shattered as a giant, flapping, shrieking thing flew towards him. Its screams woke him from his faint, and the piercing grip of its talons told him he was still here, and alive. The whoosh of its mighty wings caused an uproar all around him. Glass, pots, flowers, and knives flew and spun in the air. The flapping thing had brought the storm inside, along with the whispers and the sickening scent of roses. Vines and leaves and branches slithered and hissed around his arms and legs. They pinned him to the table, and then it—she—leapt upon him.

She smelled of rich, loamy soil, and around her buzzed a cloud of bees. They clustered in disgusting masses in the smooth pits where she should have had eyes. They festered in her thick, oily hair, which flew from her skin in long, wild bunches. The bees crawled across her skin, which reeked of a chemical-like odor he recognized even in his terror as an opiate pheromone. In touches, it was one of the most powerful aphrodisiacs known to man; in its raw state, it made him violently seasick.

Get away, get away from me! He mouthed the words, but could make no sound. He could not move. She had him tightly in her grip. He saw, now, that what he'd mistaken for talons were not human or animal forms. Her upper body was that of a woman, with breasts as dark as plums hanging to her waist, but below that, her body branched off into four powerful, wriggling tree roots that tapered to fingers and toes of vicious hooked thorns. As she brought her face close to smell him, flakes of dried skin fell from her like snow; underneath, her flesh was marked by large, oozing sores. It appeared to him that it was only loosely attached to her skull; he could see things under the surface, moving in masses, crawling over her bones.

Her toothless mouth exuded an odor of rotting fruit when she opened it to shriek the unearthly scream. It was a scream of utter rage that echoed and echoed into the skies, growing in strength until it transformed into a roll of thunder. The sound went on and on, whipping the clouds, trees, leaves and branches into a frenzy. He could do nothing. He was paralyzed, as powerless as a baby in her grasp.

Stop, stop, stop! Make it stop! Her hooks embedded themselves deeply into his shoulders and thighs, making him scream in pain, but she only dug in deeper as she roared. The overwhelming stench of rot, blended with the psychotropic pheromone, made his mind ache and spin as the horrid voice continued. She kept him on the edge, tormenting him, sweeping him along into the natural cyclone her voice was conjuring around her. The world spun in a sickening motion, prodded by agonizing stabs where she clawed him.

Don't you wonder what you are playing with? The gouges in his arms, the blood seeping from his ears and eyes. The warnings. The terror in the Butcher's eyes. The sweet taste of anise. The throbbing heart of the rose. A spurting cock, fulminating, foaming white. The words of the Director, the look of horror on his face. What are you doing? And his mother, his mother in the garden. Everything—words, images, things—swirled around him like shards of broken glass.

But her shriek intensified, roaring to a hysterical pitch, spinning around itself, circling tighter and tighter, and gathering to itself, in the center of the greenhouse, a vortex of leaves. They rose higher and higher, gathering inwards, accumulating, growing, drawing twigs and flowers into the storm. And from the vortex, getting louder and stronger than the shriek, the whisper.

The Master's eyes grew wide in terror as he watched it. From within, he saw a dance of tiny colored lights. Red, pink, pale purple, flame-bright orange. It inched ever closer to where he lay.

At last, slowly, the shriek began to subside, along with the winds, though the vortex spun tighter and faster. The world around it calmed and quieted. The thing on top of him loosened her grasp and took flight, hunching in a corner to watch. All was a whisper.

Freed of the sickening chemical, his mind relaxed. He watched the whispering cyclone. From within, he saw the leaves and twigs and flowers cohere into a shape. He could not resist looking at it. It was beautiful. Even in his agony, he saw how beautiful it was.

The colored lights, soft and glowing, began to delineate a form. At first transparent, it thickened as it grew, gaining weight and substance, density and mass. It was a woman. A real woman, slowly taking shape before his eyes. He saw her arms, legs, and hips, and a mass of flowing brown hair. He saw her features, her breasts.

The leaves spun away, and the flowers dropped to the floor to reveal her. One last shriek from the thing in the corner, and all went silent save for her breath.

The being stood, naked and whole. He watched, mesmerized, as she stretched, and sniffed the air, and then turned to look at him. She seemed to know exactly where she was, and what was happening. Her eyes sought him out.

He was still naked, and as he gazed upon her, he could not hide the evidence of his arousal, but he was not embarrassed. It was entirely natural that it would be so.

She was exquisite, a marvel. Tall and slim, her ivory skin fresh and pure. She was free of any hair, save for the glorious mane of soft brown curls that fell to her waist. She adjusted her stance, knowing he was looking. One hand rested on a taut thigh. His eyes traveled to her breasts, tipped with small pink nipples. She was as perfect a being as he had ever seen.

Leaves, twigs and flower buds were braided artfully through her long hair, and around her neck, she wore a necklace of knots. Her lips, full and red, her eyes the shade of the Italian sky.

But she swayed, unstable, shaky on her long legs, like a newborn colt. He held up his hands, as if to help her, but kept them there, reaching for her. He wanted to touch her. Please. Let me. He didn't even realize he had said it.

He didn't need to inhale to that know she smelled like the musky rose.

Suddenly, she gagged, and coughed. Her throat swelled, and her cheeks puffed outwards. She made a kind of hacking sound, as if something was caught in her throat. "Ich, ich, ich. . ." She panted and stuttered in indecipherable syllables of sound. He held his hands out, reaching for her, wanting to help her. "Ah, ah, ah!" She opened her mouth, wide, gagging and choking, and wrapped her hands around her bulging throat.

With a moan, she reached into her open mouth and grasped something, and pulled.

Slowly, still gagging and choking, she pulled from her mouth the tip of a vine, clustered with knots of leaves. She opened wide, and kept pulling. One, two, three feet long, it spooled out of her throat, until at last, she disgorged the end of it with a sigh.

"Who are you?" the Master whispered.

She turned her luminous blue eyes upon him, and, after clearing her throat, spoke in a clear, strong voice.

"Who am I? Why, I am Nature."

The Master glanced fearfully in the direction of the winged creature.

"Who—what—is that?"

The goddess looked at the shrieking thing.

"That's my sister. She's a Fury."

"What? What does she want?"

"Oh, don't mind her. She's never been socialized. She doesn't know how to speak."

The beautiful creature turned around to gaze at him. "But I do."

The Master regarded her warily, unsure of what was happening.

"You . . .?"

"Yes. Oh, it was so hard. I had to work so very hard to learn your language. Ach!"

She gagged again, and spat out a mouthful of leaves.

"But I did, Master. That is what they call you—the 'Master of Erotica?'"

He was suddenly deeply ashamed to hear it spoken aloud, by her. He mumbled something.

"Sorry? What did you say?"

"I'm . . . I'm . . ."

"You're what?"

I'm . . . an artist," he said weakly. "I'm just a writer."

At this, Nature laughed, and looked at her sister. "Did you hear that, Sissy? He says he's an artist."

Her blue eyes flashed at him as she walked over to the table. She leaned over him, and lightly slapped his cheek.

"No. No, no, no, no, no. You're a butcher, and a thief. That is what you are."

"But I, I . . . "

The Master was at a loss for words.

"You what? Tell me, Master."

"I . . . I made a garden."

Nature choked violently, again. She bent over him, heaving and clutching her stomach. Her cheeks swelled and her eyes widened. And then with a great gasp, she spewed a mouthful of rose petals over his face.

But she brushed them off, and stroked his skin. She gazed at him tenderly.

"I know you did. I know this is a little . . . habit . . . of your kind. That is why I'm here. That is why I forced myself to learn these words. I came to talk to you about your garden."

The Master gazed at her, misty-eyed with love. Was it true? Did someone, at last, want to know? He would tell her—everything! It was his life's work! Everything as neatly laid out as print upon a page! The skill, the craft, the labor that no one ever saw. Had she really come to talk to him about his garden? Could he tell her, everything he hoped to tell someone some day? See what I've done!

The being saw the hopeful, adoring look in his eyes, and said, "No, that's not what I meant. Not that. I want a name."

"I don't understand."

"The name, Master, the name."

He stared at her, blankly.

She sighed, and walked around his naked body on her long legs.

"I have a garden, too, Master. And I want to know who has been stealing from me. Are you the Thief?"

"No! No!"

"Do not lie to me. I know there are things in your garden that belong to ME. So tell me the name."

"I don't know! I don't know!" He could not bear her displeasure. His mind was in a fog. He followed her body, her ivory skin, his hands reaching out to touch. Just one touch.

"Then you admit it."

"He had them! He brought them!"

"Tell me the name of the Thief."

"I don't know! He never told me!"

"Then take me to him."

"I can't. It wouldn't do you any good."

"How did you meet him? How did he find you?"

His fingers were only inches from her skin. Her scent, now that she was near, was unbearably exciting. She was the source of it all. Her very proximity was torture. He reached, begging, for just one touch of her flesh.

"Adder. You're talking about Adder."

The moment he uttered the name, the thing in the corner shrieked, and flapped her giant wings. The gorgeous creature stopped moving, and her voice was hushed when she spoke again.

"Shh, Sissy! Shhh! Could it be him? But how?"

"What . . .?" he whispered. "Who is he?"

But Nature interrupted him. "How did he find you?!! Tell me!"

"There. It's there, in my coat pocket."

The being flew to his pile of clothes, and as he watched her, his anxiety intensified. There was a story being unveiled before his eyes. A story he did not know and had not written, and this thought was more terrifying to him than a thousand Furies.

Nature held the card in her hand, reading aloud.

Adder's Emporium Importer of Fine Fetishes, Since 1880 David Adder, Proprietor

The Fury shrieked and roared in rage, beating her wings and inflaming the cloud of bees. She wouldn't settle down even when her sister shush'ed her. "Stop! We don't have time for that, now." But the Fury continued to shriek, and beat around her head with her thorned limbs, tearing great gouges in her own skin.

"Sister! We will deal with him in time!"

Yet she continued to hurt herself, and scratch at her empty eyes.

Nature moved back to the Master and shoved the card at him.

"Do you know what makes my sister so angry?"

"I . . . I . . . I know nothing. Who is he? I don't understand!"

"You don't? You should, Master. It's a tale as old as time."

"No, no. All I wanted . . . I'm a botanist. I just wanted a garden."

"And a lovely one it is, Master, but not quite as lovely as mine."

She leaned down to him, and whispered, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in Paradise."

The Master stared, uncomprehending.

"No?"

She leaned closer, and whispered again, "And the Lord will satisfy your desire in scorched places, And give strength to your bones; You will be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail."

He moaned. He felt her voluptuous voice at the very base of his swollen, aching prick, teasing, caressing, enflaming, making him pulse and burn with every word that she spoke. His arousal reaching a torturous peak as the horror of the knowledge she was imparting seeped into his mind.

"No, no, no," he moaned, turning his head from her, trying to shut it out.

For you were in Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone adorned you: Carnelian, ruby and emerald, Topaz, onyx and lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; On the day you were created they were prepared.

"Adder . . ." he moaned.

"Bingo."

"But it's not possible. I didn't know. I didn't know."

"No? What did you think you were dealing with?"

"I . . . I . . . I . . ."

"You're the Master! I want to know. Explain it to me, and perhaps we will let you live."

"I . . . they were just flowers . . . "

She leaned into him and grasped his hair, and pulled his head back until it made him cry out.

"Yes?"

"The . . . the . . .fructifactio . . . the root . . . the stamen . . . the bulbs and buds . . ."