The Botanist

She pulled his head back further, her eyes flashing at his. "I am Nature! Do you think I need a lesson in anatomy?!"

"I . . . I . . ."

"You? You!? What about you? You have been profiting from my creations, without understanding a thing about them. Did you really think these were flowers like any other?"

"I will tell you, Master. I will tell you what you can't explain."

She climbed upon the table, and wrapped her glistening body around his, from root to tip, her limbs entwined, her breath mingling with his.

"Master, I know you pride yourself on your skill. But your talents are no more refined than a butcher of meat or an arranger of bouquets."

"Fetish—" she spat out the word in contempt, "That is his word. Do you know what they are?"

"To create just one, demands a skill far beyond your abilities, and which you could never hope to master. Do you not understand the story? You are a creation. You were adorned with gold."

"We have labored, and honed our craft, for longer than man has walked the earth. The fruits and nuts and trees precede you. But man—"

"Our garden never saw such things. Such strange creatures you are. You speak, and write, and think, and feel. You are plagued by yourselves and your thoughts."

"So we adapted the flora and fauna of earth, to you. We altered our creations, for you. We labored at our craft and our garden grew such wonderful things, for you! We invented them, for you, so you would not forget your origins. We made you a heaven to remember."

"Master. Our flowers, our seeds and fruits and nuts, every leaf, every petal, the tiniest specimens from our garden, though sensuous, and plump and juicy, and bursting with life, were just plants, organic matter, until you came along. We made them erotic, for you! We tailored them to every craving under the sun. The imagination of your species is a wonder we had never seen before. Your capacity for pleasure is as great and beautiful as the bounty of Nature itself."

She leaned further into him, whispering and writhing, as her hand traveled down his waist.

"A 'fetish'," she said distastefully, "Is a union of mind, heart, and body, as unique as the patterns on your fingertips."

She took his hand, and placed it onto the necklace she wore.

"This is a sign of our craft. We are not butchers, but weavers. We create. We knot the body to the mind in patterns more infinite and elaborate than you are capable of even perceiving. Every human, every being of your kind, is vouchsafed a little piece of paradise. There are as many as there are stories to be told. It is our gift, to you."

"The stolen flowers. The things you've touched. The colors, the flavors, the scents, are only the fleshly manifestations of something that resides in your soul. Do you know what that is? Our gift, to you? The precious gift?"

The Master could not speak. Her nearness, her voice, the touch of her skin, the waves of silky hair caressing his body, had deprived him of his voice.

"It is your nature!" she said, her voice rising. "Your sexual nature! Yours—growing, like a plant, within you. That is the only way into paradise!"

At last, he was able to say something. He managed a single word. "Me?"

"You, Master, YOU. You have a nature, don't you?"

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

"I, I, I," she mimicked him. "Yes, YOU. How do you think we were able to find you?"

"I don't . . . I . . . I don't understand."

"No? Then I will tell you, Master. My sister and I had a wager. Didn't we, Sissy?"

"We didn't know who you were. We knew of you, we knew what you were doing, but—"

"How?" The Master interrupted her. "How did you know?"

"Oh Master. You don't think I wouldn't recognize my own work when I saw it? Nothing escapes us. We knew. But our powers, our range of influence, is limited in this world. We did not know how to find you, or if we did, how to reach you. That is why I had to teach myself how to speak."

"We knew, and we wondered. About who you were. About why you were doing it. And we wondered about your nature. What kind of person you were, what motivated you, what desires drove you."

"On the one hand, it was obvious that you cared for our creations. Oh yes. You could not get as far as you did without caring for them, tending, and loving them."

"On the other hand, Master, we also know what you must have had to do, what you did. We knew."

"How?" he demanded.

Nature's voice rose to an angry pitch. "Do you think our garden is a marketplace?! Do you think our creations are free? Do you think they are simply yours for the taking?! That is Adder's design."

"Our creations are singular and unique, each one. And each is destined for and belongs to a single human heart. That is where they reside. That is what gives them perpetual life. We know they cannot live, they cannot survive, anywhere else."

"Did you not think we could sense when they were severed from their source?" she screamed. "Did you not think we would know?"

"But . . . they did not die! I found a way! I preserved their essence! I am recognized the world over!"

"Ah, yes, your writing. We will get to that."

"You were a puzzle to us. Sissy, here, has never liked you. She thinks you don't have a heart."

"But I hoped. I hoped there was a glimmer in you. So we played a little game. I sent you my rose, and my sister, the Fury, sent you that."

At this, she gestured to the morphing fungus, still lying on the ground near them. It had changed into a quivering, shapeless gray mass.

"We made our creations sensitive to you, this unknown perpetrator. Both of them, seeking out and sensing the depths and qualities of your nature. Both of them, penetrating your memories and dreams."

"For a long time, up until the very end, I thought I had won. You made my rose blossom, Master, you really did."

"But who you are. Who you really are. The truth of your nature. That was only revealed in the end. And I have to say, Master, it did not turn out well for you. I think Sissy won that bet. The eye, and not the heart, allowed us to find you."

She walked over to the quivering blob and picked it up in her hand.

"Who are you, Master? Why do you do what you do? How did you end up here? What drives you? What is your deepest passion, your truest desire? You have a nature, like anyone else. But you were so concerned with controlling the one around you, you never thought to look at the one within you."

She held up the fungus, poking and prodding it with her finger.

"What changed you? Before you became a scientist, you saw Nature simply, as something to love, as much as you loved your mother."

The Master listened, squirming, beginning to hate the sound of her voice.

"There are many, like you, who rebel against themselves, who resent the power we have over you, who want to forget or deny their origins."

"How can that be?!" he shouted. "How—when you created us?!"

She looked at him. "You should know better than anyone, Master. There are weeds, anomalies, 'mutations,' in every garden. There are parasites and leeches, things that slither on the ground, feeding off our skill. I think that should sound familiar to you.'"

"But this thing. It is the only thing my sister the Fury has ever made. It sees. It does not lie."

"Your mother, your angel. She was perfect. Until, one day, you came upon her in the rose garden."

"Shut up! Shut your filthy mouth!"

"How old were you? Do you remember? Does it matter? Did it really happen, or did you just dream it?"

"You bitch! You lying bitch!"

Nature sighed. "It's such a tiresome story. Such a cliché. We see it over and over. You discovered that your perfect, saintly mother had a nature you did not know or suspect. You saw her sucking a cock. Right in her garden! Poor thing."

"And from that moment, you became warped, like so many of your kind."

The Master struggled to rise against the vines and branches that held him, to get at her, and shut her up. His hands shook with the need to wrap them around her beautiful white throat.

"Has it all been some sort of revenge? To control that which you cannot?"

"There are so many like you. You're not special, you're not different. "

"Get away from me," he cried. "Go away."

"Oh no, Master. We are not done. There's just one more thing."

The goddess walked to his desk, where his story still lay, and looked at it. She picked up the papers, and inhaled deeply from the surface.

"Mmmmmm . . ."

"I see you are right. It is here, Master. Nearly perfect."

He reached for it, his hands grasping, his body struggling against the table. "Get away from that! It's mine! It's mine!"

"Mmmmm . . . it is your finest creation. It will give you the fame you seek. It is as beautiful and sensual as my flower, just as I made it. I worked so hard. To make something that would capture the erotic truth of love. It was so hard. Just one slip either way, and it would become either crass or sentimental. It is the perfect balance. It is a magnificent story."

"Hmmmmm, but in the end, only an imitation of eternity. What are words against the might of the Fury, the transcendence of Nature? I precede you. My sisters, the Fates, outlive you. They will keep weaving and creating things you will never see or know. You had one chance. Our power is greater. It will never end."

"Leave it! It's all I have now. It's mine. It's MINE."

The Master held out his hands, his fingers grasping as he watched her touch the precious pages. His life, his future, everything, held in her grasp.

Just then the bare toes of the beautiful being touched the remains of the rose, splattered with blood and ink, torn into pieces, her feet slipping and sliding on its heart. She glanced up, and saw the wooden table with the angled blade, the wall of knives, the scalpel still lying on the floor.

She turned back towards him, clutching the parchment, her eyes ablaze. She approached, and leapt on him, rolling the sheaf of papers into a thick, heavy tube, which she then shoved into his mouth.

"Aughhh!!!!" But his scream was muffled by the thick ream of paper.

"You want it? Your precious story? Here it is, Master. Choke on it."

She pushed the tube deeper into his throat until he gagged, until the ink ran down, along with his blood and spit.

"If you think, if you believe, it was your artistry which made your stories live, you are greatly mistaken," she hissed, and as she did, a few butterflies flew from her mouth.

"If anything of our creations survived, if you were able to impart any of their being, it is because of the pleasure you took in destroying them."

"They clung to the nature of your passion, warped as it was, finding a home in the traces of heaven still left in you, like a river seeking its source."

"Aughhhhhh . . . mmmmmmph . . . . noooooo!"

He watched, as she spoke, the story slip away from him, bit by bit, the words, the ink, fading and dissolving into a watery flux, and he screamed and flailed his legs, his arms, to try and stop it. But she held him down, straddling his hips, as she continued to hiss in his ear.

"Let them go, Master. They are only signs, that is all they ever were—bearers of desire, no more important than the paper they are written upon."

In one swift move, she yanked the tube out of his throat, and threw the remains over to the Fury, who grasped it in her thorny hands. He watched, his mouth a silent O, as she sniffed it, then tore it into pieces, and tossed the fragments to the wind.

"If only you had known, if only you had thought. You never had to steal. It was all within you. The flowers that grow from your own desire are eternal and everlasting. They are the only ones that will not die in the taking."

"And that is why you must. Because while you live, you are still able to enjoy the fruits of paradise, and that wouldn't be fair, would it?"

She drew from her side a weapon she had taken from the table, and held it over him as she whispered one last time in his ear.

"Goodbye, Master."

And so saying, she took a fountain pen and plunged it through his heart.

When all was still, she walked over to her sister. But before she reached her, she retrieved the fungus, and held it up to look at it.

"Sissy, you're a genius. But what will we do with it? Where should we put it?"

The Fury shrieked, and flapped her wings, and Nature smiled.

"Of course."

She walked back to the table, and slowly and carefully, wrote something on a piece of parchment, then returned to the body, and impaled the scrap of paper on top of the fountain pen.

"Are you ready? Let's go. We have a snake to catch."

+++

It was the Detective who found him, a few hours later.

His colleagues, in Italy, thought he was on a fool's errand, and he had made the trip to England alone. But he knew he was right. He was certain he would find what he was looking for.

It was the plants that had led him here.

He had tried to convince the others that the strange spores and traces of soil left on the bodies were the key, but no one believed him. Nor did they believe his theory that their killer was educated, and most likely trained in the medical arts. While they wasted their time chasing down petty criminals, convinced the Butcher was their man, he had consulted experts in botany.

But no one could believe that a gentleman, as their killer certainly was, could do such heinous things. Whoever he was, he chose his victims from the common trough of life—whores, street urchins, beggars and thieves. Who could have done it, but one of them? Who but one of their own could be capable of such savagery?

Only he believed, knew, there was a method to the madness—the skill and precision of the cuts, the deliberateness of the dissection, the marks of restraints on ankles and wrists, suggested a ritualistic dimension. Whoever did it, enjoyed himself. Whoever did it, was good at his craft—so good, he had refined it to an art form. This was no orgy of violence. It was calm, ordered, and controlled. This killer knew what he wanted, and took it. The sex organs, various glands, the tongue, the eyes, and scent centers, removed cleanly and efficiently.

The break came nearly five years ago. A name caught his eye. Salvatore Fiore.

The brilliant Chemistry student had been expelled from Medical School, with no reason given. The Director of the School insisted it was a routine matter, something to do with not being able to pay his fees. But the Detective knew he was lying. Fiore. Everyone knew that name, and the old, though impoverished, family from which he came. The father had been a distinguished botanist, before he drowned at sea.

Any school would be grateful to fund a brilliant student with such noted connections. He demanded the true story.

Though brilliant, perhaps a genius, Fiore had always been strange—unhealthily fascinated with dissection, and obsessed with his flowers and plants. Eventually he had been discovered stealing opium, morphine, and various drugs from the school coffers, and selling them on the black market.

The Director never told him the whole story. He vowed he would never tell another living soul of what he'd seen in the anatomy room that day, but what he told the Detective was enough.

By then, however, the Master had disappeared without a trace.

It had taken the Detective this long to track him down. After years of fruitless searching, he had finally thought to follow through on the plants. And from there, it was not that hard. Seeds and spores from several exotic specimens unknown anywhere in Europe had been found on the bodies. Where had they come from?

Only a day ago, his contacts had told him of a large, foul-smelling box which had recently arrived from Brazil. The Detective managed to find and speak to the very coachman who had delivered it to the mansion.

When he arrived, it was still dark, but he saw a light glowing from the back of the property. A strong scent of roses greeted his nostrils, and as he walked through the garden, an eerie wind whispered through the trees.

When he got there, if he'd had any doubt, the sight in the greenhouse told him all he needed to know.

A cloud of bees and flies hovered in the center of the room. A scent of licorice was so strong it made him sick. Fiore was there, laid out on a dissecting table, exactly like his victims.

The Detective stood over him, knowing that even if he was right, no one would either believe him or care. The madman was dead; what else was there to do?

But he stood, and stared, for a long time.

The handsome face was twisted into a grimace of pain, the eyes open, the bloodied mouth frozen wide, as if mid-scream. The hands had already stiffened, the fingers constricted into knots. He was naked, and his cock protruded hard and swollen from his body.

The sharp eyes of the Detective took in the mess of plant parts and blood strewn over the room, the wall of knives and the neatly labelled vials and glass jars with things floating inside. He knew therein would lie the proof, if it was required.

But he didn't need it.

He continued to look, wondering, Who are you? Who are you?

He saw the fountain pen, and reaching out, carefully removed the little piece of parchment.

+++

That day, not even an hour after he arrived, the storm came.

It wiped out everything.

The Detective fled with the remaining servants, and they watched as the greenhouse was torn off its foundations. He saw his evidence fly away. Bushes and trees, uprooted, whipped into a cyclone of spinning flowers, knives, and pieces of parchment. They watched, and looked at each other fearfully, too scared to say what they thought they heard and saw.

A whispering voice, swishing, from the center of the storm, and the funnel of wind, deliberate and conscious in its movements, intently destroy every last corner of the garden, sweeping it all into the sea. When it was over, nothing was left but the paper he held in his hand.

He hadn't even had time to look at it before the storm came.

Written in Italian was the only remaining fragment from the story, a story neither he nor anyone would ever know:

"From Erotic Horror, with love."

+++

The mansion was torn down, and for decade upon decade it remained a desolate spot where nothing would grow.

In time, it was paved over to make way for a mini-mall, and they built a Kinko's over the exact spot where the Master's garden once lay.

The manager of the store kept his office on the second floor. He liked to work there. The windows overlooked the fields, and the sea beyond. And on some days, when the winds picked up, he would smell it.

Oh it was lovely, and so, so sweet.