Greenhouse “Roots and Veins”

I still haven't been sleeping well. I've been finding it hard to focus on anything. I’ve been thinking about her too much. It is distracting.

My wife likes organic foods. She says they are better for you. I don't know anything about that. I just think they taste better. There is a greenhouse a bit further down the road. It is oddly shaped; more hexagonal than anything, all the edges being drawn up to the top into a single point. It has been operating for years, the glass muddied on the bottom, saturated with the color green.

Old and thick glass.

But when I went there recently, it was closed for business. This was odd, since the owner grows things all year round. I pressed him for information, but he only mumbled something and closed the door on me. Only later did I find out why.

Some of the people on the force are friends of mine from the old days. I don't know why I asked. I just did and for the life of me, I don't know why they told me.

It seems a body was found in the greenhouse, tangled in the winterberry patch.

The body was initially discovered after an observant neighbor noted that there was a break in one of the panes in the greenhouse.

The body was found in a rather severe state of disrepair. Although the case was declared as a suspected homicide, the extensive growth of the root system and the resulting damage to the surrounding tissues, made it difficult to determine what killed them. Someone had planted things in the victim’s flesh.

The roots had run deep into the soil, the veins and the roots running together. The plants in question was selected apparently because they could grow in tissue and find enough nutrition in the blood before the roots reached the ground.

They haven't specified what plants were used. There is a fear someone may use the information to do something nasty. Just speaks of how some people react to things like this.

No name has been released, but the decomposition and damage of tissues required dental identification. The owner hasn't entered the greenhouse since the body was discovered. I wouldn't want to either. It took me months before I could enter a hospital again. Even now I still avoid the old house, even though it adds several minutes onto my travel time. Most of all though, I still can't stand the sight of blood.

They found a note on the body, placed in a plastic bag. It said, “From my rotting body, flowers shall grow, and I am in them, and that is eternity.” Apparently, some painter wrote it. Seems no one can kill anyone around here without trying to make a point.

I hate this place.

I instead went to the local general store to get my groceries. Some young kid behind the counter recognized me. He then asked me what it was like to live in the house of a madman. With everything that had been going on, I'm surprised I didn't lay the bastard out. What the hell does he think it feels like? It is just a damn home. It’s a place I wanted to raise my family in, or at least repair some of the damage that had been done.

But that maniac who killed my wife, is now mutilating people again. Seems everywhere I look there is a new murder. I found out the other day that my neighbor behind my house is dead. Apparently, something tore him apart, and they still haven't found all the fucking pieces. And yet, no one has been able to tell me what the hell happened. No one has any idea what could have done it.

How is that even possible?

It is late again, and I have tried to go to sleep. But I keep thinking of her, and though Margaret is understanding, I know it bothers her. The woman is dead, and though I know she was my children's mother, and my former wife, grief isn't going to bring her back.

I'm now lying in bed, just thinking about the corpse from the greenhouse. Someone murdered that person, but felt it was important to plant flowers and ferns in the body. The simple question that bothers me is why? Why would someone do that?

Do they want to bring the corpse back to the earth, to just make the person useful in some way? Are they trying to tell us something? Or are they trying to tell themselves something. Or maybe, no matter what the doctors tell you, the fact is that there are some people that are just crazy. Some people just like to hurt other people for no good reason. Like the person who killed the man in the greenhouse.

Or the madman who killed my wife. Or the thing that killed my neighbor. All of the actions were pointless, and despite night after night of having these things rattle in my mind, I know there is no answer to all of it. Because under the surface, there isn't something unexpected.

There is just dirt.