How does your Garden grow?

As an afterthought, they sliced her tongue and left her to sleep. Because the extremities of pain and pleasure must feel the same. The breeze was crackling through, lifting the dry red soil on a heat infested afternoon.

This was once a secret garden where knives and shears diligently whirred all day, and sprinklers kept their vigil till the whistling evenings. The garden was kept in better shape than the country’s economy and blossomed in the controlled beauty of an Avon catalogue. The paradise had no place for defaulters. A drooping rose was an abomination; a hybrid petunia experiment gone wrong was an unfortunate sacrifice. Perfection piled up in imperfect hues, odd shapes, parasites, weeds, irregularities, and inescapable knowledge. Not a soul was let in, lest they found out something amiss. Some mould, a dead bee, a discoloured leaf.

It was deep into the splendour of Spring when she wandered into it. She saw through the beauty that survived only on branches, petted leaves that were meant only to be still-life paintings. She moved like the devil in a frozen fairy-tale. Whatever she touched, lost its unearthly magic. The perfect potted cacti sprouted out in anger, the bougainvillaea creepers ran merrily outside their trained track, the ridiculously puffed out dahlias sighed under her brown hand and turned the colour of earth.

They found her when she was sleeping among the garden that was now grown. They took their time, and let their perfect hatred destroy her. As an afterthought, they sliced her tongue so that their secret was safe.

Perfection piled up in imperfect hues, odd shapes, parasites, weeds, irregularities, and inescapable knowledge.