March 28th, 2005
I have very slowly been working on a short story about a man who kills other people. Hard to work on, because it is far from my experience of people (or myself). Despite the opinion of a few folks out there, I am not a violent man. Just sharp with my words. And there is one weaselly little gerbil out there that I might consider toilet papering its car or office (or perhaps mailing it a fish), but that is the extent of my physically-damaging thoughts.
So this story that I am working on is more than a departure for me ... it is practically a trip to another dimension and back. And until recently I've had trouble understanding how I could possibly have thought of this homicidal character in the first place.
And then it all came clear when my wife reminded me that she and I have been on a year-long death-spree. We have murdered 6 living things. One after another, meticulously, in cold blood. And even as I type this, there is another living thing slowly expiring on our balcony. Yes, soon we will be responsible for the horrible torturous and long-term-suffering death of our seventh one.
I am talking about ferns.
We started hanging ferns in our living room about a year ago. The first one began turning brown and losing bits of itself pretty quickly, but we were not deterred. One only has to stare a fern in its ... er ... fronds as the life slowly melts away once, and then he or she is inured against any future sympathy for the life of a fern.
One dead fern is a tragedy, but six dead ferns just a compost heap.
In fact, one can even get used to the bits of fern that inevitably scatter around the living room and ignore those entrails, not even bothering to step around them after a while. The act of taking the fern down and carrying it to the shower for watering (a clever but dastardly ploy to keep it alive a bit longer so that it can suffer even more) leaves the bathroom looking as though the little thing exploded in there. But still no mercy: it is returned to its hanging place where it can very visibly die slowly over weeks and weeks.
The astounding thing to most observers, though, is the fact that after killing the first one, we have been hell-bent (maybe literally!) on killing more and more and even more [insert evil laugh here].
* * *
But, rare though it is, people can change, and we finally got tired of having the chlorophyll of six ferns on our hands. So the weekend before last we went to a fake plant store (the plants were fake, the store wasn't) and bought some fake ivy and a fake crown of a plant. A very attractive little white bucket was later acquired, and now we have fake plants hanging in our living room.
How nice.
But let's be clear here: The thrill is gone. No ferns hang in terror around us any more. No daily reminders of how powerful and dangerous we humans can be to ferns with our brains and opposable thumbs. No, we have reformed our murderous fern-killing ways. But it's not so fun any more. On the other hand, it's going to be ultimately less expensive and already a lot cleaner ... so I guess everything in life is a trade-off after all.
But if things get too bad, perhaps I can go out to our balcony and viciously trim some parsley leaves ... stand in front of the parsley plant and slowly chew its former members ... heh heh heh ...