Hamish and the Impossible Flowers

It took all of five hours into the day for Hamish to get his first bee sting of the year. He'd been tossing another handful of eggshells into the compost pile. Kailee's idea, the pile had quickly grown from a smelly hillock of rotting vegetable ends and shredded leaves to something dark, rich, and fragrant: the smell of nutrient-rich soil.

He loathed it.

He had shoveled into the pile at least once a week for three months, turning the rotting vegetation in the shadow of dozens of sunflowers: each twice as tall as Hamish himself.

Also Kailee's idea, he naturally loathed the sunflowers as well. It didn't help that he'd never been able to shake the idea that they were watching him.

"They follow the sun, silly," Kailee had once told him. "Not a Gloomy Gus like you."

Terms like "Gloomy Gus" had been the sort of thing that drove Hamish insane. She was a good woman, but by the time she'd left him, they'd reached a point where everything she said and did irritated him. Somehow he'd continued to maintain the remnants of what she'd left behind last week, when she'd loaded her little bumper sticker-covered car with her belongings and left him and his nearly empty trailer behind.

He loathed her, and he loathed her sunflowers. As he took them in, their shadows trailing across his face, a honeybee worked its way up his shorts. He shook his leg to release the little insect, rattling it like the ball bearing in a can of spray paint. The insect responded by stinging him, dropping to the gravel driveway, and dying. The sting sent an unreal jolt of lightning pain past Hamish’s knee and into his thigh. He continued to shake his leg over and over in a moment of childish panic, somehow certain that there must be more than one bee that had snuck into his shorts.

The shorts: also Kailee's idea.

"I watch you do chores in those blue jeans and it just makes me sweat. These'll keep you much cooler."

Suddenly furious, Hamish tore the linen shorts off and held them at arm's length. He fumed at them for a full minute before tossing them into the compost pile. He stabbed at the navy and palm tree print with his shovel again and again. They were the sort of shorts worn by fans of Jimmy Buffett and people who owned boats with names like Pier Pressure. As the fabric disappeared beneath the darkness of the compost he snarled to himself fuck shorts because they were the uniform of a child and no man ought to wear them anyway.

When all evidence of the shorts was gone, Hamish tramped back to his trailer, leaning the shovel against the hot vinyl exterior and slamming the front door behind him though there were no neighbors for miles to hear his impotent rage.

The homestead, at least, had been Hamish's idea. The operative word being "idea." But like everything else, his idle, out loud daydreaming had been enough for Kailee to take the notion and build concrete walls around it. No, not concrete: crystal. Concrete wouldn't have been good enough for that girl: everything needed to shine, to gleam. Everything in the world needed to be mysterious and beautiful. It was the sort of attitude that had attracted Hamish to her in the first place, a little over a year ago. She, the vaguely witchy art teacher with a cart full of cardboard and kaleidoscope colors: every kid's favorite teacher at Sundown Appalachia Elementary. And he, the grumpy but respected security guard who had been hired by the board after the most recent story on the news about kids bringing guns into schools had been real enough to scare the principal into making some sort of gesture.

An unlikely pair: that's what Kailee liked about them. There was something poetic about it. The Republican with the taser falls in love with the hippie and her finger paints. He allowed himself a cynical grin as he considered the almost bare interior of the single wide trailer.

Nothing poetic about this, Hamish thought to himself as he settled into the recliner that had the best view of the television set. That was, last week when there was a television set. A serial bachelor, Hamish had always preferred to travel light, choosing apartments that were already furnished.

Kailee couldn't have been more different. Her life was decorated in a garish assortment of tchotkes and trinkets that she'd accumulated over the years. Costume jewelry and polished stones and crystals and magnets for tourists that said things like "Almost heaven, West Virginia." The first time he'd visited her apartment, the sheer amount of crap that covered every available surface made him worry that he’d have to make love to her on a mountain of snow globes.

But it had been worth it at the time. She was pretty and said kooky things about his aura that he didn't really understand. But it felt good to have someone talk about him for a change, instead of always steering the conversation toward themselves. But her eccentricities quickly started to annoy him, particularly in the close confines of their new home.

And that was to say nothing of her nonsensical fears.

Ever since they’d moved into the country, she’d become prone to peering out the windows, always keeping her eyes toward the woods that encircled the trailer. It was a quarter mile gravel drive that brought them from the main road to their little oasis: a still, grassy locale surrounded by the deep, impenetrable woods of the Pisgah.

It felt, she'd said, like they weren’t alone. Like they were being watched by the trees. She'd said this every day since they'd moved in.

He hated that sort of talk from her. The woods were creepy enough as it was: particularly at night. And there were evenings that he was sure he could see figures walking between the trees: long, loping silhouettes with no real shape to them. But the moment he'd drawn a bead on them, they would disappear. Why did she have to take her own weird fears and make them so real?

That fear was where the sunflowers had come from. She’d planted them first thing, and they’d grown preternaturally fast: reaching waist height in a matter of days. Their round faces looked toward the darkened woods, as if they were on patrol. Kailee loved it, but Hamish took no comfort from them: particularly as they grew past his own height.

“They’re not supposed to grow so fast,” he’d said.

“I think it’s nice,” she’d said. “They’re our guards. Our sentries.”

“I’m supposed to be the guard. The sentry,” he’d reminded her.

“Don’t be silly,” she’d said, scratching her cat between the ears. “They’re just sunflowers.”

That cat had been another sticking point.

It had the run of everything. Even through all her clutter, Kailee managed to make sure that every room in the house had a section dedicated to Apple: her Persian. As ugly and spoiled as any cat Hamish had ever seen.

It's not like he hadn't tried to make friends.

"Hey Apple Jack," he'd said to the tiny ball of fluff the day they met. Apple had replied with claws that sank deep into Hamish's forearm.

"Apple's a girl," Kailee had said, stroking a hand down the monster's back and sending up a cirrus cloud of shed fur. "She's got her own ways about her, don't you Apple?"

The cat licked its chops and purred, staring daggers in Hamish's direction.

It didn't get better with time. Everything about the cat seemed to piss him off. Or, more to the point, Kailee's affection toward the cat. Everything was a goddamn production. The cheap store brand cat food wasn't good enough for Apple, even if Hamish and Kailee had to live humbly on public school salaries. Every one of the various knick knacks and doo dads that filled her space seemed to have a thin layer of fur that settled into the recesses.

She sang to it, for Christ's sake. Little songs that she'd make up on the spot while she was reading her new age books about energy or chakras or whatever.

"Missus Apple isn't foooood," she'd sing. "Don't put her in a pie or she'd be in a very bad moooood."

Kailee never sang songs to him.

Any time he found another clawmark in his recliner, it was always the same. He went to spank the cat, and Kailee stopped him, explaining that you didn't spank cats.

"Well no wonder they're spoiled," he'd said. "They don't have any goddamn discipline in their lives."

The day Kailee left, she'd packed everything that would fit into her car before realizing that she'd left no space for the cat. She'd been on the verge of tears, ready to unpack a quarter of the ancient Kia onto the driveway to make room. But Hamish, in what he saw as a sweeping moment of chivalry, offered to take care of the cat for the evening while she unpacked into her new apartment. She'd surprised him by taking him up on the offer. Maybe she'd been surprised too, because at that moment neither of them noticed Apple slinking out the open front door.

One day later, they were scouring the surrounding woods for any sign of the cat, and Hamish was more than a little relieved when it didn't show itself.

Good, he'd thought. Fuck that cat.

"I knew the forest wasn't happy about us being here," Kailee said between little sobs. "Now it's stolen my cat."

He'd frowned, willing himself not to glance into the darkness of the woods. To not search for those bending, loping shapes in the trees. He wasn't a child, after all. But the comment irked him, all the same. No talk of the forest stealing their relationship away from them, Hamish couldn't help but notice. Just the damn cat.

He'd promised to set out a have-a-heart trap that very evening: a promise that he had no intention of following through on. She gave him a look that said she suspected as much. Not an outright accusation. But a look that said “You’re doing this on purpose.”

Maybe that’s why he set the trap after all. Just to prove her wrong. The flavor of the cat food was turkey and cheese, which happened to be Hamish's favorite sandwich, so he figured this ought to work. The next morning dawned, wet and humid as North Carolina summers can be. The dew had settled on the red clay ground, the trap, and the ornery Persian cat inside.

Kailee called that day not long after breakfast, and as Hamish sipped his coffee and inspected the grouchy face of Apple, he told her he was sorry: that the cat hadn't fallen for the trap. And though she wasn't there to show a suspicious face again, he could imagine it. There was a certain hesitation in her voice. As if she knew for a fact that he was lying, but didn't know if she had the right to express that suspicion out loud.

He'd assured her that he would try the trap again tonight. And, he added, that she should call if she found the cat. After all, these animals have a sense of home, and he wouldn't be surprised if Apple was on the hunt for her mom's new stomping grounds.

"It's just nature," he'd said.

When he ended the call, Apple looked him in the eyes and hissed.

"Give it a month," he said. "Apple Jack."

He was certain that a month would be the extent of it. It would be enough time for her to realize just how good Kailee had it with Hamish. She'd return and what do you know, the cat came back too: just in the knick of time. He'd tell her it was a sign, and he knew she'd go for that because she was the sort of vaguely spiritual hippie who believed in signs. Went absolutely bug fuck for them, in fact.

And in the meantime, he'd discipline the cat, though he wasn't yet sure what that meant. He didn't know if cats were smart enough to shake hands or play dead or anything, but he knew that a firm hand would make for a cat less likely to scratch and bite. Definitely less likely to look a working man over with eyes that suggested she was better than him.

Kailee would be damn impressed: probably impressed enough to get a dog instead.

As he pondered all of this, Apple spun slowly, lifted her tail, and took a dump. The have-a-heart trap was settled on the vinyl floor in the kitchenette for exactly this sort of situation. After the first runny shit onto the carpet, Hamish had considered throwing the cat into the dark of the thicket: make a meal of her for the coyotes. But knowing his luck, she'd befriend whatever creepy shadow demons lived out there and he'd be double fucked.

So instead, he climbed out of his recliner and headed to the bathroom, idly rubbing the bee sting on his leg as he did.

He was ripping a single square from his last roll of toilet paper when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. The bedroom was a large, blank space now that Kailee had taken their futon: a metal contraption with a thin mattress permanently set in "bed" mode. He'd taken to sleeping in his recliner at night, and hadn't any reasons to enter the bedroom since Kailee had left. But now, he noticed what appeared to be a rock, perfectly centered on the windowsill above where the futon/bed would have been.

He was certain he'd never seen the milk-colored stone before. It was about the size of a ping pong ball, and striated with rough veins of deep green: the same color as the forest that surrounded the single wide. He wasn't sure why, but it made him shiver: as if someone had snuck in during the night and placed the object right under his nose. More likely, Kailee had left it as some sort of parting gift. A memento of their relationship, the significance of which was left for her and her alone to know. He rolled his eyes as he palmed the stone, returning to the kitchen to pick up the cat turd delicately with his tattered piece of toilet paper. He was surprised to note that the turd and the stone weighed about the same amount. If that meant it was a heavy turd or a light stone, he wasn't sure.

Instead of spending any more time considering the two unwelcome objects, he opened the door to his trailer and winged both out into the garden, where they disappeared among the thick stems of the sunflowers.

He felt better.

Tomorrow would be different, he decided. No more turning the compost. No more watering the garden. This was his territory now, and he only did the chores that he thought were worth doing. He settled back into his recliner, and even the oh-so-superior cat wouldn't meet his eye. He was in charge now, he could feel it. He tilted the chair back, staring at the ceiling panels as he began to doze off.

The pain from the bee sting was already gone. He was going to have a nice evening.

***

The roof peeled back like a can of sardines.

Flakes of plaster and wood splinters fell on Hamish like flat, lazy pieces of volcanic ash, clinging to the wetness of his eyes and mouth as he fell backwards in his recliner. With a final, comic gasp, the chair split into two pieces at the joint, the springs twanging in pain.

Now blind, half-asleep, and completely unaware of what was going on, he scrambled, keeping his body and hands low, guiding himself to what he assumed was the bedroom. With no other furniture to adorn the single wide, he made it there without crashing into anything, and found the closet, ducking inside as he remembered that it was supposed to be a good place for earthquakes.

Or was it hurricanes?

Either way, the mountains of North Carolina weren’t particularly well known for either. He rubbed the plaster out of his running eyes, the thin light between the closet doors slowly coming into view. The single wide rumbled like a thundercloud, and Hamish backed further into the closet.

And then, silence.

Holding his breath, Hamish leaned forward unsteadily, attempting to peer out of the closet without pushing the doors forward.

The doors flew open with a snap, and something wrapped around him like butcher's paper pulled impossibly tight. Lifted to his feet, Hamish could feel a presence in the inches before his face. A form like a dinner plate shifted in the sudden darkness, as if it was staring at him.

When the light returned to the bedroom, it was through a fine series of fissures in the night. A pattern emerged and shifted, as if the glow was being held behind a disc made of scales. For a moment, the brightness stunned Hamish, but eventually he could make out the delicate details that surrounded the patterns on the disc. The long, wispy shapes that reached out from its edges, bright yellow even in the black of night.

It was a sunflower.

Bigger than any Kailee had ever grown, the monster’s glowing head was supported by a stalk as thick as a grown man's thigh. It stooped beneath the low ceiling of the trailer to stare at Hamish face to face. Its leaves were the size of palm fronds and somehow able to hold him, to lift him into the bedroom. The impossibility of the mutant flower plucked something in his brain, even as he willed his flight instinct to respond. When Hamish finally began to scream, the seeds and kernels that made up the sunflower's face began to reach out and spread, flooding the room with light, and releasing a torrent of bees from somewhere in the face’s center. The sound of them was a mad monk's choir, and he shrieked as the cloud of insects found his face and began stinging: sacrificing their lives to punish him.

Adrenaline gave him the strength to tear away from the leaves' grip, and he ran, violently slamming into one side of the hallway and then the other until he found himself back in the living room and its torn ceiling. Like a sunflower filled jungle, more of the yellow and brown plants had already crept their way through the opening, carried on stalks that stretched from the darkness outside, lining the walls like moss. Dozens of them turned to greet him, their bright light hitting Hamish and making him feel naked and exposed. A trio of sunflowers surrounded the cat in its have-a-heart trap, clutching its metal bars protectively with their verdant leaves. They were dwarfed by the awesome size of the other flowers that even now continued their steady progression into the heart of his living room: each of them with a glowing face the size of a hubcap. They reacted to Hamish's arrival with their own swirling facial patterns. Between their seeds, he could make out the silhouettes of more buzzing bees, and an awful humming filled his ears like a motorcycle engine. His face was swelling up, and he knew that any more stings would likely kill him. If he could just make it to his truck outside, it could carry him far away.

He dodged the first sunflower that lurched forward to meet him and hopped over the edge of the trap, now so encircled with the loving embrace of leaves that he couldn't even see the cat inside. His foot caught under something large and heavy: the shattered remains of his recliner. The world slowed, and a cloud of polyester stuffing mushroomed around the hole that he had kicked open.

Then, just as abruptly, the world returned to speed as Hamish's face slammed into the cold metal of the trailer's doorknob. It struck his temple like a butcher delivering the killing blow to a pig, and he tumbled over the four wooden steps from the trailer to the driveway, the world winking in and out of existence. He was face down, gravel pressing into the meat of his face and drawing blood. He rolled over onto his back, peering at the stars above him through eyes steadily swelling shut from the series of bee stings.

The starlight disappeared as another glowing disc advanced into his field of view. Whether it was the same gargantuan sunflower that had found him in the bedroom closet, he couldn't say. A cloud of bees haloed the striations of light that burned down onto him. He didn't know what to expect next: if the impossible flowers were here to kill him or god knows what else. He wasn’t sure it mattered.

As the sunlight-bright face of the flower stared down at him, he thought of Kailee and the day that they'd met. She'd been wheeling her cart full of art supplies past the main entrance of Sundown Appalachia Elementary: the tight curls of her hair rolled into a bun with a number two pencil holding it in place. He'd smiled and called her "Missus Kailee," the way he'd been taught after taking the job. The kids were expected to refer to all adults as Mister or Missus, and so he'd have to get used to the idea as well.

"Oh," she'd said in that bright way of hers. "It's Miss Kailee."

He’d taken that as a good sign.

That evening, over coffee and decaffeinated tea at the local cafe, she'd told him that she found it very admirable that he worked to keep children safe, and touched his arm across the table. The gesture made him feel warm: a warmth that crept over his arms and climbed up to his cheeks and the tip of his nose. It made him feel good in a way he wasn't sure how to reciprocate.

Over a year later, Hamish shifted in the driveway outside of his single wide trailer, gravel stones jabbing into the softest parts of his back. Heaving Hamish to his feet, the thin but strong leaves of the sunflower held his weight up, and he took one last look into the constantly shifting patterns of backlit seeds. The flower regarded him for a moment, as if it expected something. Hamish sighed in resignation, a new bee sting turning his nostril into a wishing well.

"To hell with it," he said, frowning up at the sunflower's glowing face. "She can have the damn cat."

***

When morning finally came, Hamish found himself buried to the neck in the compost pile. He would have liked to pretend that the preceding evening had all been nothing but a nightmare, but it would have required a delusion that even he was incapable of. His trailer's roof was still torn open, ragged blankets of metal curled upward like wood shavings. The garden of sunflowers had disappeared, with not so much as a seedling to show they had ever been there.

He didn't need to enter the trailer to know that the cat was also gone.

Eventually, he decided, he would go inside and take a long shower: roof or no roof. It would be a hot day. But for the moment, inside the dirt, eggshells, and discarded linen shorts of the compost pile, it was cool.

***

Phil Keeling is a writer and playwright. His work has been featured in periodicals, anthologies, and theatres all over the US. His first novella, “Juice”, will be released November 2023 from Psychotoxin Press.