His Wife’s Garden

Arthur dug up another weed with his trowel and shook the dirt loose. “Gotcha, little bastard,” he said with a toothy grin. His voice was raspy from years of smoking. No cancer, though. Audrey had told him over and over that smoking would give him cancer, and give it to her too. Wrong on both counts, he thought with sunny satisfaction. Audrey was dead now, but not from cancer. Finally she’d been wrong about something.

He adjusted his sun hat and took a deep breath of the warm, earth-scented air. Audrey’s garden was a masterpiece, no question. He’d planted it after her death, sort of in her memory. It was a beauty. The tomatoes were beginning to ripen, and the flower bed on the other side was a rainbow of sweet-scented blossoms.

Of course it was easy to create such beauty when he had so much time on his hands. Audrey was gone, and the kids never came by anymore. Chad hadn’t brought the new baby over once. Arthur had to go on the computer to see what his grandbaby looked like. That was the modern world for you.

“We did the best we could Audrey,” he said as he pulled more weeds, “but the world is just going to hell. I knew it as soon as that—fellow—got in the White House. The White House. I still can’t believe it.”

Next to him was a mason jar half-filled with vinegar. He took the lid off now and resumed digging around his tomato plants. As he dug he picked out bugs and dropped them into the jar. They curled up and died instantly. They didn’t suffer. Neither had Audrey.

“I do miss Chad, though,” he said reflectively. “I miss how he was before he married that woman. He was always such a good boy. Too good for her, and she knows it. That’s why she’s trying to turn him bad.”

He picked up an earthworm and dropped it into the vinegar. Earthworms were harmless to his tomatoes, but he liked to watch them writhe. Nasty little grubby things, they got what they deserved.

“I still love you, Audrey,” he said. His voice was thick with unshed tears. He had never cried for his wife and never intended to. “In spite of everything, you were the best wife you knew how to be. You never let that woman talk to you about that feminist bullshit she used on Chad. You were the best.”

There was a sprig of grass poking out of the soil next to a bleeding heart bush. He pinched it and pulled it out. No more weed. It was so satisfying to work out here. Immediate, visible results. Not so much like the real world. He picked a ladybug off a leaf and dropped it into the vinegar.

He glanced back at the row of tomatoes. There was something crawling on one of them.

“Ugh!” It was a slug. A big fat yellow one. He recoiled, but then he moved closer. There was a bunch of them, all over the tomatoes. They were like slimy little wads of snot, and they were covering the plants that he’d planted in his wife’s memory. This was his wife’s garden. The little bastards.

“I hate slugs,” he said aloud. “And they’re all over your tomatoes. Bastards.”

There had been a lot of slugs out here when he’d first planted the garden. Right after Audrey had died, but before the police started showing up with their questions. Something in the soil had attracted slugs, worms, and flies too. He’d worried that the bugs would draw attention to the garden, when it was still so new and ugly, but nobody had seemed to notice. Not even the police, though they had been out here poking around several times. And by the end of the summer, the tomatoes were growing nicely and the insects had calmed down. Everything had gone back to normal, except that Chad never came around anymore. Arthur’s daughter Denise lived on the other side of the country and claimed that he’d ruined her life, so he never expected anything from her anymore. Uppity feminist.

Arthur glared at the fat yellow slugs as though they were responsible for his family’s screwups. He hated them. Damn the goddam slugs, he’d make them suffer like he couldn’t do to the assholes in his life.

He picked up the vinegar jar and brought it close to the tomato plants. Could slugs smell? He hoped so. He wanted them to smell their impending death.

Christ, that sounded melodramatic. He was in one of those moods today. Spending the day in Audrey’s garden did that to him every time.

Arthur pinched a fat, slimy slug and pulled it off the tomato leaf. It pulled loose with a faint pop and left a string of clear slime in its wake. “Fuck you, you little bastard,” Arthur whispered, and he dropped it into the jar of acidic death.

Or he tried to. Somehow the slug was stuck to his fingers. He flicked it with his thumb, but the slug stuck to his thumb.

Something wet touched his other hand. He looked down to see another slug, this one easily two inches long, sliming over his fingers.

“Ew!” he shook both hands so hard the bones popped, but both slugs held on like glue. And they kept on sliding. Cold, slimy trails oozed up past his wrists.

He grabbed the slug on his left forearm and threw it as hard as he could. It stuck fast to his fingertips. Again he shook his hand to flick it away, and this time it popped off like a grape. Arthur sighed with relief and opened his mouth to curse the slugs again. But instead he screamed.

The slug had landed on his lower lip, and now it was sliding into his mouth.

The vile slime tasted like batteries, like the medicine his mother had once put on a canker sore. He worked his tongue, trying to spit it out, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge. It sat there, fat and cold and foul, like a wad of snot he couldn’t hock up.

He started to reach for it, but he stopped when he saw that both of his hands were completely covered in slugs. Their little feelers waved at him. He gasped, and the slug shifted in his mouth.

Fine, he thought viciously. Don’t want to come out? Then soak in a different acid bath!

Arthur steeled his nerves, took a deep breath, and swallowed just as hard as he could.

The slug slid down his throat in a foul, slimy mass.

Then it stopped.

Arthur coughed, but it still didn’t move. Just sat there, like a disgusting wet lump.

Then it began to swell.

His throat was filled, and it continued to swell. His breath rasped harshly, and still it swelled. Then his breath wheezed to a standstill.

Desperately he shoved both slug-covered hands into his mouth, poking and jabbing for purchase. The swollen slug didn’t move, but half a dozen more joined their brother.

Arthur’s mouth was full of slugs, and all of them were swelling like slimy balloons. They covered his face. They filled his throat, his nostrils. They covered his eyes.

Arthur never managed a final scream.

As the slugs fed on his glassy, unseeing eyes, a trickle of fluid flowed from each eye. Ants came out of the ground to feast and gather the protein-rich ocular fluid.

At last Arthur was crying for his wife.