Where The Green Things Grow

Sensitive Content Warning!! : Mental Health / Suicide or Self Harm

Where the Green Things Grow

The rot started in Eli’s fingertips.

At first, he thought it was just dirt—black crescents tucked under his nails, stubborn smudges along his knuckles. It made sense. He hadn’t touched a garden in years, but muscle memory was powerful. Maybe something in him had gone back to digging, even in his sleep.

He tried scrubbing it off with vinegar and steel wool, but it only got darker. Then it spread. His skin softened, paled, flaked. The scent—earthy and sweet, like something decomposing in the sun—clung to him no matter how many showers he took.

So he stopped showering. He stopped everything.

And one day, he packed up what little he still owned and walked into the greenhouse behind the house he’d abandoned years ago.

It was barely standing. Ivy crawled over its bones like it was trying to hold the place together. Glass panels were cracked, rust coated the hinges, and the door groaned like it remembered him—and wasn’t sure he deserved to be back.

Inside, it was a graveyard of green. Orchids long dead. Seedlings dried into nothing. Pots overturned, soil hardened like ash. The air was thick with humidity and memory, and the second Eli breathed it in, he felt something in his chest loosen. Or break.

He set up a cot in the corner where she used to sit.

And waited.

The rot reached his wrists by the third morning.

It didn’t hurt. That was the worst part. There was no searing pain, no infection. Just the sense that something inside him had given up and the earth had started moving in.

He spent his days pulling weeds, rearranging pots, clearing the dust. He didn’t try to replant anything. Not yet. It didn’t feel right. Not until he found the journal—her journal—tucked behind the last row of lavender.

The cover was warped. Pages crinkled from water damage. But her handwriting was there, clear as a memory.

Day 3: The bluebells look tired. I think they miss the sound of his voice. I do too.

Day 17: I planted foxglove. Something poisonous, something beautiful. It felt honest.

Day 43: I thought if I kept planting, I wouldn’t notice he was gone. I was wrong.

Day 58: I think the flowers are listening. I hope he never comes back. I hope he does.

He read every word with hands that no longer felt like his.

There had been no funeral. At least not one he’d gone to. She’d died in this greenhouse, crouched in the dirt like she was sowing something. Her parents found her. Sent him a letter. He left it sealed for weeks.

The guilt came slow. Then all at once.

He had left because he couldn’t take it anymore—the crying, the silence, the smallness of their world. She’d begged him to stay. He told her he needed space.

She gave it to him.

Eli hadn’t touched a garden since.

Now, the rot had spread to his forearms. Veins darkened to deep green. His breath smelled like moss and something sharp, like rainwater soaked in iron. Still, he stayed.

He cleaned. He repaired. He waited.

One night, he dreamt she was sitting across from him. Her hands were covered in dirt. She looked up, smiled. Didn’t say a word.

The next morning, he began planting.

He started with foxglove. Then wild thyme. Lavender. Bluebells, although they barely sprouted. He watered them gently. Whispered her name into the soil. Left pages from the journal pressed between rocks and planters.

Every seed he planted, he apologized.

One by one.

The greenhouse started to breathe again. The air warmed. Ivy retreated from the glass as if to let the light in. A beam of sun found his cot for the first time in weeks.

The rot crept higher.

It was on his shoulders now. His neck. The skin behind his ears softening, changing. His hair had begun to fall out in tufts, replaced by a soft green fuzz like moss growing over forgotten stone.

Still, no pain.

Only a deep, humming fullness. Like something inside him had stopped fighting.

He wrote her letters in the notebook. Not to be read. To be buried. He folded each one and tucked them beneath the bluebells. Words she never got. Words she maybe never needed, but he did.

I loved you selfishly.

I left so I wouldn't have to see the worst in myself through your eyes.

You deserved more than what I ran from.

I'm sorry I learned too late.

His handwriting grew worse as his fingers stiffened. Bark, maybe. Or something like it, forming beneath the skin.

He couldn’t leave now even if he wanted to.

That was the truth of it.

And for the first time in his life, he didn’t want to leave.

The plants grew faster than they should have. The lavender stretched toward him. The foxglove bloomed in waves. And one morning, there in the middle of the greenhouse, a single bluebell.

He hadn’t planted it.

He fell to his knees in front of it. Reached out with what little movement he had left. His hands no longer looked human. They looked like roots.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

The bluebell swayed.

It didn’t bloom away.

It didn’t turn from him.

That was enough.

When the neighbors found him weeks later, they weren’t sure what they were looking at.

The greenhouse was overrun, but not wild. Not angry. It was full. Alive. Beautiful. The air was warm. Sweet. And in the center, where the light poured down like an offering, a chair made of branches and moss.

He sat in it, still.

Peaceful.

His chest cracked open, not from violence, but growth. Wildflowers spilled from his ribs. Ferns curled around his shoulders. His mouth was open slightly, like he was about to say something, or had just finished saying it.

No note.

Just a notebook in his lap.

And beside it, a bluebell blooming in perfect silence.

Forgiveness, written in green.