1536 words

Rated PG: murder, arson

Prompt: Write about two people reconnecting after a rough patch in their relationship.

Author's note: I made this story up talking with my friend, and decided it would be fun to curse the internet with it

You are quite the gardener. In fact, you entered a gardening competition, thinking it would be fun. You had some amazing rose beds right behind your house. They grew in white, pink, red, purple, and blue if you added food colouring.

Your neighbour, your gardening rival, took notice of this. She hated you so much. So, one day, she took a lighter and a plastic water bottle filled with gasoline. 

“Oops!” she exclaimed, tossing the water bottle into the rose bush.

“My bad!” she lit a piece of paper, and threw it in as well.

It turns out, when you light a plant right behind a house, you might also light the house on fire. Your gardening rival watched as your paint job went up in flames. Good riddance, she thought.

For some reason, you were visiting your dying mother, so you weren’t in the house when it went up in flames. You could see the smoke from three blocks away, and sped up your car, suspecting the worst. Only your goldfish, Finns, died. Your rat ran away before the fire could engulf it.

You watched as your gardening rival was taken away by the police. She thrashed back and forth, and screamed she was only trying to win the gardening competition by torching your plants. The police believed her, so she was put in a nicer prison.

But, guess what? Your gardening rival had relit her taste for arson. She loved watching the flames burn at her fingertips. That’s how she accidentally burned off her fingerprints. It was a blessing in disguise.

Prison changed your gardening rival. They cut off the tops of their ears. It turns out, ears are just as unique as prints are. They also started to wear white contact lenses. Guess what? Eyes are all different too. This actually made it easier for people to find her. They just look for the person with no ear tops and white contacts.

The whole time your gardening rival was in jail, all they could think about was the flame. The red, orange, and yellow tongues lapping at buildings was such a beautiful sight. But she only liked arson if it started on plants. Plastic just didn’t have the ring to it, you know?

So, your gardening rival gave a suggestion to the warden: remedial gardening therapy for the inmates. Grow some petunias, and get used to holding shovels without using them to hide a body. It would be the perfect use for the new yard.

Over the next five months, basil, cucumber, carrots, and potatoes were grown in the prison’s yard. It actually really helped many women. They became friendlier, violence was down by 64%, drug dealing was down 31%, and pranking down by 16%. That last one was a big issue. Too many shoelaces tied together.

The lack of smuggling made it really hard for your gardening rival to find a lighter. Winifred, who used to run the propane and propane accessories department, actually laughed when your gardening rival asked for gasoline.

“What is this, Texas?” She had joked.

Your gardening rival suspected that all the fresh vegetables were messing with her head.

Luckily, the warden was a smoker, and very blind. So, on Tuesday when they served bologna sandwiches for lunch, your gardening rival set ablaze the prison. Starting the flames, of course, on Winifred’s stupid drug-free cucumbers.

The garden was so burnt, nothing was salvaged. Even Gertrude’s very resilient potatoes didn’t survive. This made the inmates furious. They looked for someone to blame. They went immediately to your gardening rival. She tried to deny it, but she was laughing maniacally as the flames tore through the plants, screaming “Rise, Rise!”

This made everyone want to murder her, with gardening hoes for a nice twist of irony. Your gardening rival couldn’t have this. It’s hard to start fires when you’re dead. At least, your gardening rival thinks it would be. Ghosts can’t touch stuff, so she’d have to possess someone. Gross.

Your gardening rival had the perfect plan. She snuck into the warden’s office, and wrote up a fake report of her being an undercover cop, Candy Cane Strawberry. She just thought of vape flavours, and the name came easily.

With prisoners wanting to kill this cop, she would have to go somewhere else. She couldn’t have her cover blown, after all. It took a little convincing. But she did it. She achieved every criminal’s dream, getting into witness protection.

So, she went to the sandy beaches of Vancouver, as Darla Sneedling. She got a job at a gas station. It made it really easy to steal food, money, and enough lighters to line her one-bedroom apartment.

She joined a parish, and asked the priest a bunch of questions about the wood used to construct the church. She needed to know because she intended on stealing the planks to light the preschool on fire. Not when it was open, obviously. That would attract too much attention.

Your gardening rival carried out her plan to torch the preschool on a Monday. She was in the middle of pouring gasoline on the toys, when a janitor interrupted her. Let’s just say they didn’t exactly let her go.

She had a court date on taco Tuesday at her gym. The gym actually made more money as a fast food restaurant. It was genius. Your gardening rival was munching down on a plain tortilla when she remembered that her fate would be decided.

She had another idea. She ran into court, and pretended to be a witness of her own crimes. She said that the treacherous person who tried to light the daycare on fire had threatened to kill her. She cried and lay down on the court floor, rolling around. One, to show that she was distressed. Two, to try to seduce that hot stenographer.

So, witness protection again. Darla Sneedling died, and became Mariachi Oriental. They stopped allowing people to choose their own names after that. It was an all time low, honestly. Your gardening rival was very proud of having banned that.

Next on her to-do list was the Marshall in charge of her case. She needed them to cut down on the check-ups, so that she could plot her arson more frequently. So putting them on her good side was a must.

They got more than friendly, though. Soon, they started going out. To the movies and to the shooting range. To burger places and hardware stores and gas stations. Your gardening rival hated to admit it, but she was starting to fall for the Marshall.

Then came the proposal. They were just sitting at home, drawing pictures of various objects on fire. Marshall showed your gardening rival a picture of a dog with flames shooting up it’s butt. That’s when your gardening rival knew.

A few days before the wedding, your gardening rival found out that she was pregnant. She should have noticed, not being able to see her feet anymore. She didn’t know who the father was, considering Marshall was a woman.

Then she remembered that she had gotten herself artificially inseminated one night when she was drunk. She had imagined making arson a part of the family business, and the thought had teared her up.

After the wedding, Yosemite Samuel, or Yo for short, was born in the back of a rental truck while Marshall and your gardening rival were making out. She didn’t notice until the head was poking at her. She thought the contractions were just period cramps. Good, she thought. She hadn’t had one in a while.

When Yo was breastfeeding, your gardening rival drank phoenix ashes. Phoenixes are the birds of fire, so breastfeeding mothers in her family would drink their ashes in smoothies. That way, the fire would make it into the baby’s blood.

Actually, the whole witness protection thing caused a few problems with acquiring phoenix ashes. Her family couldn’t find her, so she had no way of getting the stuff. So she just bought some white powder from some guy behind an arcade, who claimed it would make her live forever, and dyed it with food colouring.

The next three years were actually fairly normal. The Marshall, your gardening rival, and Yo lived an arson-free life. Your gardening rival missed the adventure, but gave it up to teach her techniques to Yo.

The last straw was when a factory caught fire. It was just three blocks from where your gardening rival lived. She saw the flames while she was vacuuming, and cried. She fell down on the floor and wept. Because she hadn’t started it.

That night, she finally told the Marshall the truth. The whole truth. The gardening that had re-sparked her interest in lighting stuff up. The trip to prison. The first witness protection program. The lighting all the plants with gas station lighters.

The Marshall smiled. They took a deep breath, and took your gardening rival’s hand.

“I know, my love.” They said.

Because, it turns out they were already in this story. This person had gotten the Marshall job after their house had burned down and they lost interest in gardening. That’s right. That person...was you.