Time In the Seed

“Grow up.” Ms. Veemothe said, “You’re almost eleven years old, this is unacceptable behavior. You cannot act like this, do you understand?” She didn’t get an answer, but she did receive silent indignance. She burned two eye-shaped holes through her son’s forehead, hoping for an explosion of some sort. After the fit little Goldy just threw, combustion seemed a fitting punishment. No such thing transpired and Mrs. Veemothe retired from her son’s bedroom with a sharp thwap of the door. It left the whole house shaking, shelves and frames and the particles of air between it all, chittering violently. Until all the little sounds slowly died away and it seemed as if anything and everything had chosen to rest its gaze upon poor Goldy.

Goldy’s face was red hot with a color to match, no doubt from crying, but the streams of tears had since sizzled off his cheeks. He decided at this moment that his mother, Ms. Veemothe, was a witch. A cruel and vile witch that deserved to be burned at the stake. He and his dog, Chickenbone, would cheer as the flames crept up her body, along with the rest of the scorned village. Goldy would not forgive her this time. How could he? She betrayed him, his own mother! She had threatened to take Chickenbone to the pound if he didn’t get his math grade up to a B minus. Was he to take her hand in his and graciously accept this challenge? Say “absolutely Mother! Perhaps you should send me to the pound as well!”. Should he have said nothing at all? Preposterous. Chickenbone was his dog, she had no right to lock him up. So it only seemed logical to the young boy to scream and cry and get up on the dining room table and throw his dinner plate at the wall across the room, sending bits of meatloaf and mashed potatoes and pieces of ceramic all throughout the house as if gravity were giving them a tour of the property.

Goldy looked at his window. It was wide open. The breeze carried itself into his room, calling to him. 

At least B minus! 

The words rang through Goldy’s ears.

Grow up.

Those too. Swimming around his head like alphabet soup, heating until finally the pot boiled over. 

“Maybe I will grow up!” He shouted at the door. No response. a bit late it would seem. He doubled down. “I’ll leave, I’ll never come back!” 

The flame fizzled out slowly, his wick at its end. A wonderful plan began to form in the quietly rising smoke left by his flame: A boy and his dog… they’d train-hop across the country leaving no stick un-fetched. They’d travel far, far away from this place. Away from the influence of Mother Witch and into the vast unknown world where adventures were just waiting to be had. He’d bring his harmonica! And he’d teach Chickenbone to do flips on every G and F-sharp chord. They’d make their pay and move on to the next town, waiting to find the perfect place to settle. Goldy would put out an ad that read, “looking for new mom, will pay handsomely”. He’d interview every woman on the planet just to find the perfect one. A mom without bedtimes, a mom without rules or threats or meatloaf. She’d make him mac’n’cheese every day and give him candy right before he goes to sleep. Goldy would never feel anger or sadness or hatred towards his new mother ever again and he and Chickenbone would live happily ever after. Perfect.         

Where is Chickenbone? Goldy thought, springing from his fantasies, realizing an obvious hole in the plot of his break-out: the absence of his escape partner. The crack of light under his door was bright and uninhibited, no shadows passed by. No pitter-patter nor scritchity-scratch nor snarfle could be made out from the other side. This worried Goldy greatly. It was very unlike Chickenbone to be separated from Goldy for more than a handful of moments. Chickenbone and Goldy were closer than two magnetized, conjoined twins. 

Goldy thought of sneaking out on hand and knee to rescue his companion, but he then remembered the wicked gaze of Mother Witch, eyes lit like infernal spotlights, and the foul spells he would no doubt endure if caught. She had already cursed him to one night bereft of any and all companionship and he decided to not tempt any more devious curses from that bear trap she calls a mind. 

“Confound!” Goldy cursed. He heard this word in an old movie once and although its meaning remains a mystery to him, his usage of it in the current situation seemed more than applicable. I could say sorry… Goldy thought, but he knew he would not mean it and any attempt at ingratiation would certainly be met with cold stares and a long pointed finger directed towards his room. His plan would simply have to wait until morning when tempers burn off and Mother Witch breaks her curse. Poor Chickenbone, Goldy thought as he climbed into bed. I can only imagine the horrors he must be facing. 

On the other side of his door, down the hall, across the living room, and in front of Mother Witch’s den… there could be heard small scritchity-scratches and a muffled snarfle or two from behind the wooden door. 

…

Goldy woke up. There were three things he noticed right away: One, there was a sharp pain coming from the top of his head. He must have hit his headboard in his sleep but it felt more like the headboard had come alive, gotten angry at its current state of affairs, and cracked him a good one for it. Two, his feet were very cold. He looked down and noted a pair of feet, yes all in good order, but now a little further down the mattress and out from under his covers. Three, his pajamas had shrunk four maybe five sizes. Perhaps his mother used a different detergent in the last wash. 

This was all he could possibly notice within the given time before his body began to grow. 

Konk. His head slammed against the headboard once again. He turned around quickly as if the slab of wood was winding up for a second blow. His face was then smushed into the wall. He turned. His feet, now almost to the other side of his room, twisted and tangled outwards as the contents of a tube of toothpaste would when squished. The same could be said for his expanding tummy, still solid but somehow flowing as if liquid, it was certainly done acting in the way tummies usually do. If he didn't do something quick he’d end up a pile of Goldy mush, and he just knew he’d be the one to clean it up. He looks around for anything, something to help him from becoming a complete mess. The window! He crawls towards the opening in his wall without the use of his legs. The two have decided to take an extended vacation, lounging against Goldy’s door, ignoring the desperate calls from their boss. They went numb shortly after and while Goldy’s focus was preoccupied with his escape, small vine-like appendages began to sprout all over his lower body. Goldy reached up one hand, grabbing the top of his desk. Then the other. He hoisted himself upright. He pushed the window open. Goldy looks back at his body. A proper mistake, that was. His torso had been stretched like taffy and his lower half looked closer to curly fries than whatever it had been before.

This is a nightmare. Goldy thought. 

“Does anyone else feel lightheaded?” He asked aloud, presumably addressing the particles of air between it all. Goldy lost his vision first, then his balance, and out the window he went.

…

Goldy woke up, once again. To his surprise, he was not laying face down in the rose bush outside his window as he assumed, but rather face up in another place altogether. A place much too foggy for him to form a good idea of his surroundings. Rather damp as well. He was soaked to the bone, the cold gnawing at him like a caveman on the blunt end of a chicken leg. Goldy thought it wise to take a walkabout his new surroundings but was soon met with the jarring sensation one usually gets after swimming with a shark.

I can’t feel my legs, Goldy thought. And like most who have recently lost feeling in their legs, Goldy looked down to access the damage. Except there was no damage to access. His legs had been replaced with a long trunk, seemingly still growing and sprouting thin mandibles in all directions, connected to his body where his netherregions used to live. 

FWOOM. Like a seed sprouting from soil, Goldy’s head bursts from the pocket of moisture he woke up in, soon followed by the rest of his body. A slow, horrifying climb it was for the terror he felt. Starting in his toes, through his ankle, behind his knee, between his clenching buttocks, up his spine, and finally bursting through the doors of his brain yelling “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!”. But there was no fire, It would be very hard to find fire where he was. He had just emerged from a cloud and watched in disbelief as it began to shrink below him until it was half of its original size. He had grown overnight it seemed, in his unconscious state, and was now around 18,000 feet up or so. 

It did not look like he was slowing down. That’s all Goldy knew for sure. After the initial terror in his brain had closed up shop and retired to his stomach, he checked his basket for any remaining eggs. Not too many and most were cracking. He’d sooner get struck by lightning than figure a way out of this one. Actually, lightning seemed much more likely in the given circumstances. Goldy began to cry - very aggressively. He cried for hours until his eyes dried up and started to itch. Until microorganisms living on his cheeks put up picket signs while screaming “close the damns!”. All of his neighbors down below were quite confused from the one patch of rain falling on the Veemothe’s house, that and the fleshy trunk growing from Goldy’s bedside window. 

After crying so hard, for so long, Goldy became overcome with a hollow feeling. Empty and bored. He decided to stop being sad and Instead, he tried being happy. He looked around at the early morning sky. Beautiful really, when his eyes weren’t blurry with tears. It’s quite a different feeling given off, from a sunrise that is, when you’re a part of it. Something in the sunrise made Goldy feel much better, hopeful even. 

I won’t be up here for long, He assured himself. This will all be resolved soon. The police will come, and they’ll call the firemen, and someone will bring a paramedic or two. Yes, I’ll be down before lunch.

The mention of food made Goldy’s stomach rumble. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch, an apple and a turkey sandwich. I wonder what Mom’s making for lunch. I wouldn’t even mind last night’s meatloaf. Goldy started to cry again, but not because he was hungry or tired or scared. He was crying out of shame. He wanted to hug Mother Witch and tell her how sorry he was and beg her to forgive him. He wanted to watch one more movie with her and complain at the end when he realizes she fell asleep. He wanted to hear Mother Witch’s car pull up into the driveway and panic, remembering he forgot to defrost the ground turkey. He wanted to make a stupid joke one more time and hope to hear her infrequent laughter. He wanted to feel her arms around him just one more time. Goldy started to fear that it may be too late.

He looked around. It would seem he had stopped growing, but there was no way for him to be sure at this height. Everything was still, suspiciously so. It was as if someone had taken a picture of the sky with Goldy still in it, trapping him in the frame. The only thing keeping him from believing this was the slight swaying sensation he kept feeling and the wisps of clouds slowly forming in and out. 

One cloud he saw looked an awful lot like a cottage or a farmhouse of some sort. This confused Goldy, because to his knowledge, humans usually refrained from building houses at this altitude. And unlike most houses, this one seemed to move. It was moving towards Goldy. Goldy’s forehead was level with the floor of the house of clouds, leaving just enough room for his eyes and nose to poke up from the fog and take a peek inside the strange home.

Inside the house was a man with a very long and dirty gray beard, watering what seemed to be an entire rainforest of plant life. The man was without much clothing. The man was very tall, or so it seemed from the viewpoint of the floorboards where Goldy was, and Goldy thanked all the stars in the sky for the old man’s decision to wear underwear that day. The old man crossed the room towards strange blue and yellow triangular flowers. On his way, he felt an unusual sturdiness in his otherwise squishy floor followed by a muffled “Ouch!”. He looked down.

“My apologies… um… excuse me, but what kind of cloud are you?” The old man asks, tugging on his beard.

“I’m not a cloud!” said Goldy, holding back tears. 

“How confusing… you are in my cloud, are you not? Would this not make you a cloud as well?” He crouched down for a closer inspection.

“I’m not a cloud, I’m a boy!”

“A boy… oh a boy! Oh you must be that thing from down below! But then, whyever have you decided to come to my cloud?” 

“I don’t know, I started growing last night and then I stopped here. Your house ran me over!” Goldy paused. The strangeness of the man and his home had only now started to dawn on him. “Who are you?”

“Calm down boy, my cloud meant you no harm and in fact, it did you no harm. You said you grew up here? I dare say, I don’t recognize you at all.”

“No. Grew up, like a plant. I grew up down below.” Goldy said.

“Oh like a plant you say?” The old man was giddy now. “I know a thing or two about plants.” He turned and walked towards his garden as if satisfied with Goldy’s last statement and considered the conversation over.

“Is there anything you could do to help me?” Goldy asked, impatiently. 

The old man turned back towards the face in his floor, almost surprised, as if he forgot he was there. “Oh! Perhaps, you’d like some fertilizer, yes? To grow higher?” 

“No!” Goldy shouted, terrified at the prospect of continuing this nightmare. “I want to go back down, I want to go home! I want to see my mom and my dog Chickenbone!”

“Ah. I see…” The old man’s posture folded. He seemed like he now bore the weight of an adult grizzly bear. “Then you want me to kill you.”

“NO! What? Why would you think that?” Goldy began to panic, shaking violently back and forth in an attempt to escape from the floors of this madman's home.

“I thought you were ready to grow, Goldy. Such things shouldn’t be said with such passion, even in such a small room and so far away. I really did think so…” The old man ignored the boy’s behavior and started to prepare a mixture of plant leaves, seeds, and the juice of a jagged purple fruit in a mortar and pestle. The final product was a coarse, dark-green paste. He walked over to Goldy's face, still flapping about, and put his hand on the boy’s forehead. His hand conveyed more meaning than his mouth ever could. The touch warmed Goldy. It let him know this was almost over. “You want to go home, yes?”

“Yes…” Goldy said.

“Good. I’m going to help you, Goldy, but do not forget this blessing. Time in the seed should not be wasted, lest you wish to wilt.” His eyes were the color of burnt copper, he did not lie.

“How do you know my na-” Goldy choked, the old man’s longest finger, coated in the green paste, was halfway down the boy’s throat. Goldy’s eyes became bloodshot. There was little time for goodbyes as the boy’s descent began with a lurch and continued on by violently rocking him back and forth as he approached Earth’s surface at terminal velocity. Goldy could have sworn he saw his body catch fire. 

…

On the floor of his bedroom, Goldy looked around. His room was a mess. Shelves on the floor, his desk was upside down, mattress turned sideways, his closet turned loose, and his harmonica was on the floor, out of its case. Goldy did not smile nor did he cry. He spent the good part of ten minutes sitting in his mess, grateful. 

He’d have to start cleaning now if he didn’t want to get in trouble. And then there’s his math homework. Goldy had never quite enjoyed his math homework like he did on that clear, Sunday morning.