Not For Nine Million Pounds // If Only

I have a secret. A secret only my family knows about. A secret that I wouldn’t tell for nine million pounds. Ten, maybe. But definitely not nine. Nine would be wasting my time. Mine, and whoever’s trying to extract the secret from me, but they don’t know that. 

Ten million pounds! You may be thinking. What’s so important?

(If you’re American, you might be adding “is that a lot?” onto the end of the first question. Spoiler: yes.)

But yes, that is the question, isn’t it? What’s so important that I wouldn’t tell for ten million pounds?

I’m not going to tell you. Unless, of course, you have 10 million pounds. Do you?

Hm. . .I thought as much.

Now, let me tell you. When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut. Then a police officer. Then a scientist. Then a librarian. A teacher. An astronomer. Anything and everything. But now, I just want to be one thing.

A helper.

I just want to help.

That’s what they say in those films. The people who say that always end up doing the most harm to the main character and then cry about it as they’re dragged away. Oddly specific, I know. Bear with me.

But I’m different. Yes, yes. It’s cliche. Please, for my sake, stay focused. I’m different. I’m not a toxic person. I don’t make things worse. I use my life to help others; I use my life for good. 

Or at least, I try to. 

Sometimes, it doesn’t work out that way. Sometimes, the person I’m trying to save ends up dead. Or worse, expelled.

Just kidding. I think death is worse than expulsion.

Sorry, just trying to lighten the mood.

What was I. . .oh, yes. Ends up dead. Dead on the table in front of you. You’re made aware of it only by the ringing that starts in your ears when the person dies. Before they were dead it was less ringing, more beeping. Beep. Beep. Beep.

The heart monitor.

It’s always there, in my head. It always plays. I can tell when someone is dead, when their heart stops. It starts ringing, the line goes flat.

No, that isn’t the secret I was talking about. You still don’t have ten million pounds. . . I digress. That thing about the heart monitor- should that be a secret?

Some say I’m insane. Some say I’m “wicked smart” for being able to tell the moment someone dies.

Wondering where I work?

Not in a morgue, obviously. The ringing would be unbearable.

Think about it. Deduct. A place with lots of ringing, where I can help people. People die. People are on tables.

Have you got it? No? Really? I’ll tell you a story, then. See if that helps.

Once, I was sitting in the living room. Watching TV. The constant beeping is more of a background noise than a foreground one. In the show, a character by the first name of Diane died. At the moment she did so, a line in my head went flat. Of course, I assumed it was for the character.

Looking back on it, that was very illogical of me. How could there be a real heart monitor for a fake death? Of course, I could be tricked. I’m not a lie detector. But still, very illogical. A grave mistake.

I continued watching the show. I mistakenly disregarded the fact that a line went flat, that someone nearby was dead. Dead! Someone nearby, too! What if it was a person that I knew? A person I loved?  

It was. It was my girlfriend, Andrea. She died that day. I couldn’t save her. I disregarded her slowing heartbeat, the less frequent beeps, in my head as the character. The character. I lost her to a character. How could I have been so foolish?

I resolved never to be that foolish again. To always use my gifts for what’s best. And so, I became a doctor. I save lives, and saving lives saves me.

I vowed only to use my powers for good, always to help others instead of indulging myself and ignoring the powers in my brain.

I like to think I have no powers. That everything I know is just instinct. But there’s no way my ten million pound secret can be called instinct.

Oh, you’re right, of course. It must be very valuable, the power. Especially since I won’t tell it for nine million pounds.

Doing good in the world has made me some enemies. They’ve sensed my secret. They can tell I’m hiding something huge. They are my archenemies. They go by the name of. . .

The Gardeners.

Yes, that’s right. The Gardeners. I know what you’re thinking. If you think at all, that is. But if you do, you’re probably confused. This isn’t some rich family with the surname of Gardener. It is literally the gardeners of the world. The people who take care of the gardens. They are my archenemies.

Here’s an example for you:

“Once upon a time, a few mistakes ago, I was in your sights, you got me along, you found me, you-” oh. Sorry. I’m a Taylor Swiftie, what can I say? Sorry, back to the story.

Once upon a time, I was taking a stroll through Stone House Cottage in Worcestershire. The gardeners were out working on their plants, and as I passed by one, he stiffened. At first, I assumed he smelled my clothes. I had been working in the hospital and no doubt smelled gross, or else too clean.

But I was wrong. He hadn’t smelled anything. In fact, I’m fairly sure that this gardener had no sense of smell. But that’s a story for another day, I’m afraid. Maybe soon, if you drop by again.

The gardener had sensed something peculiar. A change in the garden environment. Not just any change, like storm clouds or a new bee (though I don’t know why a gardener would be able to sense anything, for that matter. I have found full-time gardeners to be rather. . .dull. Too much time with plants and not enough time with people, I suppose). The only way to describe what this gardener felt was a shock. He felt the aura of the gardener royalty enter.

Now. We’ve come to the point in my story where I cannot continue unless you fork over those ten million pounds.

No. I won’t change that rule. It’s not really a rule, it’s more of a personal philosophy anyways. It’s unchangeable.

I’ve known you for not too long. Why have we got to bartering? Bartering is either for total strangers or intimate friends. No in between. Which are we? Because if you answer correctly, you’ll learn my secret. 

. . .

Well. I guess now you have a right to know. You’re practically family. And family always knows my secret.

So. Here we go.

Are you ready? You’re going to have to try extraordinarily hard to keep this secret. It’s so tempting to share. That’s why I never use this power, because it cannot be used for the good of the people.

The secret I have that I wouldn’t tell for 9 million pounds is. . .

The secret both of us would be wasting our time for is. . .

I can magically grow radishes.

Author's Note:

This is actually very interesting to me. Writing the Gardener’s Story gave me some ideas. I’m thinking about writing an actual story with these characters. Not a long one, but a story nonetheless. Leave a comment and tell me what you think, please!

* * *

IF ONLY: a short story about the gardener. A backstory, of sorts.

You’d think having no sense of smell would be terrible. 

But honestly? 

I rather like it.

The amount of pleasant smells seems to be drastically outnumbered by the amount of unpleasant smells in the world. I find it a plus that I can’t smell the cat poop, or the rotten tomatoes, or the steak wafting in from the kitchen.

Oh, yes, of course I had a sense of smell. I just don’t anymore. I lost it a while ago. The doctors aren’t sure exactly why. Or I like to think that’s how they would be if I went to see them about it. Ha! As if.

I don’t trust doctors. They scare me. Too many personal questions. Too much poking around in places where nothing’s wrong. I don’t like it. So why would I go to them for something as trivial as sense of smell? 

Yes, I know it could be rather detrimental in the long run, but for now, I’ll just enjoy what’s around me. Like the beautiful flowers and plants.

I can’t smell them, of course, but if I could I like to imagine they’d smell lovely. Maybe they wouldn’t. I’ve heard from some people that steak smells lovely. To me, a vegetarian, it does not. I’ve smelled steak before, when I was younger and could smell.

Steak is just one of the many things I’m glad I can’t smell. Steak, but not to mention dirty socks, too much axe body spray, rotten tomatoes and other foods, among others.

There are things I wish I could smell, though. I wish I could smell cookies baking, or smell the nice flowers. Not the gross ones. The nice ones, like gardenias, or those Magnolia blossoms.

It doesn’t help that I’m a gardener. I work with flowers, and I can’t smell them. I wonder if, after spending so much time around flowers, I smell like them. Usually, I’m assigned to take the rotten stuff to the compost heap, because it smells bad to others.

People who don’t know me pass by me at the compost heap plugging their noses. They always look at me with such respect, as if I have a superpower.

I don’t know if not having one of your senses constitutes a superpower, but sometimes I feel like I have one. Sometimes I don’t.

People I’ve just recently acquainted with will say things like, “do you smell that?” and then realize that the answer will always be no. They always apologize profusely, which makes me feel more awkward than if they had just kept talking as if I could indeed smell that.

Every now and again I do meet new people, but for the most part, nothing new comes around. I work in Stone House Cottage Garden and Nursery, where I spend my day with the plants, a few other gardeners and customers, and the compost heap. I don’t know if that great mass can qualify as plants. It’s huge, and looks gross. I can’t imagine the smell. No, really. I can’t.

One day, as I was bent over a plant, pruning it, I felt something very strange. I had never felt it before. I straightened up (I’ve been told that when I do this, it almost looks like I smelled something strange, but, of course, that isn’t the case). It almost felt like. . .royalty. Like I should bow or something. I turn around. The queen wasn’t there. No royalty. . .only a customer. He’s walking swiftly, as though he needs to get out.

“Sir, why are you in such a hurry?” I asked.

“I’m. . .I just walk quickly.” His voice is angry as he hurries away. Clearly, it is not his normal form of walking. His arms are stiff and awkward, and he’s nervous. He keeps twitching. I watch him until I can’t see him anymore. Strange. That man. . .he had a strange aura. Almost as if he was meant to be in the garden.

Maybe he had some veggies on him, but I couldn’t smell them. One of my colleagues once told me that we had a gardenia thief on-hand. Gardenias are very fragrant. The thief walked right by me. Everyone was in shock. “He smelled so strongly of gardenias! He smelled- Oh,” they realized. “You can’t smell.”

Maybe this man was the same. He was a thief! A fragrant vegetable thief!

Little did I know at the time, but soon was I to learn, that this was not the case. This man was no thief. In fact, he was a sort of royalty. Gardening royalty. He could do the unthinkable with plants. This man. . .this man could grow radishes on a whim. He was. . .the radish king.

Maybe if I had smelled this, if I could just smell the radishes on him, I would have stopped him. I would have known that I was meeting my greatest enemy. I would have stopped him from tearing cities apart.

If only I could have smelled him.