Two Sunflowers

*Mild Language / Description of Murder*

'What's the matter with you lately?' asked a sunflower named John to a sunflower named Nia. They had stood side by side in Mrs. Keye's impeccable garden ever since sprouting together in the same square meter of soil, and they were no strangers to petty quarreling.

'The matter?' said Nia.

'Don't think I haven't noticed it!'

'Noticed what?'

'Don't play the innocent with me. I mean your behaviour.'

'What about my behaviour?'

John explained to Nia that he had started to notice her turning away from the sun and toward Mrs. Keyes' house. 'We are sunflowers,' he protested. 'We don't take our eye off the sun. Should a woodpecker stop pecking wood? What about those evergreens over there? Should they shed their needles whenever they feel like it?'

'Needles? Is that what their leaves are called? Perhaps they should shed them. Who wants needles in their arms all year round?'

'You're being ridiculous.'

'What is it to you where I choose to look anyway?'

'Anywhere but to the sun is a betrayal of nature. And if one sunflower does it, others will, five, fifty, a thousand, before you know it, it won't be proper to call us sunflowers any more. They'll have to make up a whole new word for us. How is that fair to the faithful sunflowers like me?'

'So it's... a word you're worried about,' Nia scoffed.

'It's nature!' John screamed.

Nia had never heard John scream before. She decided to be silent, and the silence lasted a long time, till John muttered:

'What are you trying to look at, anyway?'

'Do you really want to know?'

'Yes, I really want to know.'

'Her,' said Nia.

Mrs. Keyes was coming up the garden path, home from shopping with her friend. She was immaculately put together in a burgundy two-piece suit that whispered around her curves as she moved, and her perfume smelled as fragrant as any flower in the garden.

'I'm trying to get a better look at her,' said Nia. 'Her home, her life. What does she talk to her husband about? What does she do at night? Look at her. She might not shine like the sun, but, in some ways, doesn't she burn even brighter than it?'

'No,' said John. 'What she speaks to her husband about is her business. And at night she goes to sleep and dreams of things far less fanciful than you do.'

Mrs. Keyes entered the house and closed the door behind her. Nia sighed, then said:

'I admit my dreams are fanciful, but at least I do dream.'

'Oh ho! You think I don't?'

'If you do, tell me! What do you dream of?'

While John thought about it, Mr. Keyes came out the house and walked down the garden path. He opened the white picket gate at the end, got in his wife's car and turned off the headlights that Mrs. Keyes had left on. On returning, he stopped halfway up the path, directly in front of John and Nia, and, putting his hands on his hips and shaking his head, 'Say nothing ,' he whispered, before inhaling deeply and re-entering the house.

'You... You don't think he was talking to us, do you, John?'

'Of course not.'

'She speaks to us sometimes when she's watering us. She called me her "baby" once, you remember that. Like a real baby! Then there was that other time - '

'You know, I think you're right.'

'I am?'

'Yes. I think he was talking to us. On second thought, I think he was talking to you, specifically. So why don't you shut up for a while?'

Nia huffed, annoyed, but stopped talking.

Later, inside the house, Mr. and Mrs. Keyes were in bed; Mr. Keyes asleep on his stomach, turned away from Mrs. Keyes; Mrs. Keyes sat up rigid and wide awake. The lamp on her side was dimmed, casting her side of the bed in weak yellow light. Two or three lifestyle magazines lay curled in the rut in the duvet between her and her husband's body.

'Are you awake?' said Mrs. Keyes. Mr. Keyes didn't respond. She kicked him under the covers. He let out a feeble groan and shuffled his legs, but didn't reply.

'I went clothes shopping with Donna today. I was waiting for her at the changing rooms when I saw a mother - a young woman - trying to control a little boy. He was causing havoc, the little goblin, pulling coats off hangars and tearing up and down the aisles wearing them like a cape, screaming at the top of his lungs.

'When his mother finally got a hold of him, she didn't do so much as smack his bum. I thought to myself, if that was my child, I would throw him off London Bridge. Even when his mother took him out, he kicked her and spat at her and screamed blue murder. But that in itself didn't trigger my decision. It wasn't until an elderly woman walked past and said to me, "Boys will be boys, hey?" that I started thinking of you.'

Mr. Keyes grunted. Mrs. Keyes kicked him again.

'Listen!... When Donna came out of the cubicle, I went in to try on a dress she'd picked for me. It was a beautiful dress, it would have been perfect for your gala next week. But I didn't try it on... No, I took off my clothes, underwear too, and I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked at my body and I ran my hands all over it, I probed every inch of my hard, aerobically sculpted flesh for a lump or a blemish, a wart or a blister, anything that wasn't already there on the day that I married you. I couldn't find a single thing. And that's when I decided you should die. Today was the day that I decided I would kill you.

'At first I thought about poison. But where would I get one that I could be sure was untraceable? No, too complicated. Then I imagined I'd do it with a very sharp knife while you slept. Cut your throat, that is. I have many sharp knives in the kitchen, so many that one wouldn't be missed. And if I did it just right, it would be quick and clean enough that I wouldn't have to see your face or hear you cry in pain. I don't want to see you in pain, darling.

'I thought I could blame it on an intruder, or bury you at night on the moors and tell people you'd left me. Or, now that I think about it, I could say I killed you in self-defence. Then I needn't worry about disposing of the weapon or hauling your corpse to the moors... We have many things to think about. What would you do?'

Mr. Keyes started snoring. Mrs. Keyes put her hand gently on his shoulder. 'I know, it's a lot of crucial decisions. I'll let you sleep on it.'

She turned off the lamp and was asleep moments later.

The following morning, Mr. Keyes woke up in a foul mood and he didn't know why. He always got up before Mrs. Keyes; today was no exception and, despite his burning irritability, he was careful not to wake her as he showered and dressed ready for work. He crept downstairs and made sure to close the front door quietly behind him.

On the way down the garden path, a sudden surge of aggression possessed him to kick Nia at the lower stem, snapping her so that she tumbled into John, their petals ruffling into each other's.

'Stupid fuckin' flower of hers,' muttered Mr. Keyes, then tightened his tie and left.

'I told you he was talking to you,' said John. 'I wonder what's got up his nose this morning.'

'Now what do we do?' said Nia.

'We wait for your hero to come and rescue us, I suppose.'

And an hour later, Mrs. Keyes did. She came out in her silk nighty and immediately noticed Nia's injury. 'What happened here! Oh, my beautiful baby. Did that man do that to you on his way out?'

She parted John from Nia and fixed up Nia's stem with electrical tape, and gave them both a long guzzle from the watering can. 'Sorry about him,' she said. 'He will never, ever, do that to you again, I promise.'

Mrs. Keyes went back into the house, Nia was trembling with excitement. 'She called me her "baby" again,' she squealed. 'Her beautiful baby! You heard her, didn't you? You heard her say it!'

'Yes, yes,' said John. 'Loud and clear.' He knew there would be no turning Nia back to the sun now. He thought perhaps the best course of action would be to encourage her newfound romance, to accelerate it to whatever end the house and the people inside it had in store for her. Meanwhile he would do his best to think of a better dream, and how to articulate it to Nia in a manner that might attract her upsettingly fanciful mind.