The Grass is Always Greener

By Brenton Tomlinson
© 2009, All Rights Reserved

Bill coaxed his battered Buick Electra to the side of the road. The town of New Bedlam lay below him in the shallow valley. It looked dead.

No cars traversed the narrow streets, and no people strolled along its sidewalks. The town was parched and forgotten, except for a field of green, partially obscured by a large gymnasium-type of building and the bus depot. Above it circled a sizable flock of birds, a swarm of black dots against the azure sky.

Bill had jumped at the chance to add the rural community to his sales route. The rumor of so many writers in a small town added up to dollars in his pocket. He pulled back onto the blacktop and rolled down the hill into town.

The verge between the road and the sidewalk held little grass, and weeds ruled the small front gardens of the houses he passed. Withered trees lined his way, their sparse branches bent toward the tarmac as if reaching for his car.

He placed a hand on his suitcase as he turned left onto Main Street, to stop it from sliding across the polished burgundy vinyl bench seat. He patted the case tenderly.

Main Street was deserted. Not even a stray dog sniffed around the bins outside the grocery store. The shops on either side of the thoroughfare were tired, with peeling paint and dusty windows. Faded planter boxes held marcescent floral arrangements. The Post Office had what would have been a grand gazebo positioned out front, but vines now hung in matted clumps which blocked the entrance and obscured the ornate ironwork beneath. Bill allowed the car to crawl forward as he nervously drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

Outside the police station, a grey and slightly warped flag pole held a frayed standard which fluttered in the gentle breeze. Beyond the flag, Bill saw the flock of birds still circling in the distance.

He glanced to his left and was startled to see an old woman on the other side of the road, sitting on a chair in the shade of a faded white and yellow table umbrella outside the coffee shop. He raised his hand in greeting; she pinched her lips together and furrowed her brow in response. He allowed the car to drift over and stopped in front of her. The woman pointedly stared back the way he’d come.

Bill wound his window down. “Good afternoon, ma’am.”

“You’re on the wrong side of the road, fool.”

“Yes, ma’am, but as there doesn’t seem to be much traffic, I thought I’d risk it.”

“Typical,” she said as she stood and collected her coffee cup.

“Ma’am, if I may trouble you for directions to the school?”

She paused and took a good long look at him. “What would you be wanting with the school?”

Bill patted the suitcase beside him. “My name’s Bill Grennan, ma’am. I sell dictionaries. You name it, I’ve got it: standard definition, verbs, nouns, translation, grammar and just about any O-nyms you care to mention.” He counted off on his fingers. “Homonyms, paronyms, acronyms, synonyms, and antonyms.” He flashed his best salesman smile, but the woman gazed down her nose, her eyes mere slits of distrust in her pasty white face.

“I have an appointment with the librarian to discuss the school’s needs,” he added before leaning a little further out of the car. “And I hear tell New Bedlam is famous for the writers here about, so I figured I’d do some door-to-door sales as well.”

The woman crinkled up her nose in disgust and turned toward the shop entrance.

“Ma’am, please, the school?”

She paused on the doorstep with her ramrod-straight back still facing him. Bill was about to ask again when she lifted her arm and pointed to the right, past the gymnasium—toward the black birds—before she stepped into the shop.

Bill turned onto Johns Street where the expanse of emerald green came into view. Cropped close and even, it was a gardener’s masterpiece, a total contrast to the dustbowl and weed-ridden front gardens of the houses opposite.

Performing a U-turn to ensure he was on the correct side of the road this time, Bill parked beside the school oval. A rusted and partially fallen fence marked the boundary, creating a disparate border for the immaculate verdure.

Travelling across its surface on a matching deep green riding mower was the gardener, a frail and somewhat desiccated-looking gent, who hunched over the steering wheel.

Dry remnants of grass crunched under foot as he got out of the car, the verge in perfect harmony with the surrounding town. He stepped over a fallen section of fence and waved at the gardener as he turned at the far end of his run across the field. With no response, Bill started walking toward him.

The black birds continued to circle overhead, cawing and screeching to one another. Their sound overpowered the distant mower. As he walked, he held a hand up to block the sun and to get a better view of the flock. He whistled softly. There must have been hundreds of the things.

The surface beneath his feet was like walking on the softest of plush carpets. “I reckon you could sell this stuff as an alternative remedy,” he whispered in awe. “People would pay money to walk on this.” Chuckling quietly to himself at the silliness of the thought, Bill stopped and squatted down, running his hand across the tops of the perfectly cut blades. Like delicate columns of green tissue-paper, they swayed beneath his palm. It felt as if a thousand nodules massaged his skin.

He dropped to his knees and lowered his face, intent on rubbing his cheek across its surface; a need to expose more of his skin to its touch grew inside him. An aroma lingered near the surface. Something different, something not quite in accordance with the lush beauty he saw around him. Something dead.

He glanced around, searching for the source. A glint of sunlight reflected off something partially hidden in the grass to his left. He crawled over and parted the blades.

A tarnished gold ring encircled a white and wrinkled finger. Bill’s gaze darted. A tooth lay next to his right hand. He swiveled his head to the left. Half an ear, something swollen and black beside it.

He emptied his stomach noisily onto the green carpet. The smell of decay was obvious to him now. He remembered it from his childhood. His mom said her roses wouldn’t grow without it.

The deep growl of a heavily worked engine drowned out the raucous calls of the flock above him. Bill glanced over his shoulder. The gardener was racing toward him, but the machine was no longer a small riding mower. It was huge! It consumed the grass and soil in front of it, spitting it out behind in a green layer of perfection. The old man in the driver’s seat no longer resembled a frail and serene pensioner as he leaned over the forest green hood. A look of insane anticipation sat on a flushed and wrinkled face. He raised his gnarled fist in premature triumph. “Just in time, Sonny,” he yelled above the roar of the engine. “My lawn could do with an extra injection of blood and bone.”

Bill scrambled to his feet, his sensible dress shoes providing no grip on the grass surface. He lurched toward the fence but slipped in his own patch of vomit. His face smashed into the freshly cut grass, the stench of death invading his senses. On the other side of the fence, the old lady from the coffee shop leaned into the open window of his car.

Looking behind him, Bill saw the giant mower closing fast. He turned back to the old woman. “Please!”

The woman backed out of the window and faced him, his case clutched in her arms. With the smile like that of an eternal grandmother showing patience toward an unruly child, she slowly shook her head.

The cacophony of the birds was silenced behind the scream of the mower as the gardener increased the revs of the engine. As the blades bit into Bill’s feet, he added a scream of his own.

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BT is from Down Under. While living in a sun drenched country is nice, he finds his mind continually delves into places not so warm and comforting. Strangely he seems to enjoy this.

His writing credits include: Antipodean SF, 52 Stitches, NVF Magazine, and Fear and Trembling. He also writes book reviews for HorrorScope and Black. New work will be appearing in: The Blackness Within Anthology from Apex, Night to Dawn, and Yellow Mama.

For more information you can read his blog at Musings of an Aussie Writer.