Where the Mandrake Grow
Where the Mandrake Grow
The Alchemist raised his axe and brought it down with all his might but one blow was not enough to sever head from shoulders. The captive’s final screams echoed off the pristine white tiles, the white walls, and fell with harsh agony against the Alchemists ears, flushed with excitement. The screams, turned garbled by blood welling up in the victim’s mouth, went silent as the body splayed across the floor under the weight of the bloodied axe. Blood emptied from her mouth, spilling across the tile and forming streams in the grout.
The body twitched.
“The soul must be separated from the body so that while the body may serve the higher purpose of man,” the Alchemist swung the axe, this time crushing the spine completely, ripping through throat and larynx, shattering the jaw bone with a sickening crack, “the soul may join the higher purpose of God.”
No movement. The Alchemist remained still, his axe buried deep in the tile floor, shattered ceramic and shattered bone blending into one. Panting, he withdrew the axe, dropped it at his side and the heavy crash of it hitting the floor was dulled by the ringing in his ears. In his rush to get the violence over with he had forgotten to put down the wood block he had gotten specifically to avoid damaging the floor; noticing this he tugged at his hair and growled. For a moment the Alchemist just stared at the mess in his kitchen, lost in the creeping pool of crimson life as it inched along until touching the soles of his shoes. He sighed, and dipped the tips of his fingers into the blood, brought it close for examination. The faint metallic smell danced through his nostrils. The blood trickled down his fingers to his palm and he caressed her most intimate of fluids with his lips, tasted it with his tongue.
He savored it, let the coppery taste swim along his palette. Like a lucky penny, he thought, just like the first lucky penny he’d found. Walking home from the mortuary after his father’s death, hand in hand with his mother, there! on the sidewalk was his first lucky penny. His mother spoke a rhyme of good luck and told him to pick it up and keep it with him. The Alchemist kept it in the safest place he knew. He dropped it in his mouth and tasted the copper and grime and all the places the penny had been, all the hands it had passed from. His mother slapped the back of his head and shouted, cursed, until she saw he had swallowed it. She cursed more and swatted at his rear, finished the walk in silence, occasionally looking down her nose at her son as he hung his head.
The copper taste still lingering on his tongue, the Alchemist spat the blood out at the girl lying on the kitchen floor. Blood and saliva dribbled down her pale cheek. She was gorgeous, even with her golden locks stained red, even with her body limp on the floor, even with her head resting a good foot from her shoulders. Part of him hated having to end her life in such a way, but the rational part of him knew it was a necessary part of the formula. The Alchemist breathed in deeply the aroma of blood and new death before beginning to clean up.
It wasn’t until the Alchemist was half way through cleaning the blood and gore that the true horror of what he had done dawned upon him. He had cleaned so much and still the kitchen was so full of blood. It was on the cabinets, it was on his clothes. His eyes darted back and forth searching for anything not tainted with blood until they landed on the open eyes of the beheaded girl. Green eyes wide in horror and pain staring right into his, accusing him. They knew what he did. He ran to the bathroom and heaved, brown and putrid into the toilet. The mirror over the sink showed him his own eyes, green and bloodshot. The bloodstains on his shirt. He pulled the white shirt off, losing a button in the process and threw it in the sink and tried desperately to scrub the blood out. He let the water run and collapsed to the floor. Deep breaths, he told himself. Deep breaths. It will be okay. It will be worth it. When it was all in the ground it would be done with, out of his hands, until it began to grow. When his homunculus was complete it would all prove worth it. Deep breaths. It would be alright. It would be worth it.
* * *
When the phone rang the Alchemist winced and squeezed the bloody sponge, red squirting into the iron bucket he was using to collect the spilt life. Rolling his eyes, he crossed the kitchen to the phone and answered it with a polite “Donovan residence” trying to keep his voice from wavering.
“Oh, hello Mother.”
Her voice was harsh in his ear, made harsher by the static of the phone and years of smoking. “Darling, how are you these days? It feels like it’s been forever since we last spoke.”
It hasn’t been that long, he told her, and they begrudgingly exchanged pleasantries. Yes he was doing fine, and no he hasn’t found a wife yet, although he did meet a woman, had her over to the house even, and he really hoped it would work out.
“Well, honey, I really just wanted to call to let you know the anniversary of your father’s death is coming up in a few weeks.” The thought had escaped him, and he was happy that it had, but leave it to mom to bring back all things unpleasant.
“I remember, mother.” He drummed his fingers along the yellow marble countertops, stared out the window to his backyard. In the back, he thought, behind the old eucalyptus tree. He pushed the curtains aside to get a better look at the yard. The greenbelt behind his house, so far having survived wave after wave of new houses springing up, provided the ideal shelter from inquisitive eyes. But where was the shovel? He still had it right? Or had he left it at mother’s house when she borrowed it to make her new husband do some landscaping?
“Mother, do you still have my-”
“Don’t interrupt me, Perry, now listen. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to his grave this year. I’m feeling a little under the weather, but don’t worry son, Dennis has been taking good care of me.”
“It isn’t for another week. You should be fine by then,” Perry eyed a broken chip of bone he had missed. He leaned down to scrutinize it, as if a closer inspection could give him any idea of what bone it was. Resigned to not knowing, he dropped it in the bucket.
“I know honey, I know, but Dennis thinks its best that I don’t exert myself too much. It could make my condition worse. Anyway, I’ve convinced Dolores to go but Angie says she simply can’t. If you ask me it’s that no good husband of hers keeping your sister all to himself.”
“I’m not sure I want to go either,” Perry said quietly.
“I can’t believe you’re both turning against me!” His mother cried into the phone. “I’d expect this kind of thing from Angie but not from you Perry.”
“Mother, I-”
“You’re father helped bring you into this world and this is how you repay him?” She was breathing each word heavily into the receiver and Perry held it away from his ear.
“Mother-”
“I loved your father. Every chance I had to visit his grave I did, remember Perry? We used to go together every year and leave flowers.” It sounded like she was sobbing, but Perry hadn’t heard her sob in years.
“Mom, calm down, it’s alright. It’ll be nice to see Dolores. Don’t worry about it.” Perry sighed, away from the receiver. He didn’t need to give his mother another reason to jump down his throat.
“Alright, that’s all. I just wanted to be sure you kids paid your respects to your father. I’ll let you go because it doesn’t seem like you want to talk much.”
The nerve! Perry gritted his teeth and took a deep breath. “Oh! Mom do you have my shovel?” But she had already hung up.
* * *
The Alchemist eyed the piece of paper on which he had written down the recipe. Scrawled across the top of the page, in all capitals, was one word:
HOMUNCULUS
Beneath the heading he had started a list of ingredients which he scanned, mentally checking each off.
Bones: did it matter if the flesh was still attached?
Blood: there certainly wasn’t any shortage of that.
Semen: well, that would be easy enough.
Mandrake.
Only time would tell if the Mandrake root would grow but he was running out of time. The Alchemist had carefully scheduled each step of the recipe and damnit if he would let one simple plant mess the whole process up. He needed all the ingredients in the ground and covered up immediately. The moon would be full soon, and though nothing in the Alchemist’s research said it was necessary, he could only assume that the moon’s occult glow would aid in some way. The recipe called for the ingredients to be buried, covered with earth for a full month
It was already dark outside and he wanted to get the bones in the ground as soon as possible. The Alchemist let his head hang over the back of the wooden chair, stared at the ceiling. Little shapes and patterns emerging in the popcorn ceiling, lost to intermittent blinks. He snapped up suddenly and the chair almost tipped over behind him.
“Still a lot of work to do tonight, no time to waste.”
After digging through the mounds of unused tools, hammers and hacksaws he found the shovel, caked with dirt and smelling like shit, hiding in the back of the shed. Mother didn’t have it after all. Shovel in tow, the Alchemist swept the area behind the old eucalyptus for a patch of soft ground, stabbing the earth until the shovel sank in with little effort.
The Alchemist peered over his shoulder, checking the dark for eyes. Seeing none he began to dig. He pulled at the dirt and tore rocks from the ground. For what seemed like hours he dug until the grass and yard was just under his shoulders. A shallow grave, to be sure, but it would do. He climbed out of the pit, his clothes absorbing the dirt, hands encrusted in dried earth. He surveyed his work, pleased with the breadth and depth, confident that the earthen womb would hold the body.
The Alchemist dropped the body into the grave, arms and legs landing at awkward angles. He went back into the kitchen and returned with the bucket of blood and his recipe. He cursed. The mandrake hadn’t sprouted yet, after four long weeks of watching that exact spot and still it had not sprung up from the ground. Not one leaf, not one stalk, nothing! Not even weeds. All his effort had been for naught.
Why then, had he so carefully tied the noose around the tree branch? Why had he wrapped it around his neck and kicked off from the stool? What was the point in coaxing out his seed, his frantic, pumping race against the noose choking the life out of him? As his semen dripped to the ground, his world went dark, the night giving way to unimaginable black. When he came to he was on the ground, underwear around his knees, noose around his neck. The branch had snapped and he had fallen free of the death grip noose. Glad to be alive and able to begin his experiment, he made a circle of twigs around the spot where his semen landed to remind himself of where the mandrake would grow.
Mandrake. That was to be the start of the process for that would take the longest to harvest. The body, he could get that at any time, the blood, well that would come with. But the mandrake root, that required time. He couldn’t just buy that, or find it growing wild in the woods, he would have to grow it himself. If his creation were to obey him it would have to be his seed that gave birth to the mandrake, his seed that joined with it again in the earthen womb.
The Alchemist was lucky enough to find references to the root in a few sparse history books. The mandrake, named for its human appearance, he found, would grow only where the hanged man, in his final throes of life, spilt his seed onto the bare animal earth. How unfortunate, the Alchemist thought, that so little people were hanged these days. Modern man preferred the electric chair, a lethal injection, or just letting criminals rot in jail. He would have to do it himself.
* * *
The sign read Rose Ring Hill Cemetery in blue with a rose in bloom and a white dove taking flight next to it, a sign Perry read aloud every year when he came to visit. Despite the fact, if you were to ask him where his father was buried, he would blank on the name and try in vain to give directions. Perry turned down the drive, through the trees that separated road and cemetery. He parked behind a black truck he recognized as Dolores’ and wondered how long she had been there. Was he late, or was she early? She was already out at the grave; he could see her slender figure on the hill top in the distance by the topiary angel next to which their father was laid to rest.
“Lolo!” he shouted from the bottom of the hill. Dolores responded with a shushing wave of her hand and shook her head as she turned back towards the grave. She hated the nickname, but being Perry’s favorite sibling, she had never been able to convince him to use her full name. Since he learned to talk, he had used the nickname as a term of endearment, but she had never returned the act.
“We’re in a cemetery,” she said through tight lips when he had reached the crest of the hill. “Don’t shout, okay? Be respectful.”
“Sorry,” he lowered his head. Perry fingered the keys in his pocket, sliding his pinky in and out of the key ring. He ran his hands through his tangled hair, scratched behind his ear for a moment, avoiding the eyes of Dolores and his dead father. It was another minute before either spoke, an awkward silence not out of respect. When finally they spoke, it was at the same time.
“Sorry, go ahead,” Perry backed down. Ladies first, his mother had always insisted upon him. Six years his elder, Dolores was easily able to get her way.
“It’s good to see you Perry,” she started.
“It’s good to see you too. Have you talked to mother recently? I was hoping she would be feeling better enough to come.”
She took a deep breath, held it in for a moment. “Have you found a job yet?”
The smell of the grass was sharp after its fresh cut. His eyes scanned the ground, the angel of leaves and branches, hoping for a route of escape from the question. The heavenly topiary had overgrown, its face marred and out of proportion. Less angelic up close. The left wing was missing clumps of leaves and the wing looked shattered, its green feathers stripping away from the angel in its fall.
“No, not yet. But I’m working on some things,” he was quick to add, “so maybe it’ll get better.”
“Perry…”
“How’s mom? You didn’t answer.” He braved a look into her hazel eyes. Had he not, she probably would have pressed her question more. Mother always said she got her eyes from their father, but he was too young when his father died to really know much about him.
“Mom is fine, Perry. Her and Dennis are in Guam.”
“Guam?”
“Look, she didn’t want me to tell you because she knew you would get upset. Its some second honeymoon or something.” Perry was shaking. “Forget about it, okay? It’s not a big deal.”
“Why would she lie?” he turned his back on his father’s grave and sat heavily in the grass, disregarding the dress slacks his mother had bought him two years prior for visiting the grave. She had shown up that time, if only to make sure all her children did as well. After an hour of near silence staring at the grave Angie had asked that they please leave to which their mother had gone hysterical until Angie decided to wait in the car while the others mourned for their beloved father and husband, twenty years in ground. When she accused Perry of wanting to leave too, he assured her he wanted to stay. “Mother no! I didn’t say that. I don’t want to leave yet.” The ride home was in complete silence until their mother broke into a tirade about respect for the dead and, more importantly, for their father. Her eyes in the rearview mirror always seemed to find his and they bore guilt into his skull whenever they caught glances.
Dolores placed her hand on his shoulder, softly, a gentle touch Perry was unfamiliar with and she sat down next to him in the grass. “Perry, I don’t mean to be so down on you but you have to stop living off of her handouts. Aren’t you ready to take control of your own life yet?”
* * *
The Alchemist drove home with fervor, roaring down the highway passing cars and trucks he deemed to slow as he banged his fists against the steering wheel and he smacked the side of his head when the lights and siren flared up behind him.
Pulled over on the side of the road, lights flashing red then blue then red again. Perry was shaking intensely. He kept his hands gripped tight on the steering wheel to steady himself but released when the sensation of the whole world trembling began to rattle his innards. He was caught. He had murdered a poor girl in cold blood, such a brutal death for someone so young, and now the police were bearing down on him to decide his future. What would they do? Life in prison without parole? Or would they shoot him on sight? The justice system didn’t cater to such brutal murders, such horrible onslaughts of violence, he thought.
Tap tap. The policeman knocking against the glass, telling him to roll down the window. He did so, slowly, without so much as a glance at the officer, afraid that one look would be enough to seal his guilt. Deep breaths.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?” the officer said.
“Yes,” Perry swallowed the lump in his throat. He fought to hold back the tears he was sure were already forming, ready to cascade from his eyes without his say. He cursed himself for being caught so soon, before his experiments had finished. Perry fumbled through the glove compartment for his registration when asked and with trembling hands gave it to the officer, still refusing to look at him.
“Sir?” the officer said. “Your license?”
Startled, Perry reached for his wallet and handed his license to the officer and for the first time got a good look at him. He was younger than Perry. Too young to be telling anybody what was right or wrong. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, his smooth face showed no signs of world experience. He had green eyes, just like the girls. Were they related? Had he suspected Perry all along, been tailing him for weeks waiting for the perfect opportunity to make his move?
“Sir you were going seventy-five in a sixty mile per hour zone. I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a ticket.”
* * *
“One hundred and twenty-five fucking dollars!” the Alchemist yelled at the picture of his mother on the mantle. She was young in that picture. He hair hadn’t yet started to gray and the cigarettes hadn’t completely marred her face or stained her smile yellow. One of the few photographs she still looked pretty in. “One hundred and twenty-five fucking dollars from a kid who probably became a cop so he could drive as fast as he fucking wants! And how am I supposed to pay for it?”
Dolores was right, and he knew it. He had been living off of his mother’s handouts. He’d never even left the house he grew up in. When his mother married Dennis she moved in with him and gave Perry the house. She even kept him on an allowance.
“What am I supposed to do?” he cried and flung the portrait from its place on the mantle to where it shattered against the opposite wall, glass shrapnel blasting across the floor. Everything was a mistake culminating in the one huge mistake that was his life. He tossed aside the end table, breaking the lamp that had rested atop it, darkening the room. He swept curios from the mantle, porcelain birds that shattered on the floor, decorative plates that clanged to the ground and echoed throughout the chaos. His eyes settled on the family portrait from so long ago when they were a family. His father, tall and handsom, clean shaven with his hands resting on Dolores’ shoulders. His mother stood to his right, her hands placed delicately upon Angie. And little Perry, wide-eyed with a big grin sat in front, happy to have his picture taken with his family. The Alchemist overturned chairs and couches and stormed into the kitchen to the pantry where he had left the axe. He swung wildly on his return to the living room knocking gashes into the walls and furniture. He approached the family portrait, tears like waterfalls, and raised the axe. One swing left it embedded deep in the portrait.
He was a failure and he realized that now. It was stupid of him to think that his alchemy would work. There was a reason nobody had practiced it for so long. It was all lies. He had killed that girl for nothing and now she was buried in his backyard, defiled, mangled in a gruesome science experiment that was doomed to fail from the beginning. He hung his head and wept, deep sobs that shook his entire body.
He picked up the shovel in the backyard and found the spot he had buried the girl. Next to it was the circle of twigs he had laid out to mark the place where the mandrake would grow but never did. He kicked them aside with a scowl and began digging for the girl. He didn’t know what he would do when he dug her up but she deserved something better than this. Something better than being dumped in a shallow grave and drenched in her own blood. He dug furiously, throwing clumps of dirt into the air behind him like an earthen fountain. When the haft of the shovel snapped he dropped to his knees and used the spade alone.
The ground gave way before him to more and more dirt and he dug frantically. Just a little deeper, he told himself, and he would begin to unearth the girls remains. He dug until his hands were caked with dirt and grime but he found no body. He expected to see her body blue and rigid from rigor mortis. Nothing. No twisted, bloated corpse. No head, blonde hair browned with dirt. He kept digging thinking he had mistaken how deep he had buried her.
What Perry found deep below the wet earth was such a preternatural shape that he wept at the mere sight of it. Like a torrential downpour the tears streamed down his face and he wiped them away leaving crying tiger stripes of dirt and mud across his face. Quivering down in the dirt, fetal and brown with muck, was the tiny form of a woman. He reached into the dirt and pulled up a handful underneath the creature, afraid that his touch would reveal it as an illusion. It was still with the exception of the few spasms that shook its body.
Cradling this tiny life in the palms of his cupped hands the Alchemist made his way into the house. Glass crunched underfoot. He stepped around the shattered lamps and overturned furniture of the house in which he had grown and lived all his life. In the family portrait his mother’s menacing smile pierced the din that occupied his head. Next to her his father’s smile seemed almost angelic, comforting. The chaotic ringing of adrenaline calmed. The axe was still embedded deep in the portrait in the middle of little Perry, his jovial grin ripped apart. The Alchemist admired the new, glowing life of his homunculus.
Please read! I've put soooo much work into this and I want to know what you folks think. The people that read this journal are really the only people I care much about, you know! So I would like your opinion.