Evergreen Apocalypse
Evergreen Apocalypse
Evergreen Apocalypse
Copyright (c) 2010 by Melrick (Tabooccaneer@gmx.com)
Rated: Contains No sex.
Codes: Humour, No Sex.
Synopsis: A man tends to his garden, but pests arrive to ruin his day, and his lupins.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
Distribution: Please ask permission BEFORE you distribute this story to other sites. You do NOT have permission to distribute this to pay sites. If distributed, you must leave everything intact, including this header.
Author’s Note: This is a FlashFic (less than 1000 words) written in response to a word prompt – “Evergreen” – posted on the forum here: http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/18234-week-9-12-05-120/
Joe was proud of his garden. Not a single day went past that didn’t find him out tending his plants. And it took more than a bit of rain to keep him away. Seeing him pulling up weeds or trimming bushes in a raincoat wasn’t an unusual sight.
Initially, when his wife had died three years earlier, there’d been little else to occupy his time other than gardening; it was something to do to keep occupied. Sure, he enjoyed reading, but he’d never been one to just sit in a chair all day and do nothing. And if he was going to sit and read for a while, doing it while sitting in his garden was about as good as it got!
When his wife had been alive, the garden had been mostly her domain. He helped out a lot, but it had been Gwen that had chosen which plants to buy and when; which plants to trim and when; which plants to fertilise and when. Still, he’d learnt a lot from her, so when he’d taken over the garden, he’d been able to put his knowledge into practice.
What helped was all the gardening books she had bought. Shelf after shelf groaned under the weight of them. He’d never read any of them previously, but did so voraciously after her death, to the point where he was now confident that he was as close to an expert as made no never mind. At least, he was regarding evergreen plants. Neither Gwen nor he had much time for plants that lost their leaves in winter. Plants are supposed to have leaves! And living in Australia meant it simply never got cold enough to warrant leaves falling off.
Joe’s garden extended out the front and the back, but it was the front yard that he liked to show off the colours, such as with daisies, phloxes, lupins, dahlias, impatiens, foxglove, forget-me-nots, and others, all depending on the time of year and which seeds from his own collection he wanted to plant. A Washington Navel Orange tree stood in the middle of the yard.
Movement out the front window caught his attention.
“Oh god damn it, those damn pests are back again,” he said, grabbing his shotgun before heading out the front.
“Go on, fuck off!” he said, raising the gun and blowing off the left arm of a zombie just below the shoulder. “Get the hell out of my yard!” The zombie groaned and ambled towards the gate. “And take this with you!” he added, picking up the limb and tossing it out into the street.
“And that goes for you pair, too!” he said, pointing at a pair of zombies shuffling past his fence. “There’s no use pretending you weren’t coming in here, I know you were! I’ve told you lot before, stay the hell out of my yard and I’ll stop blowing off limbs! I can’t be any fairer than that! Besides, you don’t even have a bottom jaw so what the hell do you want an orange for?” The zombie drooled in response.
Joe watched them lurch and stagger past and out of sight.
“God damn zombies trampling all over my god damn garden. Look at that, he’s ruined those lupins! That’s it!” he screamed after them. “The next one gets it in the head! I warned you, didn’t I! Didn’t I warn you lot? I warned you, I sure as hell did!”
Joe sighed as he went back in the house. “Cats shitting in my back garden, zombies tearing up my front garden, this neighbourhood has gone to hell.”
The End.