The garden is vivid and well kept. I’m not sure when he finds the time, but it’s wonderfully maintained. We are sitting on the front porch of his humble, one bedroom house – if you could call it such a thing. I suppose it has some sort of diluted charm. The old man is ranting on about various things that bother him in a heavy, cigar-worn voice. My attention drifts back and forth between my adoration of the bright garden before me and my slight recoil at the sound of his raspy paranoias and the horrible contrast it had against the high-pitched klinking of empty beer bottles being kicked around between his feet.
I find it fascinating that when I looked outwards, all I could see was remarkable colors that played so well with each other despite thier intensity. Strange yellow bushes with purplish stripes sporadically placed. Bright green vines that twisted in and out of each other with bursts of pink blossoms intermittently placed. And yet, when I looked back towards the aging man, he was draped in filthy greys and dark browns that were stained with even worse colors.
He sat with his head turned down and cocked slightly to one side, pulling on the rusted hammer of an old war pistol. I’m not sure where he got the damn thing from, but I know it’s hard for him to go without it. He hasnt stopped talking this entire time, but I found it hard to listen to him. Instead, he spoke downwards to an audience of empty brown bottles that surrouned him like small children around a campfire – and there was indeed an inferno within him. Dark brown bottles that fit perfectly with the bitter colors he subconsciously chose to contrast the bright garden before us.
What a useless soldier. Its funny how things usually work out like this, I thought as I looked at the man scraping his dirty finger along the barrel of his small rifle in the same manner as one would brush a finger along the cheek of a lover. Its funny how the people that are most consumed with war are usually the worst at it. Just as the people most obsessed with sex are typically the worst at fucking. The individuals that feel they are constantly at war, are most often pointing their barrels in the wrong direction. Commonly at themselves.

“There’s a storm coming, boy”

The sky was a lovely blue and not a single cloud could be found, but what he said wasn’t lost on me. I knew what he meant by it. It wasn’t the type of storm that quenches the gardens around us, it was the type of storm that can potentially drown a man such as this – a man so consumed with war and yet not a direct enemy in the world. Not a physical one, anyway. A man who constantly surrounds himself with the barrel of one weapon or another. Rifle barrels and whiskey barrels. Each emptied one by one into the old man.
“Put me in the garden when its over.”

I nodded one last time and walked away through the bright, healthy flora.
When you spend so much time in such a bleak environment, walking out into these brilliant hues becomes almost intolerable to the eye, and there is a very small part of you that begins to resent them in such a strange way.

I layed on my sofa closest to the window and waited for the storm to arrive. Then I would get my signal. The thunder. The bullet. The noise wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, not in this part of Florida. Red necks shoot at swine frequently. This particular swine intended to shoot himself. If all goes according to plan, the old man would burst into blossoms long before they came looking for him. Of course, a man that was virtually composed of dirt would naturally make the most fertile base for a flower bed.

I finally heard the bullet travel its intended path at around 4:25am. Did God create bullets? Or did a creation of God create bullets? What would be the difference? I realized this was a grossly oversimplified way of thinking, but it was the first thing that entered my mind the moment I distinctly heard the bullet enter the old man. As I made the careful trek back towards his pathetic home, I imagined myself as a bullet. I tried to imagine its lifespan. Darkness, then intense chaos. Millions of sounds and colors within a fraction of a second, and then darkness once again.
I found myself again standing at the back door of the old mans house at around 4am. I didn’t remember much of the walk, but I know it was well planned and as inconspicuous as possible. The houses around here are very far removed and spread apart from one other, so as long as I kept my senses alert and the noise to a minimum, I need not worry of any coincidental onlookers.

I pushed the sliding glass door aside and moved carefully into the back of the house. The light flickers a handful of times before dimly lighting the back room of his small home. For a while I stared deep into the light switch, focusing on nothing more than taking a few deep breaths. I slowly slid my glasses off of my face and placed them on the wobbly, wooden table beside me while keeping my eyes fixed on the switch. My vision has always been unfavorable and I thought that given the grim circumstances, this would be sort of beneficial. Each specific visual detail would only be used to prove myself later of this terrible scenario. How did I even get involved in this? I thought to myself, not moving my eyes from my focal point. Without my glasses on, the dim light made everything begin to seem clouded and surreal. It gave the intense impression of being submerged deep under water. I imagined that instead of miles and miles of black sky above me, there was waves crashing into each other again and again, tormented by thick rain and thunder claps. Lost in this idea, I was convincing myself that the storm the old man mentioned had flooded the earth over leaving us in this putrid little sunken house down at the bottom of this new ocean. I sensed that the rest of the world must have been carried away safely to the surface and, still focusing on the dirty light switch, I could almost hear the muffled sound of lovers, family and friends from the surface far, far above me.
I slowly pulled my eyes away and turned to where I knew I’d find him. With my terrible vision, the vermillion color gave me the impression that it was not the remnants of the old man at all, but rather, a large rose bush in the corner of the room. As I walked slowly towards it, my body struggling to cut through the heavy water (the intense pressure of miles and miles of water pushing on my entire body) I could see the roses slowly swaying in the current.
I decided to focus on the task at hand. I didn’t have much more time to spare caught up in my little euphoria. For the next couple of hours, I worked to fulfill my promise to him. I carefully placed his body on an old tarp that he, himself had laid out earlier and cleaned up the walls and floors around the chair he sat in. When the corner was cleaner than it had been in nearly a decade, I folded him up in the tarp and slowly made my way out the door to the now sunken garden out front. Dragging the heavy tarp while being submerged under an entire world full of water was no easy task. Twice I stopped to regain my breath and relax my muscles and for a quick moment I wondered if I would even be able to finish this, but a promise is a promise.
Once I got out into the garden itself, things because much easier. It was as if the hundreds of bright colors from the flowers had leant me their vitality and warmth. I felt a new strength. It was if the garden was almost welcoming me and even helping me in some way that I couldn’t possibly explain. The overall energy of the small house was pathetic and desolate but out here there was life. There was energy. It was like the old man intentionally kept everything positive and alive in that garden and tended it with care, but kept all of the filth of a bleak world to himself. On his clothes, his skin, his furniture. He regularly watered his flowers, yet he would bathe perhaps once a month – if that.
The horizon behind the trees was starting to fade into a washed out blue color from the inevitable sunrise. I didn’t have much more time to spare, I was hurrying at this point but walking around under endless amounts of water was not making anything easy. I grabbed the shovel that was leaning against the side of the shed and pushed it into the ground with all my strength, but something strange happened when the shovel sliced into the garden floor….Tiny bubbles started to rise up from the ground. I threw the shovel into the dirt again and watched the hundreds of small bubbles turn in much larger, violent ones that signified that endless oceans above me were draining into this small pit I was digging. I began to stab the earth frantically with the end of the shovel, creating a massive cyclone that rose up to the heavens and dragged the liquid atmosphere around me down into the center of the earth, yet somehow not affecting me at all. I sat with my back against the shed and watched the leagues of murky fluid empty out. The last thing to be swallowed up into the earth was the tarp with the old man wrapped inside at almost the exact moment the top of the sun rose above the horizon line. I slowly stood and walked over to fill the hole. I was utterly exhausted and decided to go inside and lay down on the old mans sofa for a little before finally going home.

I had a small dream as I layed there. I was trapped inside of a barrel being carried quickly down stream towards the very edge of the world, as if the earth was flat, leading out into a gigantic waterfall that emptied out into oblivion. I yelled out for help and frantically dug my fingernails into the small cracks at the top of the barrel, trying desperately to pry open the top but it was no use. I was rushing towards the end of the world.
I was rushing towards the end of everything.
My pounding heartbeat woke me up immediately and I sat upright and tried to calm myself down. I found my glasses and put them on and decided that I had enough. I wanted tomorrow more than anything. I wanted anything at all instead of this very instant. I locked the door behind me and squinted in the sun as I walked out into the garden but I stopped suddenly when my eye caught sight of something. Something that hurt me and made me smile at the same time. Something that utterly confused me, yet at the same time made me feel like everything will be ok….

It was a small rose bush growing where the old man was now buried. Swaying softly as if it were dancing in an ocean current.