Sunflowers

[Juana]

Um. It gets less silly later. This is not the complete story, since I'm still working out how exactly to end it. Suggestions welcome.

Max Lewis lived on Dulcy Street, which was connected to Drury Lane, Anne Road, and met its demise at the intersection with Green Gables Avenue. These were somewhat whimsical names for otherwise very boring streets in a very boring neighborhood. Every lawn was trimmed to golf course standards, there was an SUV in every driveway and all of them were washed on Sunday by aging, topless men while their kids played football in the street.

Max had an SUV, too, and he washed it on Sundays, just like every other man on his street, and his sons Jacob and Charlie played football in the street. Max's wife Sarah tended their yard on such mornings, which was bursting with sunflowers. He didn't care very much for sunflowers, but Sarah loved them and he loved her, so each spring dozens of stripy black and white seeds went into the ground. Max pawned the care of them off on his sons, who were assigned to weed and water them every day.

Every weekday morning, Max arose at six am to shuttle his boys to school before he headed to work at Sy Insurance, where he methodically shuffled paper from one end of his desk to the other and played solitaire on his computer for eight hours before going home. Sarah taught high school English on the other end of town, so she would often pick up some take out on her way home in the evenings while Max helped the boys with their homework.



One morning in April, Max found that the water cooler at the office wouldn't pour for him. The tank was full; in fact, it had been replaced yesterday, and the spout had poured just fine for Emma two minutes ago. He slapped the side of the cooler with an open palm, and a hollow glug echoed from somewhere inside the plastic as he peered at the spigot, wondering what was wrong with it. The tab that acted as a handle lifted by itself and waved. Max blinked. The tab had settled down again, as if nothing had happened.

He wasn't thirsty anymore.


After that, Max brought water bottles to work, which he filled at home from the refrigerator in his kitchen and he noticed several of his colleagues soon followed his example. Their boss was exasperated, asking them at meetings if he should take away the cooler because no one was using it anymore. Max played with his pen instead of saying anything. He was half convinced that he had hallucinated the waving tab, despite noting the increasing popularity of bottles brought from home.

The next thing to behave strangely was his mouse. The buttons began to wriggle under his fingers sometimes and the cord connecting it to the PC would twitch. Max had yanked his hand off the mouse with a gasp the first time, thankful for the walls of his cubicle for the first time ever. He gingerly unplugged it and coiled it up in the furthest corner of his desk, learning the keyboard shortcuts instead.

A few weeks rolled by and everything in the office behaved. Max thought he might have been imagining the wriggling buttons and waving water cooler tab. He plugged his mouse back in and stopped bringing water bottles from home, and no ill came of it.



It was a very nice morning in June when the weirdness started at home. Sarah wasn't teaching summer school this year and so she and the boys were still asleep. The house was quiet as the smell of brewing coffee wafted through the kitchen and he made himself breakfast. Scrambled eggs and toast with apple butter. He heard the paper arrive, the thump announcing its presence on his doorstep. Max turned off the stove and walked out of the kitchen to his foyer, and as he reached for the doorknob, the door opened on its own, the hinges creaking loudly over the sound of his bare feet on tile.

When he didn't move, the door began to close and shut with a click.

Max backed up quickly, not turning his back on the door until he was almost back to the kitchen again. Turning on the stove again, he tried to calm down, reaching almost mindlessly for his cup of coffee as he tried to come up with answers for the door. Maybe a breeze had closed the door.
Max didn't notice the sound of ceramic sliding across tile by itself as he grabbed his mug from the counter top.


That morning, he went out the back door and out the side gate to reach his car, walking through the stands of sunflowers.

"Max," a voice called. "Max!"

He looked around, expecting one of his neighbors, but found none. Only the tall yellow sunflowers, their faces heavy with seeds. They were almost as tall as he was now. Puzzled, he hoped he was imagining things.

"Max!" the voice pleaded. "Please!"

There was either something very wrong or he was crazy. He had his suspicions but he didn't want an answer. Max ignored the voice and walked through the last stand of broad-faced yellow flowers.
He found no peace at work or home that day, nor any day after that. It was little things. Eager-to-help staplers, a grouchy printer which refused to print the requested number of pages, and computer monitors that seemed to go to screen saver at will. At home, the refrigerator declined to vend ice and both Jacob and Charlie reported that it had bit them when they tried to reach into the ice box itself. Neither boy would go near the sunflowers and refused to explain why. Sarah wouldn't let them die, however, so she took over tending them, sometimes returning to the house white faced and wide eyed.

Jerikah, one of his office mates, made a half-hearted joke about the Brave Little Toaster, eyes averted from the office toaster in the kitchenette. Everyone tittered nervously, eying the chrome appliance as it slid across the counter top to the end of its cord, straining to reach the window. With a jerk, it pulled itself out of the socket and tumbled to the floor with a crash and a spray of crumbs.

Lawrence's voice reached school-boy pitches as he asked, "Please tell me you all saw that?" He sounded frantic and desperate. "I'm not going crazy, right? Please tell me you saw it move."

Jerikah nodded. "I saw it all right," she said. She didn't sound quite as bad he did, but close. There was a chorus of agreement, too, following her.

"Thank god," Lawrence said. "I thought it was just me."



Max continued to go in to work, solidly ignoring his increasing anxiety. But the day his desk up and left his cubicle was the last straw. As it lumbered through the hallway, he walked out.

He made a beeline for the car garage, opened his car door, and jammed his key into the ignition. The vehicle started smoothly, a soft rumble under the dashboard, and Max pulled out of his parking slot, making for the exit. One hand still on the wheel, he groped shakily for his parking pass, which was clipped to edge of the glove compartment. Max dropped it, and it tumbled under the seat and out of reach. Swearing loudly he reached for it, fingers searching the sticky floor for the slick feel of plastic.

He almost crashed his car into the median and gave up. He pulled over and got out, shoving back the seat to search for his pass. He found it lodged in the corner of the seat well, half covered by an empty chip bag. Retrieving it, he got back in and flashed the badge at the man who sat at the gate of the parking structure. As soon as the gate was up, Max floored the accelerator and zoomed out into the street.

Everything was moving now, almost as though it were planned this way. Blue mailboxes stalked hopping parking meters and stop lights flashed in a rhythmic fashion, repeated by every light he encountered; red, yellow, yellow, green, red, green. Street cameras spun erratically on the top of stop lights and street lamps danced, rocking their foundations, cement rupturing around the bottom of the poles. It was midmorning, so traffic was light and Max was grateful for that as he nervously navigated the streets. He didn't want to think about what it would have been like at rush hour.

As Max approached his suburb, things got worse. One legged flamingos flapped wildly on yards and lawn gnomes were brawling in the middle of the street. One was chasing a crying Stephen down Dulcy, wielding a long fishing pole. Max stopped his car and scooped Stephen up as he ran past. He slammed his car door shut just as the creature reached them and the gnome slashed at the side of the SUV with its pole. He jammed on the gas pedal again and then slammed on the breaks as his neighbor's three-foot high plaster deer leaped off her lawn and nimbly jumped over the courtyard walls of the house across the street, hanging onto the crying Stephen to prevent him from going through the front wind shield.

Max pulled up in front of his house and dropped Stephen off on his porch after ringing the bell and waiting just long enough to see the door beginning to open before he ran to his own yard. Stephen screamed once, but Max didn't hear it cut off over the chorus of voices that met him on the edge of his grass, the sound of his name echoing off the house across the street.

The nearest sunflower smiled at him, pearly white teeth gleaming in the sun from its eyeless face. "Are you going to water us, Max? Sarah's been neglecting this corner of the yard lately and we're thirsty."

Max stared at the plant in silence before bolting along the sidewalk towards the garage. Once in the dark and hot quiet of the room, he paused, ignoring the voices yelling for him outside. He flicked on the light, deciding he needed the lawn mower to take care of this. Everything was wrong, from the toaster at work to murderous lawn gnomes, but talking sunflowers were the beyond the limit.

A rustle echoed in the depths and a tinkle of breaking glass followed, emanating from the top of some boxes nearby. Wide-eyed, Max reached for the nearest thing at hand, Charlie's baseball bat, as the huge china cat Sarah's aunt had given them lunged at him from above with a yowl. With one wild swing, Max smashed the cat. The fractured head of the animal continued to howl as he backed out of the garage, stumbling over the mat at the door. He landed on his ass and the bat clattered at his feet.

He stared around him as the sunflowers called again, and Stephen's mother's plastic fairies and angels flitted through the flowers and his drooping willow tree.

A small voice drifted down to him. "They're awful thirsty, Max." He looked up to see a little purple fairy perched on the edge of his roof, staring at him worriedly. "You don't want the sunflowers to die, do you?"

"Yeah," called another voice, that of a pale angel riding a waving flower. "It's not fair to let them die, you know." He patted his steed and it smiled contentedly. "They can't help the way they are."

Max stood up slowly and reached for the bat. The angel and the fairy watched him closely as he walked to the house.

"Do you plan to water them or what?" the angel called again.

He was not about to answer a plaster angel. No way in hell. Still hefting his bat, he opened the door to his home and crept inside. Sarah's spider plant squeaked at him while the 3-D picture of the Last Supper Jacob was planning to sell waved at him silently from the frame.

The couch appeared to have moved several feet toward the TV and various other items were not where he had left them last. The house was eerily quiet, too. It was early August, and while Sarah was at school to prepare for the upcoming year, the kids were home. Or were supposed to be.

"Jacob, Charlie!" he called. "Boys, where are you?" Max made his way to the back of the house where their bedrooms were, in search of his children. A quick search of their rooms yielded nothing. Perplexed and beginning worry, Max returned to the living room and thought to look out back. Maybe they were hanging out on the back porch?

"Jacob! Charlie!" he called again as he opened the door that divided the kitchen from the rest of the house. "Where are you?"

A frantic banging came from the refrigerator and Max whipped around to face it. He dropped the bat on the counter and opened the double doors of the fridge and freezer.

Charlie fell out of the freezer and into his father's arms, his face scratched and bloody. He clutched at his father and started to sob incoherently. Max only caught Jacob's name and tried to calm the boy down.

"Shh, shh," he said. "It's all right, I'm here now." Max hadn't said these words to his son in over a decade and memories of Charlie's night terrors came forth. They had always involved small spaces and things scratching at him.

Charlie managed to gather himself together soon, and was able to stop sobbing. Max held him for just a minute longer before asking,

"Where's your brother?"

"He took off after the freezer tried to eat me," Charlie muttered. His eyes narrowed when spied the bat on the counter behind his father and shot up to grab it, pushing Max out of the way. With surprising viciousness for a boy usually so calm, he swung the bat into the face of the fridge. When the machine growled and spat ice at him, Charlie rammed the bat into the ice dispenser and destroyed it, ignoring the flood of water.

Max restrained his son when the boy went to open the door and finish the job. "Where is your brother?"

"I don't know!" he snapped, glaring at his father. "I was too busy fighting the freezer to see where he ran!"

"Come on, then. Let's find him," Max told him, pulling the bat from his son's hands. Having Charlie steadied Max; the boy needed to be looked after and to do that, he had to have a calm head. Max opened the back door and led the two of them out into the yard. They ignored the old swing set, which had pulled itself out of the ground and lumbered around the yard, before walking through the fence onto the neighbor's property. There was a metallic scream as it fell into the pool and the howl of frightened dogs.

There was no sign of Jacob at all, so they walked around to the front yard. A leg peeped out of a stand of sunflowers.

[Freeky]

I can see this turning pretty cheerfulgrim, which I personally like to see in a story; normal, everyday things which shouldn't be at all scary are terrifying and strange. 

Good start so far, I am looking forward to where you're going with this.

[EK WAFFLR]

I like it a lot. The image of the smiling sunflower is especially vivid in my mind's eye.

[Juana]

I like it a lot. The image of the smiling sunflower is especially vivid in my mind's eye.

That's the image that sparked the entire story, actually. Glad you like it.

I can see this turning pretty cheerfulgrim, which I personally like to see in a story; normal, everyday things which shouldn't be at all scary are terrifying and strange. 

Good start so far, I am looking forward to where you're going with this.

Thanks.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Eeeeeek!

[Juana]

Haha, it gets worse!

[Slurrealist]

Nice!
Really want to know how the sunflowers are connected to the whole affair.
The idea is great! But I don't know how to react. I understand it's horror, but I couldn't stop laughing while reading.
Great work!

[Placid Dingo]

Reader hat: I love this. The pace is really nice, and there's a nice sense of not really knowing if he's crazy or if other people are experiencing the same thing.

Editor hat: The place names are a bit distracting because they contain references to unrelated works.
What did the sunflowers want when they called out the first time? Do we ever find out?
When Stephen comes into the story you act as though the reader should already know who he is.
The sentence 'talking sunflowers was the limt' was a bit odd because by that point, not only is it one of the less weird things he's been through, it's not the first tune they've spoken to him.
I love the dialogue with the fairy telling him off.

I genuinely really really enjoyed this.

[Juana]

Thanks! Glad you think so and thanks for the criticism. As soon as I have a minute and am not stealing time on PD while procrastinating, I'll fix the things you pointed out.

Nice!
Really want to know how the sunflowers are connected to the whole affair.
The idea is great! But I don't know how to react. I understand it's horror, but I couldn't stop laughing while reading.
Great work!

Thank you. :3

[Pæs]

I like this!

Looking forward to reading more of it.