Tumgik
#these overgrown abandoned greenhouses are such treats for my eyes!
happyheidi · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media
“Abandoned somewhere in France”
by Julien Harlaut
4K notes · View notes
Text
DeJarnette Sanitarium, March 2017
When we trudge from green hatchback, it is down a grassy hill, speakless, no beat but the wind to bring us to our knees beneath brick. We don’t know why we are here. All of Shenandoah recedes from sanitarium, ivy overgrown, something unearthable in the fieldlands. Ghosts standing in the shade of microgreens wave us over.
We are praying or pleading or something and silent, hushed unsure, staircases snaking up to Staunton’s most boarded-in, Anasazi of their own, looking for a crack to pry, a cry in the glass to creep through. To come to.
A window delivers us to a tiled floor— so many envelopes, so many letters— the only place the light enters. Our thirsting lungs call out for greenhouse air; unsure if we haunt or host. We feel our way through basement bathroom. Decomposition gases flood the panes; I stop past the shower. Try to picture the steam. I do not know whether the water will hold back the angels or the dead.
I can only picture the nakedness. Something wrong. Something crawls from the corner of a mirror— dusk, dust. Something like oracle or occult—holy and raw at once. A door left ajar lets us through.
Anasazi means ancient outsiders. They lived in Colorado before I moved from Virginia but remain recorded in glyphs, cliff-side, like the ones DeJarnette patients jumped from. These, the hands that painted, abandoned open pages, left their souls in the grass here, psychorealized, that sat in the front yard once watched long enough to be allowed outside for lunch— fistful to mouthful, they watch the Blue Ridge bend and remain, a different kind of prehistoric. Nobody kept records on eugenics, so we are forced to anthropologize, make our way through the dim.
What a privilege to shuffle along marble, to clumsy up staircases, snake toward stars, to wander in the dark. In woodchipped walls, heartbeats echo as sirens. If born forty years before I was, I might’ve been one among many, sterilized, forced to find ways to survive the light. Things they don’t teach. I press an arched window, think of the eyes that must’ve stared through— Staunton’s most boarded in, shapes of opal, shades of pool, mud. I smell latex and bleach, heavy on gritted palms.
The weed pulp outside smells of ghost breath. The floor, of shadow, the bathroom, of irony unsent. Letters opened but never delivered. There were children here, their bodies are outside, along the back fence. Like subterranean succulents, treated with chlorine. Hands corroded tender. I wonder what happened. Ferns holding tiny craters in their bellies baptize away the rot. My trespassed transgression now nothing like what they did.
Out front, grass flattens under where ambulances once treaded, still fertile from spit and mouth foam of pre-patient mourn, rabid irises leaking down and down and down. The stairs work both ways. Flytrap: I can hear them scream. Nerves are synthesized here in handfuls of shrub and oak. Humid clings mist-like to moss out front. They can no longer see it: the portico a duct, nozzeling off-dreams and wrong bodies through. The Anasazi were surrealists, too— watch what they drew from ash.
Watch the Pueblo dunes. Watch the sun rise and pink up the clouds. Predictions come from people asylumed under mortar, mansioned farmhouse kept close in to nowhere, porthole for sanitation— lobotomy, scrubbrush.
Ivy dwindles as fragmented memory. We snake up the front stair, unscrew doorknob like we would loosen a bulb. Every light is already out. Only a few of the entryways open. DeJarnette remains for us anthropologists, haunt or host, hushed— its doors and windows clasp and come undone again, come apart and lock again. Dimmed footprints reactive as carbon whistle under rubber soles. We come to.
Katie Hogan is a twenty year old emerging poet from Richmond, Virginia, writing and living in Denver, Colorado. Her work is forthcoming in The Chiron Review and Ember Chasm Review, and she is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in creative writing from the University of Denver. Twitter: @katieshogan Insta: @katiehogan16
Madison Zehmer is a poet and wannabe historian from North Carolina. She has published and forthcoming work in the Santa Ana River Review, Gone Lawn, LandLocked, and more. She is the editor in chief of Mineral Lit Mag, and her chapbook will be released by Kelsay Books in 2021. Twitter: @madisonzehmer Insta: @maddiezehmer and @mirywrites
Tumblr media
0 notes
saltineofswing · 7 years
Text
The Garden
This was done for @destinyweek day 1: Ghosts! In which, a little more about Euclid's relationship with Constant is given a little more attention than usual- it has a little more turbulence than most might assume at first glance.
“Constant. Constant? Constant!”
The Ghost glanced up from the console it had been flitting back and forth in front of to see its Guardian standing amidst a significant collection of dead Vex. Euclid-319’s gloves were smoking with the discharge of so much Solar light, and the molten embers of his Radiance were still glowing enough to provide an additional layer of lighting to the long-abandoned lab complex. Constant’s aftsegments contracted slightly and its eye flitted back and forth between Euclid and the console as Euclid spoke again. “Are you finished downloading the files?”
“Yes. I got distracted.”
That drew a tinny chuckle out of its Guardian as Euclid moved to take a step over a fallen Minotaur, and floated across the small pool of machine corpses to land silently at Constant’s side. “That is ordinarily my line.” Euclid tapped a few command lines into the console and then fried it, ensuring no Vex would acquire the same data they just had. “Are you alright? Your processing core has displayed an unusual amount of lag time in the past seven hours and twenty minutes. And you have out-and-out become distracted for the first time in…” Euclid paused to calculate, and Constant felt a grating irritation that prompted it to roll its eye and vanish with a hushed hiss of particles disassembling. “… Approximately eighty-three years, if I remember correctly.”
“The ever-looming possibility that you don’t remember correctly is nothing but a comfort to me,” Constant muttered. It was true, though; the Ghost was distracted, distracted by the data they had harvested from the console in the lab. They’d been trying to track it down for months; admittedly they had probably put it on the Vex’s radar purely by virtue of searching for it so hard, but ultimately the search was worth it. “I got the location. It’s in the building, just as we suspected. I’ll transmit it to you.”
“Excellent! It is possible that-” Euclid was a gusher even on his worse days, and Constant used the sudden exposition spilling like an especially ornate word fountain from his vocoder to zone out again. It felt… peculiar to be back here on Venus. There was a certain tug, somewhere in Constant; something deeper and brighter than his crimson shell, something that stretched all the way back to Earth. Something that made it feel tense all the time now. As if something was… coming. Euclid had sensed Oryx’s arrival; Constant couldn’t help but feel as if something… similar was happening.
It wished it had some guidance. That deep unknowable Something inside of it was quiet. At times maddeningly so. Constant found itself tangled in the strings of an indiscernible everything, feeling the trembling vibrations of something it could not see or understand. It supposed Euclid felt similarly at times… but the difference was, Euclid had Constant to guide him. To refocus him, to remind him, to stabilize him. Constant? Constant didn’t have anyone to look to for guidance. Constant was alone.
“Don’t you agree?”
The question shook Constant out of its reverie and it re-materialized without bothering to look at Euclid as he walked. “Mm hmm.”
“It should work, right?”
“Yes, Euclid.” The Exo stopped walking and Constant turned. “What are you doing?”
“Just trying to confirm,” Euclid said slowly, “That you think it’s a good idea.”
“Yes.”
“Okay then.” Euclid kept moving, mouthlights strobing an innocent smile. “When we get back I’ll paint your shell bright, neon purple.”
Constant froze for a moment, the lights in its eye shrinking to a pinprick as it realized what had just happened; then it let out a blustery sigh and spun its foresegments in irritation, following after Euclid. “Alright. I wasn’t paying attention,” It admitted, tart and snide and bristling at the idea of such a brazen coloration. The crimson Frontier Shell it wore served both form and function. It took paramount pride in its appearance, unlike the disheveled robes and oft-forgotten helmet of its Guardian. “You caught me. Let’s just get this done, alright? I’d like to get back.”
“Do you want to talk about what’s wrong?”
“You left your helmet on the ship again.”
“That is a deflection.”
Constant buzzed in irritation and started to dart out ahead of Euclid, but the Guardian slipped around in front of it and put his body in Constant’s way. “Wait,” He said, holding his hands up. “P-please. Talk to me. We’ve been together for… for how long now?”
“One hundred and seven years,” Constant responded; it lifted its gaze to Euclid’s face.
“A very long time,” Euclid murmured. “I remember when Andal Brask was the Hunter’s Vanguard.” He turned and glanced back down the hall. “And I remember, ahh, how, how much you were hoping for a Titan. Or a H-hunter. Someone sturdy, someone s-strong. A front line warrior, someone to wage direct war on the Darkness.”
Constant was silent, following its Guardian down the hall as they progressed deeper into the forgotten laboratory. This had been a point of contention between the two of them, to a certain extent, for a hundred years. Constant did not regret much, but Euclid had been so unstable when he’d resurrected the Exo, when he’d chosen his Guardian; and then he’d become so flighty and anxious, so reluctant to socialize and be a part of the Traveller’s world. So far from what it had wanted to find.
Constant regretted every moment he’d spent treating Euclid like a chore, and not a partner.
“The garden,” Constant finally admitted. “I’ve been thinking about the garden.”
“Ah! Me too. I believe that we’ll make it something great. I know it is somewhat smaller than our garden here on Venus- no rock garden on the Tower- but the herbs are coming along nicely, aren’t they?”
“Hmm. You’ve done well at regulating the temperature and humidity.”
“I think so. I am quite glad Ikora afforded us the spare room for it; some of the other Warlocks enjoy meditating around the smell of the Venusian Blackgrass.” Euclid pressed his palm against the keypad of the door they’d been traveling towards, their ultimate destination. There was a flash, a gout of smoke, and the sizzle of fried electronics as he cooked the entire panel with a burst of Solar light, and the seams of the door sizzled and pried apart at Euclid’s whim.
Inside, Euclid took a small, excited breath; walls and walls of seed packets and hanging flora from before the Collapse. The room was severely overgrown, vines choking the directory and every table.
“It’s still here,” Constant said, unable to hide its incredulity. “I can’t believe it. The Fallen, the Vex… untouched. Euclid, we found it.”
“Th-the lost greenhouse of Doctor Arkand Breunner,” Euclid whispered, voice bubbling with glee and awe. “Records and seeds of pre-collapse flora dating back to the earliest days of the Golden Age.” Euclid turned to look at Constant, beaming in lights. “Good job, my friend.”
For a second Constant found those feelings of incumbent harm- that tug, somewhere deep in a fathomless place much bigger than the red shell it resided inside- fading into nothing. Euclid gently cupped the bell of a bright orange flower, humming and leaning in to give his olfactory detectors a chance to analyze the smell. “I would love to live in a garden,” Euclid murmured. “I find them so soothing. There’s something about a garden that is endlessly invigorating. So much life.”
“Do you think that’s what the Traveler sees us all as?” Constant asked before it could stop itself. “As a garden?”
Euclid hummed. “I don’t know. I suppose I wouldn’t be all that surprised.” He sighed fondly and let go of the flower, then began packing up seed packets. “Come, let’s get these stored away. I suspect we won’t have an abundance of privacy.”
“Of course,” Constant said. Before long the two of them had completely cleared the room, and Constant was initiating the process to dematerialize the both of them back to orbit.
“Euclid.” The Guardian looked up from his notebook at his Ghost. “I’m sorry I don’t talk to you more often. I mean, just casually.”
Euclid paused, the lights at the very back of his throat flickering faint, uncomfortable, unsure. “O-oh. Er, it’s alright.” He was silent for a moment, scribbling out one last note. “… You know… I-I am grateful.”
Constant’s primary foresegment dipped in confusion, its entire shell quirking quizzically at the sudden statement. “What? Why?”
“For everything you do for me. For everything you have done for me.” He gave the orange flower-bulb a final, gentle brush with his fingertips before he strode over to where Constant was floating. “You have helped me so much. I know I’m not exactly what you wanted but… you are the reason I am as stable as I am today. Bringing me back to life in the first place notwithstanding.” He chuckled.
Constant let his gaze linger on the Exo, but before he could say anything else, the countdown finished. Both Guardian and Ghost were gone, whisked away into the vast immateria that connected the two of them together and to the Traveler, and to every other Ghost and Guardian in existence; Constant supposed, in a way, it was its own type of garden. Cultivated and maintained in a self-sustained system. A greenhouse in its own right. Being there, if only for a few moments, made Constant feel at ease.
15 notes · View notes