The Oil Garden
Dreamt of the garden again last night. It used to be my grandmother's, full of roses. Now, the soil is thick and black, like tar. It clings to my shoes. The roses are still there, but their petals weep a shimmering, rainbow-slick fluid that smells like petrol and sickness. It's beautiful, in a way. Horribly beautiful.
The whispers are part of the garden now. They rise from the oily puddles when I get too close, telling me to cultivate, to nurture. They say the thorns are a blessing. They say the rot is a form of purification.
I reached out to touch a bloom. The oily dew coated my fingers, and for a moment, I understood the whispers. The patterns in the oil, the fractals of creeping blackness—it was a new kind of language. A new kind of life. I felt a pulling sensation behind my eyes, a pressure to invite the garden into the waking world, to let it grow.
I woke up with black smudges on my fingertips. They won't wash off.
[Source: Transcription from a water-damaged notebook found in a quarantined apartment, Kaidan.]
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