The Garden

This is a chapter I thought about a lot before November came.

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I couldn't help myself but to go into the garden behind that house.

For starters, it iss really beautiful. It rained a couple of days ago, so it's still a little moist; droplets of clear water hang heavy off the petals of dandelions and tulips bowing under the weight of still rain. Bees are everywhere.

So are fairies, of course. The tiny ones, flitting back and forth between various flowers as rapidly as the insects. Like the flowers, they're diverse in shape and color; some near tulips are straight-bodied and full-lipped; others, near roses, are spectacular and refined. Fat fairies sit lazily on gardenias and orchid fairies are coyly sexy. In their black-and-yellow stockings, little six-inch girls with gossamer wings play with bumblebees like they're puppies.

Naturally, I'm sitting in the middle of it all, just watching them all go by. I hear it just as I expect it:

"What's your name?"

"Ben." My answer comes even before I bother looking. My head turns to see a fairy (no shit!) looking busy. She's pulling the petals of a lily open; when I look, she stops and sits gingerly on the stem. The way the flower bows under her miniscule weight is one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

She's a perfect one, all right. Long-necked and doe-eyed, I can't tell whether she's dressed in tiny flowers or just tiny flower tattoos (do fairies get tattoos? Or are they more like "markings?"). How can I put it? She's just flowery - curvy in all the curvy places but ultimately slender and graceful. I can't tell what her wings are made of so I just guess they're made of flower petals, though some parts of them look like moth antennae, all pink and red and blue and pretty. Needless to say, I'm already trying to check myself from falling immediately in lust.

She looks a little sad for a second. "I'll bet you can guess my name. It's really easy."

"I'll bet it's..." I glance at the flower behind her. "Daffodil."

The sad look immedaiately turns into a pissed-off one; the wings start humming and she pops right off the flower, hands on her hips. "This isn't a daffodil!"

I hold up my hands innocently. "I know! I was just playing along so you wouldn't be mad about having an easy name!"

Her look melts fickle into sparkly-eyed admiration. "Oh, you're awesome!" she shouts. I savor the moment for a second until I realize all three emotions - sadness, anger, and adoration - are quite possibly exaggerated.

"Uh... thanks, Lily." She's hugging my neck - I can feel the outline of her body against my Adam's apple and I try to stifle a sudden sweat.

Lily extracts herself and flits over to my knee, where she ceremoniously places her butt. "What brings you to the garden, Ben?"

"Small talk from hot fairies."

"I've got that in droves."

"What? Small talk, or 'hot'?"

"Both. It's my job." Lily bounces around perkily.

I'm starting to see why the night fairies hate day fairies so much. I mean, I can't help but really like Lily, despite her complete... floweriness. "You have a job, then?"

"Well, not really. I guess you could say I do things that don't need doing."

I catch her drift immediately. "Which are things that need doing!"

"Exactly!" She reaches down and slaps the side of my leg excitedly. "I think we're going to get along, Ben." Lily slides both hands down my thigh, then adopts a position lying belly-down on my knee. I'm trying to avoid arousal here and she's got her lascivious curves sitting on sensitive parts of my leg.

Worse yet, I think she knows. She's kicking her bare feet back and forth and tickling the bottom part of my thigh with her fingertips. I notice that her fingernails are this shiny color of pink, kind of a shade that you'd see on the bottom side of a CD held to sunlight.

I try to distract myself through conversation. "I have to admit, I didn't expect to like you guys so much."

Lily only looks confused. Her eyes open wide and she just goes, "Huh?"

"Well, the night fairies seem to think that you guys are kind of... inane."

"I know," she says. "I mean - you know all those idiotic characters on TV who are happy all the time because all they do is drink wheatgrass shakes and catch rays, right? But really - are those characters for real, or are they caricatures made by people who are bitter that they haven't unlocked that power in themselves?"

"I guess I can agree with that," I reply. "I mean, last year I would have thought that I'm a complete fucking loon."

"Don't forget that you still might be," she retorts with a sunny smile. "But if you are, just remember that your hallucinations are happy ones. At least, I am."

I'm not sure what it is, but hearing that from her makes me feel as happy as that moment in the spring when the sun hits your back and you realize that it is finally warm outside.

I must be smiling to myself at that moment because she just continues on speaking. "The night fairies aren't bad for the same reason I'm not. They mean well and they do well."

"Doesn't it bother you that they dislike you so much?"

"Why should it? They have much different perceptions of themselves than I have of them. They play the same role to themselves as any of us do - that is, the role of 'me.' They obviously occupy a different place in your life as they do in mine - but when you think about what life is like for any of us, it all happens from within our own heads."

"I'm still not willing to admit that you're not part of my own little hallucination."

"I don't mind that. I find comfort in that as real as I may not be, I still have the ability to help. And smile."