Planted

Jane Clements was a woman who was not faithful. Her husband Randy Clements had no idea of her infidelity. She had been sleeping with Victor Brown for more than two years. Their affair had started while the two of them worked at Fulton's Furniture, a factory on the west end of Litton. Litton was the town that they lived in. It wasn't a large town but it was a nice town.

Jane and Victor started off as just two coworkers who had met at the Straw Dog, a local bar. They had become good friends but that changed after Jane told Victor that she was thinking of divorcing Randy. It wasn't long after that the two of them had met secretly at the Lane's Motel in the near by town of Foustville. From that day on they had been seeing each other at least once a week, sometimes more.

The two had fallen in love and Victor had asked her when she was going to ask Randy for the divorce.

"I'm afraid to ask him. He would rather kill me than let someone else have me."

"I won't let him, Jane. Ask him for us, for me." Victor pleaded with her.

"I will try." Jane replied.

She was good to her word. She tried to ask him but couldn't face her fears. She knew Randy loved her and he hadn't done anything to her. She had just grown tired of him.

To her he never paid enough attention to her. All he ever seemed concerned about was work and tending to his garden in the back yard. Jane never saw how much he really did for her. The garden was just his way of staying out of her hair, letting her have her own freedom. Of course Randy didn't know how far she had taken that freedom.

Two weeks after she had tried to ask Randy for a divorce and failed, Jane and Victor were back at the Lane's Motel.

"Did you ever ask Randy for the divorce?" Victor asked Jane as they were getting dressed.

"Yes I did." She said in a shaky voice, then started crying.

"What's wrong?" Victor asked worried.

"He said he would never let me leave him, that if there was another man he would find him and kill him!" She cried out. "We have to stop seeing each other. I couldn't stand it if something happened to you. That's why we have to stop seeing each other."

"I don't care what he tries to do to me, I just want to be with you!" Victor exclaimed.

"If only he would just go away. Then we would'nt have to sneak around like this anymore."

"I doubt that's going to happen." Victor said flatly.

"I know but if there was some way of making him leave, I'm sure you would help me do it. Wouldn't you?"

"Of course I would Jane."

Jane and Victor slowed things down for a while, as a matter of fact they stopped all together for almost a month. They saw each other at work and talked some, but not too much. Jane wanted to keep up appearances. Finally Jane handed Victor a note as he was walking past her at work one day. Meet me tonight at our usual place. The note said.

That night Victor met her at the motel.

"I think I found a way to make Randy leave for good." Jane told Victor as she walked into the motel room.

"How is that going to happen?" Victor asked.

"Don't you worry about it. I'll take care of it. All I need you to do is wait by your phone this Saturday. I'm going to call you after he leaves. I'll need your help with something."

"Okay, but I would feel better about all of this if I knew more about what you have planned."

"Don't worry I know this will work."

Then Victor grabbed her and picked her up and kissed her. They made love. The last time that it would be considered adultery.

That Saturday Victor was at home waiting for the phone to ring. He had been waiting since he woke up. He was starting to get nervous, it was already past noon.

At 2:13p.m. the phone rang. Victor pounced on it.

"Hello"

"Vic it's Jane, come on over to the house Randy is gone."

"Are you okay? You sound strange."

"I'm fine. I guess I'm still nervous."

"Jane, how did you get him to leave?"

"I'll tell you when you get here. Now come on over I need you and I need you to do something for me."

"I'm on my way."

Five minutes later Victor was walking through the front door of Jane's house, for the first time. Jane met him with a smile but her eyes looked strange to Victor. The only word, Victor could think of, to describe that look in her eyes was the word jittery. Something didn't feel right to him.

"Now tell me how you got Randy to leave and how do you know he won't be back?"

"Okay, I told him that I wanted the divorce."

"I thought you had already told him that? Isn't that when he threatened you?"

"I did tell him before but this time I told him that I was going to get a restraining order against him, since he threatened me. He got really mad. I was scared. I thought he was going to hurt me or worse but he didn't. He told me he was leaving and I'd be sorry for the way I'd treated him. He said he was going out west to stay with his sister. She lives in New Mexico."

"Are you sure he's gone? I don't want him walking in on us."

"I'm sure. He called a friend of his to take him to the airport. He wouldn't have done that if he wasn't leaving."

"Now that he's gone, what do you need me to do?"

"Now that he's gone I'm a little low on money."

"You want me to give you some money? I'd be happy to." Victor interrupted.

"No I want you to follow me to a car lot. I'm going to sell Randy's truck. He told me to do whatever I wanted with it."

"Sure if that's what you want."

They both drove to the nearest lot and sold the truck for an amount much less than it was worth. They drove back to Jane's and celebrated. That nervousness in Jane passed and so did time.

When Jane had called Victor that Saturday, it was late winter. Winter passed and spring came. Victor had moved in with Jane. The two were very happy, until one day when Jane went out back to where Randy's garden had been. Victor had noticed that she went out there often and stared at the ground. Sometimes he thought he saw her crying. He figured that maybe she missed Randy some and felt bad for cheating on him. He never asked her about it. No need to scratch old wounds. One day was different. Jane was looking down at the ground and noticed two plants sprouting through the soil. She didn't know why but something about those tiny plants made her feel uneasy. She stared at them and wondered what kind of plants they were. She had never before seen plants like these. The plants were a dark reddish green and about six inches tall. She was sure they hadn't been there the day before. She tried to think what Randy had planted in that area the year before but couldn't remember. She knew he had planted some kind of flowers there and that was all she could remember.

Weeks passed and Jane noticed that the plants were growing very fast. They now looked something like plants that looked familiar. They looked like discolored sunflowers. They made her feel more nervous than ever. She was repulsed by them and yet fascinated by them as well. Victor asked her one day what kind of flowers they were.

"They kind of look like sunflowers but the color is wrong." Jane told him.

"Maybe they are some kind of hybrid or a mutation." Victor reasoned.

Victor found himself fascinated by the flowers as well. He knew from the look of them that they would soon bloom. He was curious to see what they looked like once they bloomed. Jane was filled with terror at the thought of them blooming. She wanted to cut them down but couldn't bring herself to do it. No matter how afraid she was of the flowers, she was still curious what they would look like after they bloomed.

Jane and Victor were both home and looking out the back window at the flowers one Saturday morning and saw that the flowers had bloomed. The flowers were bright red instead of yellow. Both had never seen anything like them. They went outside to look at them.

"There beautiful, I've never seen anything like them." Victor said.

"Yes they really are. Vic would you go and get the camera? I want to take a picture of them."

"Sure be right back."

Victor went inside to forage for the camera. Jane was looking up into one of the sunflowers, They were almost six feet tall, when she thought she could see Randy's face in the center of the flower. She shook her head to clear it and the face was gone. Then the plant leaned towards her. She gasped in fear. She started to turn and run but the flower bent and grabbed her head with its petals. She screamed then felt a sharp pain at the top of her head. It was the last thing she felt.

Victor had found the camera and was checking to see if there was film in it, when he heard a scream. He ran for the back door and on into the back yard, to see an unbelievable sight. One of the sunflowers had Jane by the head and she looked like she was getting thinner. He could hear a sickening sucking sound coming from the flower and could see the stem pulsing like a throat swallowing. It was like the flower was sucking her dry. He ran over to try and break her free of the flower. He beat at it and pulled at her. He yelled her name but she didn't answer. She looked dazed, like she was drugged. She kept getting thinner and paler. He bent to try and pull the plant up by its roots. He was pulling and thought he could feel the roots starting to pull free, when he saw a shadow move across the ground. He turned to look behind himself and saw the other flower bent in front of his face. He screamed like a small girl as the flower grabbed him by the face.

Two weeks passed and people got worried about Jane, Victor, and especialy Randy. Randy's family called the police because they hadn't heard from him in several months and when they called his home no one answered. They called all of his friends that they knew and none of them had saw him.

The police showed up at the house that once was Randy's, Jane's, and even Victor's. They knocked on the door and got no answer. They walked around to see if anyone was in the back yard. There they found the home's occupants or what was left of them. What they saw was two dead and dried up sunflowers and next to them was something that looked like two mummies, one male the other female. The mummies turned out to be Jane Clements and Victor Brown. The police checked the whole area around the house but didn't see Randy Clements anywhere.

An investigation followed and during this investigation the garden was dug up where the two bodies were found and a third was found. Buried in the garden was the body of Randy Clements. He was found with the roots of the dead sunflowers buried in his torso. The cause of death was a blow to the head by a blunt object.

It wasn't anything that Randy planted that killed Jane and Victor. It was what Jane had planted in the garden. Victor never knew she had done this. She killed Randy on her own and Victor paid for his love with his life.


The end
Mike Meehan
April 4, 2002