THE GARDINEL

Phil Roberts About 7,200 words
22 Stafford Street, First Publishing Rights
Footscray (V) 3011 © Copyright 2025
AUSTRALIA. Phil Roberts



THE GARDINEL
by
PHIL ROBERTS



Manny Wellman was sitting in the lime-green walled kitchen of his son and daughter-in-law's house at number 109 Dorset Lane in LePage, in the Victorian countryside. Like usual, he was grousing about life in Australia.

"I don't see why we had to come ten thousand miles from the States. We were happy in the U.S.A.?"

"In Australia we say sixteen thousand kilometres ... Besides, you weren't happy in the States," corrected his Melbourne-born daughter-in-law, Tegan. "You were forever complaining about all the gun massacres, school knifings, drive-by killings ..."

"Not to mention a certain madman who will be in the White House on January 21st next year," pointed out his son, Keifer. Like his father, Keifer had been born in a suburban area of New Jersey. Like his father, Keifer was a tall, lean man. But unlike his father, Keifer still had a full head of lush raven-coloured hair, whereas Manny's long, snowy locks made him look like an emaciated Santa Claus. Imitating Manny's whiny grousing voice, Keifer said, "How could people choose an evil, insane man over a good, decent woman?"

"Well, I admire your support of women's rights," chipped in Tegan, a mousy blonde barely one hundred and sixty centimetres tall, "but I wanted to return to my homeland."

"And we agreed Australia was a safer place to raise kids," added Keifer.

"Well, that's true," admitted the old man reluctantly, "but why do we have to live in the smelly countryside?"

"The air around here smells sweetly of pine and eucalyptus," pointed out Keifer. "That's another reason to live here."

"Yes, you were always grousing about the polluted smell of Jersey and New York."

"I never grouse," groused Manny. "And it wasn't that bad."

"Dad, you groused about the smell of petrol slash gasoline from when I was born to when we moved here shortly after my thirty-ninth birthday last year." When the old man said nothing, Keifer added, "Besides, you were always talking of selling up and moving to a 'Nice log cabin, like Abe Lincoln grew up in' in the countryside!"

"The Jersey countryside!"

"Dad, there are more drive-by shootings in American country towns than there are in Australian capital cities!"

"Maybe," groused Manny, "anyway I'm going for a walk."

Picking up his cane, which said along the side, 'Made in America', despite being made in Korea, the old man turned and started outside.

"Would you like us to go with you?"

"No!" said Manny and Tegan as one.

Outside, the sixty-two-year-old kept grousing as he started across the pine needle and gum leaf-covered floor of the sweet-smelling forest.

Think I'm an old man who needs taking care of! I'm only sixty-two! he thought, grousing in his mind as he started.

As he walked through the sweet-smelling pine and eucalyptus forest, Manny sniffed at the fragrant air and decided it was nice walking through the forest just beyond LePage township. Although he would rather die a gruesome death than admit that to Keifer or Tegan.


Inside the two-storey villa home, Tegan asked: "Wouldn't it be kinder to put the old fool into a loony bin?"

A little shocked, Keifer said: "He's not loony ... Just a little eccentric."

"Eccentric as a coot," said Tegan, not sure what a coot was.

"Besides, due to Ken Kesey's rambling mess-terpiece, there are very few loony bins left. That's why there are so many drive-by shootings, and stabbings in America ... They let the crazies out of the asylums and closed them all down."

"I guess that explains Donald Trump still being free!"


"Ah smell that sweet aroma," said Manny, looking back as though afraid that his son or daughter-in-law had followed him and would overhear him. "They're right, this is better than polluted Jersey air and drive-by shootings."

Enjoying the fresh air twenty days shy of Christmas, Manny lost track of time and his location as he walked deeper and deeper into the eucalyptus and pine forest. Not that he was worried, he's been a Boy Scout, then a Boy Scout leader, and knew how to track through the forest. Looking back, he thought, "Not that it's hard following tracks across the pine needles and gum leaves ... they make it mighty easy."

He had almost decided it was time to turn and head home for lunch, when he reached a clearing and stared in shock.

"What the Hell!" he said, staring at the small log cabin in the clearing. "We were just talking about Honest Abe's log cabin, and lo and behold, I find one in the local forest."

Even as he started toward the grey-wood cabin, Manny wondered whether they had ever had American-style log cabins in Australia.

Nonetheless, thrilled to find what looked like a one- or two-room cabin in the bush outside LePage, Manny started forward, a little surprised by the strong flower-like smell as he approached the cabin.

Guess the occupants love flora, he thought as he approached the cabin.

On the patio, that ran from one side of the cabin to the other, there was a wooden rocking chair, rocking gently as though someone had just been sitting there. Beside it sat an old wooden barrel upended so that what looked like a corn whisky jug could sit on it.

Didn't know Aussies even made white lightning? thought Manny as he approached until he was up to, but not yet upon the patio. From this distance, the plant smell was almost overpowering.

Still, it's better than the gasoline stench of Jersey, thought Manny, before calling out, "Hello, anybody about?"


In the Yellow House on Rochester Road, Merridale, they were seated around the lunch table, awaiting Sheila Bennett's arrival.

"Where the Hell is she?" demanded Tommy Turner, a short blond retiree. "Doesn't she know there are starving people here?"

"Tom-Tom you could live for weeks on that gut," teased Freddy Kingston, a tall, portly recent retiree, almost but not quite bald.

"How dare you ... and don't call me Tom-Tom!"

"It's not like Sheila to be late for meals," said Leo Laxman. Tall, thin, and born in Jamaica, Leo had moved to Australia a year ago to work as a nurse at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.

"Yes, she certainly has a healthy appetite," put in Natasha Lipzing. At seventy-one, the tall grey-haired lady was the oldest resident at the boarding house.

"For a pregnant Hippo, maybe," teased Terri Scott. A beautiful blonde, at thirty-six, Terri was the top cop of the BeauLarkin to Willamby area, and was the boss of Colin and Sheila.

"Terri!" chided Deidre Morton, shocked. The owner of the Yellow House, Deidre, was a sixty-something brunette who should have had at least a dozen Michelin Stars for her culinary skills. "Sheila spends all day every Saturday at the Muscle-Up Gym with Derek and Cheryl exercising ... That's why she has to eat so much.

"So it's not just that she's a glutton?" teased Colin Klein. A tall redheaded man, Colin had worked as a London crime reporter for thirty years before moving to Australia to join the Glen Hartwell Police Force and become engaged to Terri.

"Well, I am surprised at you, Mr. Klein!" said Deidre pointedly. Her face flushed red in anger at her favourite 'guest' being slandered, and she started to give Colin a major tongue-lashing.

When they heard the sound of a key turning in the front door.

"That must be her now," said Natasha. "Where has she been?"

"Don't ask us," said Terri, "she just said she had to buy something at the Rosy-Lea Florist shop at the corner of Baltimore and Matthew Flinders Road."

"Rosey-Lea, that's rhyming slang for cup of tea," said Natasha.

"Not in their case," said Colin, as they heard footsteps approaching from the corridor. "The florist shop is owned by two sisters, Rosey and Lea McCullam."

"Howdy Doody boys and girls," said Sheila, beaming broadly as she entered the kitchen carrying a large white plastic bag. The same age as Terri, Sheila was a Goth chick with orange-and-black striped hair, and the second-top cop in the area. "Guess where I've been?"

"The Rosey-Lea Florist Shop," said Natasha Lipzing.

Looking puzzled, Sheila asked, "How did you know?"

"Terri told us," said Deidre. "Besides, that's what it says on your plastic bag. What did you see that took your interest?"

"Took my interest, nah ah, I had to get this specially ordered in."

Reaching carefully into the plastic bag, she lifted out a plastic flower pot, holding a large flower that looked like it had giant green halved clam shells for leaves, with long green 'tines' on the outer edges of the 'shells'.

"What the Hell is that?" asked Tommy, puzzled enough to forget about being hungry.

"A Venus Flytrap," said Sheila, grinning like a child on Santa's lap.

"Isn't that one of those carnivorous plants?" asked Natasha.

"Yep, it'll take care of all the flies and insects in the house, as well as scarfing down the occasional mouse."

"There are no mice in my house!" said Deidre emphatically.

"But we did have a problem with flies and wasps last summer," said Tommy, who invariably sided with the Goth chick.

"Get it out of my house!" Insisted Deidre. "I don't want to lose a finger to that thing!"

"You won't lose a finger to it, Mrs. M., I'll keep it in my room." She thought for a moment, then said, "Probably on that little table near my bedroom window. It needs to have lots of indirect sunlight. And I'll need to buy a water distiller ... it can't handle tap water."

"Who can, with all that fluorine, bromine, and canine they put in it?" demanded Tommy.

"You know water distillers can cost a thousand bucks?" asked Freddy.

"Venice is worth it."

"Venice?" asked Colin Klein.

"That's what I decided to call her; Venice the Venus Flytrap."

"And we thought she was insane," said Terri, making everyone, except Sheila, laugh.


Calling out again, Manny Wellman stepped tentatively up onto the patio of the log cabin. Although it looked rickety, the patio was fairly solid underfoot, if a little soft, strangely so for what looked like aged wood.

"Anyone at home?" called the old man, tentatively pushing inwards the door to step into the cabin.

Inside was one large room containing a wooden bunk with strangely plastic-looking blankets, two wooden chairs, a coffee table bereft of coffee table books, and a large wooden fireplace, bereft of a fire, although the day was slightly chilly.

"Brrrr," said Manny, a victim of chilly days. "Pity they didn't light the fire." He walked across to the fireplace where three or four small logs were waiting to be burnt.

Would it be presumptuous of me to light the fire without having been invited in? thought Manny. However, as the cabin became almost Antarctically cold, he stretched down to pick up a single small log.

"What ...?" cried Manny, dropping the log in shock. Instead of being dry and hard, it was soft and pulpy like an over-ripe capsicum.

What the bloody Hell ...? thought Manny, deciding it was time to depart the mysterious cabin.

He turned to leave, as the room and furniture starting to dissolve around him, melting into a mess of colours like a twisted rainbow in a psychedelic movie from the 1960s.

What the shit? wondered Manny as he started to feel faint, seconds before a large mass of gooey cold gel fell onto him from the ceiling of the room, which no longer looked like a room in a log cabin. The grey wooden walls had been replaced by green curved walls, looking more like the sepals or pitcher of a gigantic plant.

"What the fuck?" cried Manny, shrieking as the sickly fungal goo started to burn into his pate and face like strong acid. "God, please help me!" he cried, crossing himself, wondering whether he had somehow been fast-tracked straight into a fiery Hell.

"God, Help ..." he began, stopping as a dollop of the sickly, acidic goop fell straight into his open mouth.

He gasped, gagged, and tried to spit the goop out. However, it had already started to burn away the inside of his mouth, oesophagus, and throat.

Help me! he cried inside his mind, starting to wonder if he had lost his mind as the acidic puss-like goo burnt him inside and out.

Fortunately, Manny died of asphyxiation from his blocked windpipe, before the plant acid ate away his face, leaving him with a ghoulish skeletal grin as though finding his own death hilariously funny.

For fifteen minutes or so, the strong acid continued to melt away Manny's flesh, organs, and entrails, until only a shining skeletal remains; stripped of all flesh and wiped clean of even blood and mucus.

Then, pursing like a gigantic mouth, the once-was cabin spat the skeletal remains of poor Manny Wellman out into the air. They would have travelled a couple of hundred metres into the forest ... if they hadn't collided with a thick bough ten metres or so up a large blue gum tree. Some of the skeleton adhered to the bough, some bones hung down from the bough, in long strands of acidic goo; and the remainder crashed onto the thick layer of pine needles and gum leaves that carpeted the forest floor.

For a moment, the outside of the 'cabin' looked like the grinning face of a lunatic, then slowly it began to reform, returning to its former guise of a quaint log cabin.


After lunch, Terri, Sheila, Colin, and Suzette Cummins (a short, lithe eighteen-year-old trainee policewoman) were driving down Mitchell Street, Glen Hartwell, with Sheila at the wheel of Terri's police-blue Lexus.

"Guess what?' said Terri, holding up her left hand to show a sparkly engagement ring.

"Cheapo finally lashed out on an engagement ring?" asked Sheila.

Glaring at her, Colin said, "No, we've decided to get married next year."

"We're thinking of October the third."

"Your birthday?" asked Suzette.

"Yes," said Colin. "That gives us almost a year to plan things out."

"No!" cried Sheila. "You can't get married on your birthday, Tare, you'll only get one set of presents from Cheapo."

"I am not a Cheapo!"

"Yeah," agreed Suzette, "marrying on your birthday is almost as bad as being born on Christmas Day ... Unless you're Jesus, of course."


At number 109 Dorset Lane in LePage, Tegan and Keifer were starting to worry about the non-return of Manny.

"It's after 1:00 PM," said Tegan, angry at herself for allowing the old man to wander alone through the unfamiliar Victorian countryside. Feeling guilty that she had been so happy to get a few hours' peace from the old man's constant grousing about life in Australia. "Should we go out and search for him?"

"No, we don't know the local area any better than he does," said Keifer. Taking out his mobile, he rang through to the Mitchell Street Police Station, where he was redirected to Terri Scott's phone number.


"A quiet day, so far," said Terri, stopping as her mobile screamed.

"Why do you always say that, Chief?" demanded Suzette.

"Yeah, trouble rings as soon as you say it," agreed Sheila.

Ignoring Sheila and Suzette, Terri listened on the phone for a few minutes. Then, disconnecting, she said, "That was Keifer Wellman over in LePage. His old father went out walking not long after breakfast and hasn't returned yet."

"They let an old man go out by himself?" asked Colin.

"He is only sixty-two," said Sheila. She turned the car toward Dorset Lane in LePage.

"How does she always know that?" demanded Suzette. "There are over twelve thousand people from BeauLarkin to Willamby."

"I know my job," said Sheila with a smirk.

Ignoring them, Terri rang through to Don Esk, a tall brown-haired sergeant under her command. Disconnecting, she said, "Don's bringing Lisa with his dogs, Slap, Tickle, and Rub, to help locate Manny."


At number 109 Dorset Lane in LePage, Tegan and Keifer Wellman were waiting outside when Terri's Lexus arrived. Don and Lisa had already arrived with the Alsatian-crosses, which were sniffing one of Manny's bed socks. One of the dogs sneezed, then all three of them started sniffing around, before almost pulling Don and Lisa, a lithe twenty-eight-year-old blonde, Don's fiancé, off their feet.

"How did they get here first?" Colin wondered aloud, as, abandoning the Lexus, they all set off at a run after Lisa, Don, and the three dogs.

"Slow down you crazy mutts!" called Lisa in terror, almost losing her footing. However, yelping in excitement Slap, Tickle, and Rub raced at breakneck speed into the sweet-smell pine and eucalyptus forest, making pin point turns, that sometimes left Lisa or Don sore and bruised as the dogs managed to avoid the trees, but their handlers did not.

Finally, to her relief, Rub managed to pull his leash out of the blonde's grasp to lead the charge toward the remains of Manny Wellman, as Lisa fell facedown onto the carpet of pine needles and gum leaves.

As Slap pulled his leash from Don's grasp, the tall, strong policeman fell facedown onto the forest floor, allowing Tickle to escape also.

"Come back, you mangy mutts!" cried Don as the procession thundered after the three excited dogs, wondering if they would ever catch them.

Then, as Don and the others appeared, the dogs' yelping became panicked, and they spun on their heels, almost knocking over the procession as they took off back the way they had just come.

"Worthless mutts," Don called after them, almost stepping on some of Manny Wellman's remains.

"What the Hell are ...?" began Don. He reached down to pick up some of the bones, being stopped by Terri.

"Hold on," she called, "put your protective gloves on first."

Looking like she might throw up, Lisa said, "These can't be the remains of Manny Wellman, can they?"

She yelped in terror and fell onto her backside as she jumped away, when a long strand of goo-coated bones fell down from the bough of the tree.

Looking up, they saw the hanging bones, and the half of the skeleton stuck to the bough.

"What the Hell is this stuff?" asked Sheila, careful to put on blue latex gloves before picking up some of the goo to take a careful sniff.

"Well?" asked Colin.

"Acidic," said Sheila.

"I think it's time to get Jesus and his crew out here," said Terri. Taking out her mobile, the blonde rang through to the Glen Hartwell Hospital.

It was nearly an hour later before an ambulance and two Range Rovers arrived with the medical staff.

Terri and co. showed them the acidic goo hanging from the tree bough, then left them alone to do their stuff.


Two hours later, the skeletal remains had been transported to the morgue in the basement of the Glen Hartwell Hospital, and they stood around watching as Jesus and co. did their best to examine them.

"It's acidic all right," said Jesus Costello (pronounce Hee-Zeus), a tall fifty-something man, administrator and chief surgeon at the hospital.

"But strange acid," said Tilly Lombstrom. A tall, attractive, fifty-something brunette, Tilly was Jesus's second in command, and chief chemical analyst at the hospital.

"Strange in what way?" asked Terri.

"It seems to be combined with some kind of sap ... possibly tree sap," said Elvis Green, the local coroner.

"So he was melted by tree sap?" asked Colin.

"Looks like it," agreed Jesus. "We've managed to get a DNA sample to test ..." He left the rest of the sentence hanging.

"So now it's my job to break the possible news to Keifer and Tegan," said Terri.

"And get a DNA sample from Keifer," said Tilly. "I'd better come with you for that."


It was nearly midnight, and the dirty old hobo, not quite forty, but looking more like sixty, staggered through the freezing forest looking for a place to spend the night.

There must be a barn or something that I can sleep in, he thought, knowing it was a rural area. However, the nearest farm was twenty kilometres away, and Lance, as he liked to call himself, was tired, starving, and freezing.

You'd think there'd be at least a few fruit trees out here somewhere, he thought. However, there was nothing edible on the pine, eucalyptus, or occasional maple trees that proliferated throughout the forest outside LePage.

Is this the end of poor Lance Longfellow? he wondered, using the poetic alias which he had adopted almost a decade ago, after being thrown out by his wife of eight years.

His legs ached and felt like they were made of concrete; he was almost ready to give in and collapse to the forest floor. Although he thought he would possibly freeze to death outside by morning, he was too sore to care.

Only minutes before he wouldn't be able to go any further, he saw the small log cabin. The empty rocking chair still rocked gently on the porch. Beside it sat the wooden barrel upended with what looked like a corn whisky jug sitting on it. But more importantly, the front door was still open.

Salvation! thought Lance trying to run across to the cabin, but finding that he could only stagger, struggling even then to stay on his feet.

Don't fail me now, legs! He thought, mindful of the brutal irony when he was this close to sleeping indoors, if he was unable to make it.

Despite his legs wanting to surrender to death, the hobo forced himself forward centimetre after centimetre, until, after what seemed like hours, he fell onto the porch outside the cabin.

What? he thought, surprised by the softness of the porch, which did not feel like wood. After a moment's rest, he managed to crawl across to the upended barrel in the hope that the whisky jug was not empty.

Come on, you bastard! He thought, trying to pull the jug away from the barrel. However, the jug seemed to be fixed to the barrel by some means Lance could not see. Also, it felt soft and rubbery to the touch, as did the porch that he was still half lying upon.

What the fuck? he thought, pulling his hand away from the jug in disgust.

Sighing from frustration at getting no whisky, he struggled to turn, then slowly crawled along the rubbery porch until he had reached the partly open door to the cabin.

Just don't blow closed now, he thought. That would be the finish of him. But as he crawled toward it, the door seemed to slide open a little wider, as though welcoming the hobo inside, into its warmth.

Thank God! thought Lance, almost crying from relief as he pulled himself in through the doorway, not even noticing when the door slammed closed behind him, keeping the wintry cold outside. Not that it was much warmer inside. However, at least there was no cold wind blowing onto him, sapping away his life-giving body heat.

He lay on the floor for a few minutes before managing to pull himself to his feet to start across to the fireplace, in the hope of setting a couple of the small logs on fire. However, when he picked up one of the logs, it was clammy and rubbery.

Artificial logs, yet! He thought, collapsing to the rubbery floor again.

As though deciding it was time to put the tramp out of his misery, the log cabin began to dissolve into a kaleidoscope of flashing, spewing colours as the acidic sap of the Gardinel began to poor down onto the hobo, drowning him in its fiery death, until he was stripped down to the bones, as Manny Wellman had been earlier that day.

Then, pursing like a gigantic mouth, again the cabin spat the bones out into the forest. This time managing to miss the bough of the eucalyptus tree, a hundred metres or so away.


At the Yellow House, they had just finished breakfast the next day, when Terri Scott's mobile phone.

"It's a miracle!" teased Sheila.

"What?" asked Suzette Cummings who had arrived early and been invited to join in Deidre Morton's culinary masterpieces.

"For once, they didn't ring until after we finished eating."

As Suzette looked puzzled, Colin said, "She's right. Usually we've just sat down to eat when someone calls."

Disconnecting, Terri said, "That was Jesus at the hospital. It seems Manny Wellman's skeleton is incomplete. He wants us to return to the death scene to look for two missing ribs."

"Well, that's not too bad," said Suzette, as they headed outside.

Forty minutes later, they arrived back at the clearing, to find not two rib bones, but a complete human skeleton lying on the forest floor.

"Am I mad?" asked Sheila. "Or did we pick up all these bones yesterday?"

"Yes, to both questions," teased Colin.

"You do realise I outrank you?" Sheila teased back.

"Well, in that case, yes, to both questions, marm."

"That's better."

"Something tells me this is a second skeleton," said Terri, just as the thought occurred to Colin and the others.

Looking at the thick, acid goo soaking the bones again, Sheila said: "Don't tell me the Acid Man is back?" [See my story, 'The Acid Man'.]


"No," answered Tilly Lombstrom two hours later, when the second skeleton had been transferred to the morgue in the basement of the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital. "Firstly, we killed the Acid Man. Secondly, this is a plant-based acid. The Acid Man used a type of Hydrofluoric Acid, which could dissolve glass. This stuff certainly can't."

"We know, we've tried," said Jesus Costello.

"No, this is more like something you might get in a pitcher plant, but much stronger."

"A picture of a plant?" asked Sheila, confused.

"No, you Goth idjit," said Tilly, "a pitcher plant. It's a carnivorous plant that dissolves spiders and insects in acid to eat them."

"Like Venice," said Sheila, at last understanding.

Looking at Terri, Tilly asked, "Does she deliberately say things like that just to confuse us all?"

"Quite possibly," said Colin Klein, "but she's talking about her pet Venus Flytrap she's just bought, which she named Venice."

"Venice, the Venus Flytrap," explained Sheila.

"Now comes the tricky part," said Tilly. "We've taken DNA from skeleton B, as we're currently calling it ...."

"But we don't have a clue in Hell, who to test it against," Jesus Costello finished for his second in command.

"Don't you have some kind of internet DNA database?" asked Suzette.

"Yes, but despite what the Z-Files wants you to believe, it doesn't contain the DNA of everyone born in Australia since 1788."

"Well, that's a letdown," said Sheila.


Having finished their final exams, in lieu of staying at school, some teachers from Glen Hartwell High School were taking nearly fifty form five and form six students out into the forest for a day of living off the land.

I'll give them living off the land, thought Suzie Carmichael, a tall, shapely seventeen-year-old brunette. Checking that none of the teachers were watching, she opened the large bag of Mars Bar segments she had in her school bag, and sneaked two segments at once into her mouth. Now, this is living off the land!

"Suzie, keep up," called Len Lonsdale, a tall, lanky forty-something maths teacher, seeing her falling behind.

Unable to answer with a mouth full of chocolate and nougat, Suzie nodded, then ran to catch up with, then pass Mr. Lonsdale, so he wouldn't see her chewing the Mars Bar segments. She finally stopped when she reached two friends of hers, identical twins Lizzie and Eli Chong.

"Keep up," teased Lizzie. Then seeing Suzie chewing, "What are you eating?"

Giving them each a couple of Mars Bar segments, she said, "I'm living off the land."

"Us too," said Eli, grinning, as the two girls popped the treats into their mouths.

"We've got some Cherry Ripe bits we can all share," said Lizzie.

"Camping really suits us," said Suzie, and the three girls almost choked trying to laugh through mouths full of chocolate.

"Can anyone tell me when Australia was first colonised?" asked a tall, rusty-haired woman in her late forties, Shelby Zhau.

"Sometime between sixty-five thousand and eighty thousand years ago," answered Adelaide Donadin, a half-breed Aborigine, with a cheeky grin.

"Er, that's right," conceded Shelby, blushing in embarrassment, as the school kids laughed at her expense. "But I was referring to the first fleet, which arrived in Australia at Botany Bay on January 18, 1788, but then moved on to Port Jackson, a.k.a. Sydney Cove, on January 26, 1788, which is where they established the first European settlement.

"Not all of us are European," teased Adelaide.

"Technically, none of us are," said Suzie, "since Australia is sixteen thousand kilometres from Europe."

"Er, yes, girls, we seem to be getting off the track."

"No, we're not, ma'am, it's right ahead of us," said Lizzie, pointing.

Shelby blushed good-humouredly as the kids laughed at her expense again. Kids will be kids, she thought, before laughing herself.

"Remember we have to live off the land," reminded Len Lonsdale.

"With luck, we can find some witchetty grubs for lunch," teased Adelaide.

"Good eatin' tonight," said Lizzie. The girls laughed at the embarrassment of the teachers.

Trying not to be seen, Eli handed out some Cherry Ripe pieces to Lizzie, Suzie, and Adelaide.

"Good eatin' tonight," agreed Adelaide, before putting the Cherry Ripe pieces into her mouth, then almost choking as she laughed at her own joke.

"You girls seem to be coughing and choking a lot today," said Shelby, "are you all right?"

With their mouths full of chocolate, the four girls could only shrug or nod.

Still surreptitiously eating Cherry Ripe, Mars Bar pieces, Snickers, and other chocolate treats, the four girls reluctantly followed the others as they continued into the forest, walking from Glen Hartwell toward LePage. At 1:00 PM, they stopped for lunch.

"One way to find food in the forest is to dig for tubers," said Len Lonsdale. Taking a small gardening trowel from his rucksack, he started digging around the base of a large blue gum tree.

After more than an hour, Len and the other teachers had still failed to find anything remotely edible.

"Sometimes it can be tricky to find anything," said Henri Chen, a tall, stockily built Chemistry teacher.

"Sorry, girls, we may have a very late lunch today," said Shelby to Suzie and the others.

"That's okay, miss," lied Eli, "we all had a very large breakfast this morning."

"Very large," agreed Adelaide, before putting a Snickers Bar piece into her mouth.

"What's that you're eating?" demanded Shelby.

Realising they'd been caught out, Suzie said, "We might have brought a few packs of lollies with us, so we wouldn't starve."

"Oh, thank goodness, can I have some?" said Shelby, her stomach rumbling.

Grinning in relief, the girls handed the rusty-haired woman some Snickers, Mars Bar, Cherry Ripe, and Kit Kat segments.

"Thank God," said Shelby, scrumming down the chocolate greedily.

By two thirty, Henri Chen said, "Looks like we'll have to bring in some sandwiches for lunch today."

"How long will that take?" demanded Heinrick 'Soapy' Sales, a tall Eurasian boy.

"Not that long," admitted Len Lonsdale, taking out his mobile phone. "We played safe by having a Range Rover following us with a mountain of sandwiches. It's about two Kays behind us."

"You cheat!" teased Suzie Carmichael, making Shelby and the girls giggle.

A short time later, they were all tucking into corn beef, ham and cheese, or cheese and tomato sandwiches.

"I need to pee," complained Lizzie, "where are the toilets?"

"Pick a tree and squat behind it," said Adelaide, making everyone laugh at poor Lizzie's expense.

"Ooh," said Lizzie in disgust, although she reluctantly did as instructed.

At 7:30 PM they stopped to have a tea of sandwiches, or cans of baked beans.

"I hate cold baked beans," complained Eli Chong.

"I love them," said Adelaide, before scarfing down a large can.

Straight after tea, they set up the four-person tents, even though, in early summer, with daylight saving, it would be light for another ninety minutes.


It was shortly after 1:00 AM when Henri Chen woke up, needing to pee. Like Lizzie, Henri did not like peeing behind trees, so, with a military-style super-torch to light the way, he set off into the forest, hoping to reach a local farm or find an old public toilet abandoned in the forest. He had been walking for over forty minutes, when he saw the small log cabin in the clearing.

Thank God, he thought. They must have a toilet, even if it's an outdoors dunny.

Trying his best not to wet himself, Henri fast-walked, not daring to run, across the clearing to the cabin, where he saw the front door was wide open.

Still, there might be a toilet inside, he thought, almost leaping onto the patio. Then, almost bouncing off again, as he was caught unawares by the rubbery feel of what looked like wood. What is this, a bouncy log cabin? wondered Henri, almost laughing as he walked across to the door.

Henri called out, "Hello, is there anyone there?" Finally, in desperation, he ran into the cabin, calling out, "Is there anyone in there?"

Receiving no answer, he looked around for a toilet cubicle, ot even a wooden bucket to use. Seeing a small door at the rear of the room, he raced across and grabbed the handle.

"Ooh," he said, almost letting go, at the rubbery feel of the door knob. Instead, he tried opening the door, which stretched as he pulled, but refused to budge.

"Come on," he cried out, despairingly trying to pull the door open, unaware that it was not a real door.

Then from behind him came a loud plopping sound as a great column of digestive acid flopped down from the ceiling.

"What ...?" said Henri, almost falling as he spun around, and saw large yellowy liquid strands stretching down from the now twisting and distorting ceiling.

Tentatively, he reached out one hand to collect a dollop of the strange liquid and raised it to his face to smell. Some kind of plant resin, he thought, yelping as the liquid began to burn like acid.

He hurriedly wiped the resin off onto his khaki shorts, then started toward where he had entered the small cabin ... Only to see that the front door had now melted away so he was trapped inside a door-less chamber, now bulb-shaped rather than rectangular.

What the hell is ...? thought Henri.

He started screaming and lashing about wildly as the strong digestive acid began raining down onto him, burning him, melting his flesh away.

"God, help me!" he cried aloud, finally beginning to wet himself ... as much from terror as from the need to pee.

"Nooooooooo!" shouted Henri as the goop fell onto his face, burning away his eyes and nose. Soon his tongue was also gone, and he could no longer scream.

Finally, the digestive acid swamped his throat, asphyxiating the Chemistry teacher, who fell to the rubbery floor, now shaped more like the bulb of a pitcher plant than a room.

Digestive acid continued to swamp the teacher's corpse, eating away at the man's flesh, muscles, organs, and entrails, until he was reduced to a skeleton.

Once more, the Gardinel pursed like a vast mouth and spat the skeletal remains of Henri Chen into the sweet-smelling pine and eucalyptus forest outside.

Then slowly the Gardinel began to twist and contort, until reshaping itself to look like a log cabin again.


They had already started breakfast, again sandwiches or cans of baked beans, the next morning before anyone noticed the absence of Henri Chen.

"Where could he have gone?" asked Shelby Zhau, seated upon a fallen log, with Suzie, Eli, Lizzie, and Adelaide seated beside her.

"Probably sneaked off home in the night," said Eli.

"Why didn't we think to do that?" asked Suzie Carmichael.

"Now, now, girls, it's not so bad out here," insisted Shelby.

"We almost froze to death last night," complained Adelaide.

"Didn't you have sleeping bags?" asked Shelby Zhau.

"No, we had to leave them home to fit all our chockies into our bags," said Eli.

"If he's not back by the time we've finished breakfast and taken down the tents, we'll have to search for him," said Len Lonsdale.

"Then we'll get lost too," complained Lizzie.

"We already are," her sister, Eli, said.

By the time they had eaten and packed the tents, they were already tired, but they reluctantly set off to find Henri Chen. After looking around the campsite, they managed to find size twelve Adidas tracks, which confirmed they belonged to Henri, and set off into the forest.

It was half an hour or so later, when they located the slime-coated skeleton that had been Henri Chen. With most of the kids screaming and running back the way they had come, Len Lonsdale went across to examine the bones, then, straightening again, he flipped open his mobile phone and rang through to the Police Station in Mitchell Street, Glen Hartwell. Suzette Cummings, who was on phone duty there, patched them through to Terri Scott, at the morgue in the basement of the hospital.

"So you can confirm that the acidic goop is plant stuff, Tils?" asked Sheila Bennett.

"Specifically, digestive acid of the type used by pitcher plants or Venus Flytraps."

"Curiouser and curiouser," said Terri, seconds before her phone buzzed. She spoke on the phone for a few minutes, then disconnected, saying, "Shit!"

"What's up?" asked Colin Klein.

"They've found a third skeleton, by the sounds of things, at the same approximate spot as the first two."

"Let's get going," said Sheila, and they started upstairs.

"I'm coming too," said Tilly Lombstrom, racing after them.


It took nearly an hour for them to reach the spot where most of the teachers were standing around Henri Chen's skeleton -- Shelby Zhau having gone after the fleeing school kids.

Tilly examined the skeleton, still wearing the chemical protection suit she had warn in the morgue. After a minute or two, she stood up again and said: "It seems to be the same digestive acid."

"So they've all been dissolved by a pitcher plant?" asked Colin Klein.

"If so, a very big one," said Tilly, "and this acid is many times stronger than the normal pitcher plant digestive acids."

"So, wouldn't we be able to see a gigantic pitcher plant if it were nearby?" asked Colin.

"Yeah," agreed Sheila, "all we've got besides the skeleton are heaps of pine and gum trees, an occasional maple tree, and what looks like an old-fashioned log cabin."

They all turned to look where Sheila was pointing further into the forest.

"Well, I'll be damned," said Colin, "I haven't seen one of those in ... Well, ever. We don't have log cabins in England."

"Or in Australia, to the best of my knowledge," said Terri Scott as they all traipsed across toward the cabin.

"What is that plant-like pong?" asked Sheila.

"We are in a forest," pointed out Tilly Lombstrom.

"Yes, but this doesn't smell like pine, maple, or gum trees," said Terri as they continued across toward the cabin.

Seeing the cabin door open, Colin called out, "Hello! Is there anyone inside?"

When no one answered, he stepped up on the patio and promptly fell over as the rubbery 'wood' swayed wildly beneath his feet.

"What the Hell?" asked Terri. She and Sheila helped Colin to his feet, then back down to the forest floor. Touching the porch, Terri said, "It's all rubbery, like a misguided version of a bouncy castle."

Raising the visor of her helmet, Tilly took a sniff then said, "I think this is where the plant-like pong comes from."

"Meaning?" asked Colin.

"This could be our giant pitcher plant ... The Yanks have a legend of what they call a Gardinel, a giant pitcher plant which imitates a log cabin to gul people into going inside it, so it can digest them."

"Yucky," said Sheila.

Lowering her protective mask, Tilly said, "Stand back, while I test it."

After the others backed well away, Tilly took out a scalpel and made a deep slash through the rubbery surface of the patio.

The Gardinel reacted as though stung and began shimmering and swaying, until transforming back into its true form, a gigantic pitcher plant - a tree-thick green stem supporting a huge reddish-brown bowl filled with digestive acids.

Tilly raced across to Terri and the others, saying, "I think we've found our killer."

"So what now?" asked Sheila, "a few tonnes of concentrated plant killer?"

"No, we might kill off the gum, pine, and maple trees," said Terri. She thought for a moment, then said, "No, I've got a better idea."

Opening her mobile, she phoned through to the Department of Buildings and Works and said, "George, we need some supplies urgently."

Fifty minutes or so later, George and a dozen other men and women from the Department of Building and Works, dressed in overalls, protective masks, and carrying flame-throwers, were ringing the Gardinel, which had changed again to look like a harmless log cabin.

"You sure you want to burn this cabin to the ground?" asked George

"Set it ablaze!" ordered Terri.

After a few seconds' indecision, George repeated the order, and the dozen public works staff started sending streams of fire toward the Gardinel.

At the first touch of the flames, the Gardinel started shimmering and swaying again, transforming into a giant pitcher plant, then back into a log cabin, then back into a pitcher plant and so on, faster and faster as though hoping the transformations would help it to avoid the fiery death intended for it.

"What the fuck?" said George.

"What does it think it's doing?" asked Sheila.

"It can't think, it's just a plant," said Tilly.

It seemed to take forever, but finally the giant pitcher plant had been reduced to ashes.

"Now carefully cart away the ashes," instructed Terri. "Then I want you to dig up the earth beneath to make certain you get all of the root system too."

"Gotcha, Tare," said George as they started scooping up the charred remains of the Gardinel.

A bulldozer was brought in to take away any dirt that might have the slightest trace of roots in it, and then they were finally able to leave.

As they started off back to the Yellow House in Rochester Road, Merridale, Sheila said, "Can we stop into the pet shop on the way home? I want to pick up a white mouse as a treat for Venice."

"You're still keeping that thing after all this?" asked a puzzled Terri Scott.

"Why not? It's not Venice's fault if one of her distant relatives murdered three innocent people."

"Can plants even commit murder?" asked Colin, making them all ponder as they drove back through the sweet-smelling pine, maple, and eucalyptus forest.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia