How Does Your Garden Grow?

He was pale and shocked looking with his cigarette waving patterns everywhere with smoke.

"Did you say cash prize?" Keith felt a strong trembling sensation pass through his body, to the extent his hands were shaking madly as the seeds (ha ha!) of a plan were taking root in the fertile soil of his soiled soul.

"Yes, this year the council are offering one thousand pounds to the winner of the best garden…"

Keith wasn’t listening due to the money currently floating around his mind, all that money there for the spending and the only obstacle stopping his mother from winning was an old geriatric next door with his pet machine.

"I’m taking a break son," Keith’s mother started to lean up but was roughly shoved down by her son who uttered a battle cry of, "No you don’t! Get it done! We need that money."

Rapidly Keith went into action, with a casual flick of his smoked cigarette, he ran into his hallway to look outside the corridor window – unwittingly setting his mother’s prize winning bush on fire – and spy on his old neighbour.

"All that money for the taking and if that old gargoyle is out of the picture then the bitch-fucker can claim it."

Bitch-Fucker was Keith’s secret name for his mum.

The first thought that ran through Keith’s poisonous mind was to hurl some bottles of bleach over the massive fence and taint the shrubs next door but this was unrealistic, as it would reveal him as a cheat.

Keith considered his philosophy to be quite simple, winning is everything but cheating to win is even better!

So with this is mind, Keith decided to sneak into Mr Greene’s home and kill his plants before sneaking out leaving the old git none the wiser.

"I am a genius!"

So it was with great relief that approximately one hour after leaving the garden to spy, Keith watched as old Mr Greene left his house wearing h is old coal miner’s cap and battered coat on some mundane mission.

"Your garden is mine fucker!"

Armed with bottles of weed killer, herbicide, vinegar and bleach Keith sneaked quietly up to the door (it had a brass tag on it that proudly proclaimed: Greene’s Garden!) and after a few attempts Keith managed to get it open. Indeed he had watched many American cop shows where the policemen smashed the glass pane on the front doors and gained entry that way and that was exactly the tactic Keith used, making sure he was wearing gloves (gardening gloves!) to hid any incriminating fingerprints.

The first thing Keith noticed was the smell – old people have a distinctive smell and Mr Greene was no different as his house positively reeked of it. Also how obsessively clean his home was made an impact on Keith who was unused to seeing houses so sparkly. Mr Greene even went so far as to painting his whole house green.

"All that money is mine! Mine!" Keith cried out exultantly as he poured various bottles of plant killing chemicals all over the lush, beautiful, ripe green garden. It was like a miniature Eden there with a dazzling array of assorted exotic flowers on display.

No wonder Mr Greene won every year, Keith generously thought to himself before giggling – "He won’t be winning this year!"

That was when the most extraordinary thing happened.

One of the flowers seemed to be turning towards Keith, waving as though a slight breeze had caught it even though there was no breeze. It was an orgasm of colours and a shape that was alien, it actually freaked Keith out slightly.

Keith knew he didn’t imagine the computerised voice grate out:

You are an intruder – leave or die.

"What the fuck?"

That was when the flower spat a jet of flame at Keith: a gush that the startled boy managed to avoid except from the slight charring of his hair.

"You burned my hair you bastard!"

But Keith’s surreal garden nightmare wasn’t over, not by any stretch of the imagination.