SPRING IN DECAY
By Johanna Beate Stumpf
Caroline brings in another victim. Ripped open. Bleeding out. Slowly dying. She puts them on a table. It’s always worst in spring. Outside life is conquering the earth. Plants are growing. Flowers are blooming. Inside there is death and decay.
She performs the basic steps of first aid. Cleaning the wound. Feeding the victim. Making them comfortable. She always does this. But it never helps. It never stops them from dying. It only prolongs their suffering. After a few days Caroline carries away the corpse. I don’t know why she does this.
I can’t help. I can’t do anything. I am stuck in my own little prison. Just enough space for myself. I get fed better than the wounded ones. And I have a window. Light shines in. In spring I can see the plants outside thriving. In autumn I can see them dying. I guess I am lucky.
Caroline has left me alone before. She was gone for weeks and I was starving. But up until now I have survived everything. I won’t let her carry away my corpse. I am alive. I am living here now. On the table is a new victim. Dying slowly.
They must die. I’m allowed to live. This is what spring is like on the inside. Outside the window I can see plants. They are growing freely. I am stuck inside. But I am alive. And I can feel that I am changing.
Sometimes Caroline talks to me when she feeds me. She speaks in a soothing voice, as if to calm me down. Today she inspected me closely. Then she leaned in and touched me. I was scared, but outwardly I didn’t react.
“Look at you,” she said. “You are growing a new leaf. Good job, little ficus!”
Johanna B. Stumpf is a German millennial, living and working in Norway. She is fairly new to fiction writing, but she did enough academic writing to earn a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Oslo.
