Dream of a Cabbage Spirit

Lamb took in the cold grey sky with his golden-brown eyes and sighed.

How boring.

He could be with his friends playing at the arcade right now but instead, he was here at his Aunt’s farm harvesting cabbages. For generations his family had worked these lands, they hunched over the soil, injuring their backs for cabbages they wouldn’t even eat.

No one would ever eat them.

How stupid was that? People called their family soul gardeners, shepherds of alien souls waiting for reincarnation. Lamb called them dumb sheeple. No one believed in God anymore, much less angels or alien souls. Yet here he was, wasting away in the countryside where practically everyone ran the same business. There were families who reaped all sorts of souls; drug addicts, adulterers, and sinners as well as pure, religious souls. His Aunt reaped the souls of vegetarians, and of all things cabbages. Lamb blinked at cabbage the size of his head as his Aunt picked it up with her pale white hands.

“You harvest them like this and then,” Lamb’s aunt demonstrated for him to see. Then she pushed the wheelbarrow mounted with cabbages towards a well in the center of the cabbage patch and dumped them inside. Lamb peered at the deep black void, its darkness reflecting back into the pitch-black minuses in his eyes. He felt his boredom was just like the depths of the well;

No end in sight.

He stood there for a while when something blocked out the sun behind him. Looking up he saw a tall black man with curled horns.

“You’re Gaia’s nephew?” His voice sounded deep and gruff.

Lamb froze for a second at the sight of the man’s red eyes. Normally a person’s eyes were yellow or brown but this guy. . .

“You must be Grimm.”

Lamb stood straight on his hooves and smirked, trying not to show his intimidation. His Aunt had told him about her creepy neighbor who reaped the souls of atheists but he initially thought it was an understatement. Grimm’s eyes skimmed over Lamb and the well before looking to his field of wheat next door.

“You shouldn’t stare into there for too long, it’ll take your soul.”

He said this before walking away. Lamb listened to the sound of his large hooves fading away before sticking out his tongue. He scanned the cabbage patch for his Aunt and found her loading cabbages onto the wheelbarrow, she was like a machine. Loading, load after load.

Bored, he watched the empty spots magically spawn in baby cabbages only to find himself frozen once again.

He had assumed the cabbages were re-planted but before his very eyes the cabbages grew at a rapid speed. Is this what they meant when cabbages had souls? There were all sorts of cabbages in all sorts of different sizes and shapes. Some were misshapen, others had holes. Lamb followed his Aunt from afar and watched the cabbages regrow themselves in awe.

As he passed by a baby cabbage, it quickly flourished in his absence. Inflating up like a balloon. From the inside, a glow emerged and out sprouted the glowing torso of a sleeping human girl.

Cosmo woke to the sound of sheep conversing. The kiss of death was still fresh on her lips and as the recording of a screeching car played back in her mind, her indifferent expression immediately morphed to one of outrage.

“Son of a bitch!”

She had been hit by someone speeding on campus grounds while she was on her phone with her Mom. She had always been careful whenever she crossed the street, but not even she could predict the sudden acceleration of a car that had initially stopped for her to cross. It sent her flying into the air, like a seal tossing up a beach ball. Her plans of setting up a fundraiser for raising awareness about the lifestyle of farm animals would definitely flop in her absence and her favorite nephew coming to visit her would be devastated. Cosmo paused. Why am I thinking like that? It’s not like I’m-

“Baaah!”

Startled by the sudden sound before her, Cosmo looked up to see a person in a sheep mask. She looked them up and down from head to toe. Correction. It was a standing sheep wearing a dress. It had human hands, but its feet were definitely hooves. Cosmo was confused. Was it a full body costume? Or… she didn’t want to finish the thought.

“Baaah.” said the Sheep Lady. Her gaze lowered and Cosmo traced it down to find that she was in her birthday suit, her lower half was stuck inside a giant piece of cabbage twice the size of the Sheep Lady’s head.

“Um…”

Cosmo looked at the Sheep Lady who appeared flustered as she kept shuffling from side to side.

“Baaaaaah!”

When the two made eye contact once more, the Sheep Lady backed away. Her pale white hands held each other and she kept glancing off in the same direction as if hoping someone else would come and deal with this, whatever this was.

“Baah?!” A gruff sounding sheep voice called back.

Cosmo turned to see a sheep man appearing from a field of tall wheat. They were in a field of cabbage patches, and aside from the wheat field and cabbage patch that extended miles she couldn’t see anything else. The sheep man held his scythe in one hand and a bundle of wheat in the other. He froze when he spotted Cosmo, then fainted, scythe and wheat dropping with him.

The Sheep Lady ran to Sheep Man’s side. Cosmo was beyond confused at this point. What is going on? Where am I and just what is this place, even?! She watched the Sheep Lady carry the Sheep Man away and tried to climb out of the cabbage, but she found herself stuck. Much to further shock.

Wtf?!

She could not separate herself from the cabbage, it was almost as if someone had welded her torso to the cabbage or. . . Cosmo stiffened as a horrifying thought entered her mind. What if she was the cabbage? At that point she became desperate. She tried to lift herself out but no matter how hard she pushed, nothing happened, she only found herself in pain. It was like pulling super glue off the skin, painful but not impossible. Cosmo stopped to catch her breath when she felt a strong poke.

“Ow!”

Cosmo looked down to see a little lamb in overalls poking her with a pitchfork. His mouth opened wide in awe when Cosmo cried out, and then he grinned. He began to poke Cosmo harder and harder until the pitchfork pierced right through.

Cosmo screamed and cursed at the kid who continued to poke her even as red liquid spilled from the holes in the cabbage. After one last stab, Cosmo’s eyes rolled to the back of her head.

*

She found herself staring up at a white ceiling in what looked like a hospital room.

“Baah!”

A short person wearing a sheep mask jumped onto her bed on all fours.

Cosmo punched them so hard, they fell off the bed and onto the floor. She sat up huffing and puffing, fists ready, when shortly afterward, the kid stands, the sheep mask slipping off his head revealing a teary-eyed human boy underneath. He was her favorite five-year-old nephew, Jimmy, and he looked at her now with trembling upturned lips and a pink face.

“I’m sowee…” He apologized, huffing, as he held his head with one hand.

She held her nephew, kissed him on the head and apologized as a small sobbing sound escaped him that only grew louder and louder as she caressed his head as if to decide whether he was more confused than apologetic and didn’t know why he should be hit for trying to surprise her.

“Auntee, bhut th hell?!” In the end he decided to protest.

Cosmo wasn’t listening, she held him in his arms thinking back to the vivid dream in the back of her mind.

Gaia arrived at the scene to see Lamb standing, pitchfork in hand, there was a red liquid all over his clothes and it seemed to be oozing out of the cabbage. This was unheard of, since when did cabbages bleed? Gaia scooped up the remains of the cabbage onto a piece of cardboard and carried them over to Grimm’s house, he was more experienced with her in this field, he would know what to do.

Cosmo felt terrible, and confused with the memory of her dream still fresh in her mind.

Her parents walked in to see the sight of their daughter, stroking the head of their wailing grandson, mentally she didn’t seem to be all there but she was alive and they were relieved to see that she was okay. The doctor claimed her recovering consciousness to be a miracle.

When Grimm recovered, he explained to the startled Gaia and Lamb that what they had seen moments before was a miracle.

“When a soul dies, normally their consciousness does too. But that soul. . . was partially split from its body.” Grimm explained this while laying in bed. He stuffed tissues in his nose.

“You mean?” Gaia realized the truth, her hand held her cheek as she glanced at Lamb, eyes widening in horror.

“It was still alive.” Grimm clarified.

Gaia looked at Lamb and frowned. Lamb didn’t notice this, he was staring into space, there were stars in his eyes, an infinite galaxy of glitter and void.

“Hey!”

At their lunch table, a friend of Cosmo’s joins her. She was still in the hospital, but she had managed to befriend a few of the patients.

“Hi Fred.” Cosmo smiled in greeting. Fred paused, before her stood a glass of water. He sat down slowly before pulling the plastic off his utensils.

“Are you gonna eat or…”

Cosmo blinked at him, her gaze shifted to his tray. There was rice, a bowl of beef stew and cabbage. When was the last time she’s ever seen cabbage? As he picked up his plastic black fork, Cosmo’s eyes seemed to widen, the next thing she knew her hand was reaching across the table. She snatched the steamed cabbage and threw it against the glass of the window. Staring at the glass, transfixed at its reflection. There were sheep in the glass. Cosmo squinted before realizing that the sheep in the glass were reflections of the patients dining in the cafeteria. She stared at them all now, wolfing down their food ravenously. Teeth tear into meat, loud smacks and gulping.

That’s right, this whole time she believed that humans were the problem, preying on other animals but in all actuality, weren’t animals just as guilty? They preyed on other animals too. If they could do it, why couldn’t humans? Even the plants, the plants were living things defenseless against herbivores! This planet thrived off murder!

“Ohmigosh.” Cosmo held her head, her eyes the size of jaw breakers.

Taking her behavior as abnormal Fred already left to notify a doctor. Though she seemed perfectly fine on the outside, she hadn’t been eating. This became a concern to the doctor and her parents.

“Why won’t you eat, dear?” Her Mom sat next to her daughter on her bed in a hospital room. Cosmo shook her head.

“I don’t want to eat death…”

Her mother exchanged confused looks with her Father. It was eventually decided that she needed counseling. The counselor, however, recommended she had an eating disorder and needed to be rehabilitated. After recovering from her injuries, she was sent to rehab where she was fed mush, she couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was eating and when she became hungry enough she didn’t seem to care. Later, the foods became more solid and distinct. They thought she was getting better.

Jimmy watched them bring her in through the door that thanksgiving day, with wide eyes, for a second he almost didn’t recognize his favorite aunt who he hadn’t been allowed to visit for nearly two years. She had been skinny before but her skin looked so pale and thin now, she looked like death. Relatives greeted her and asked her how she was. She barely responded, nodding every now and then, smiling at someone's joke. Her behavior was perfectly calm but when it was time to cut the turkey, Cosmo blocked the knife with her hand just as her mother stabbed into it. Blood spilled out onto the turkey spoiling everyone’s appetites. A hush washed over the room.

“You can’t eat it!” Cosmo protested with tears in her eyes as she hunched over with a pained expression. Jimmy’s vision zoomed in on her hand, at his aunt with a knife stuck in her hand, who continued to protest against eating turkeys. Against eating anything. She proposed they all drink water. Everyone sat stunned, no one remembered themselves until she keeled over. Then everyone was scattering about like ants looking for the first aid kit, others helped her up, while someone called the ambulance.

*

Grimm shook his head.

He walked out to Gaia’s field and stared at the spot where the cabbage spirit once was.

“It’s no good now. It can’t live like this or it’ll go bad.”

Lamb stared up at Grimm curiously. He had fainted before but he was beginning to think Grimm was pretty cool. He was so knowledgeable about stuff like this.

“You have to dump it.” Grimm looked to Gaia who handed the pulverized cabbage to Lamb who stared at it, eyes shimmering.

“You should apologize.” Gaia tells him. “To the soul.”

Grimm and Lamb just stared at her. She blinks at the two, eyes watering and after enduring their blank stares a bit longer, walks away. A hand lifting up to her mouth to muffle the sounds of her sobs. Lamb walks to the well and releases the cabbage. It broke apart long before it reached the bottom.

*

Jimmy stared at the pale body before him and held her hand. She was cold, as cold as ice. The wails of Cosmo’s parents and some relatives were all background noise. He couldn’t understand why his Aunt was lying on the bed sleeping. He would look back on this moment later on in his life and make a note of the things she said that Thanksgiving day whenever visiting his grandparents.

“It seemed to me that Cosmo just couldn’t come to terms with being human.” Her Father noted. Jimmy blinked at him, recalling Cosmo claiming that this planet thrives off death. It was a reality, not many people realized, and one, she as a vegetarian most certainly could not accept.