Euphoria Obscura

‘Think you could get it done today?’

‘You got it.’

Bradley flashed him a dazzling smile and thumped him on the back. ‘Te-rrific. I can always count on you.’

In a way, Ezra found it hard to begrudge Bradley and his ilk, high-flyers over an equally high safety net. Unremarkable university careers followed by executive positions at their fathers’ friends’ firms. Bounding through life, blithely unaware of the heartbreak that lay in store, pitiless and indifferent to their overflowing family coffers. Ingrate children, infidelity, illness, and finally, infirmity. He almost pitied them.

Almost. The brief was open before him untouched; his head throbbed in his skull. His phone lit up the dark with a series of love-heart laden messages from Emily. He responded ‘working late’ without reading any of them. More procrastination followed. He placed an order for dermestid beetles to replace the hard-at-work colony she had thrown out in a panic Saturday night.

‘I thought it was some sort of infestation, Ez. I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘It’s faster than boiling the skulls,’ he said, and gave a little shrug.

‘You seriously need to get a different hobby.’

Home time. His train delayed, he turned his collar up against the drizzle and killed time by walking up and down Station Street. He checked his phone: reminders about Emily’s uncle’s 60th. Garden party, loungewear dress code. Whatever that meant.

Passing by an alleyway, he caught a glimpse of two boys crouched over some defenseless animal, jabbing it with a stick. ‘Hey,’ he called, and then broke into a run when they paid him no attention. ‘Hey, leave it alone. Leave it.’ He wrested the stick away from them.

‘It’s just some gross plant-thing,’ mumbled one of the boys, snot-nosed and only slightly larger than his school backpack.

Ezra’s gaze roved over the pale, freckled face glaring up at him before moving to the creature on the ground: a plant, small and orb-like. He was about to pick it up when Redhead’s equally pint-sized friend decided to kick the plant directly under a dumpster. They snickered, watching him hungrily for a reaction before tearing off laughing.

Ezra strained to retrieve the plant from under the dumpster. He held it gently in the palm of one hand and turned his phone’s flashlight onto it. The plant was pale green and tightly budded, so finely hirsute that it was like velvet to the touch. Fluid oozed from its puncture wound; Ezra rubbed the pads of his thumb and middle finger together in awe, the filmy secretion was warm.

He took a photo. Maybe he’d even show it to Emily, who had taken a botanical sketching course offered by her — back then their — university last summer. He placed the plant in a corner against the brick wall and covered it with a discarded cardboard box. He cast it a lingering glance over his shoulder as he set off at a jog to the station.

***

‘Emily tells me you did well in both your law and journalism studies. It’s a bloody shame you couldn’t stick it out with either,’ thundered Emily’s uncle in lieu of the usual ‘pleased to meet you’.

Uncle Jericho continued in this vein for quite some time, throwing in choice remarks about the twenty-somethings employed at his investment firm who, just like Ezra, lacked ambition and drive. Ezra listened politely whilst pondering the fleshy Roman nose now taking up much of his field of view. Rosacea or a drinking problem?

‘Well, something to think about,’ he finished lamely, giving Ezra a kindly departing smile, evidently having determined him to be a lost cause.

‘He has a point, Ez,’ said Emily, coming around beside him and looping her arm through his, ‘you could finish your degree any time you wanted to.’

They strolled to one of the benches opposite the artificial lake. Her head on his shoulder, they listened to the symphony of cicadas and breathed in the heady perfume of spring air.

‘I was bored out of my skull. I’m not going back; you need to accept that.’

She lifted her head off his shoulder. ‘But you have so much potential. You don’t have to be a paralegal forever. You’re smarter than half the actual lawyers there, don’t you always say so?’

Smarter than every last one of them. They wouldn’t know their heads from their arses if he attached a helpful memorandum to both.

‘Sure,’ said Ezra. He pulled his phone out to change the subject. ‘Any chance you can tell me what this is?’

‘Oh, that’s a baseball plant. Euphorbia obesa,’ said Emily. then frowned. ‘No, wait, I don’t think it is, actually. Some closely related succulent anyway.’ She gave him a quizzical look followed by brisk pat on the knee. ‘I have to go see about getting the cake ready.’

Ezra watched as she made her way back to the marquee cautiously, her heels sinking into the dewy grass. Her white dress an eerie twilight-blue in the setting light, her bare arms and legs and exposed back shimmering against the backdrop of silhouetted figures gathered around the banquet tables. Almost ghostly, entirely beautiful. She was a great girl, they got along well…

He left the party without saying goodbye to her.

***

Ezra woke up. He groaned and massaged the back of his neck, then let his head fall back against the dumpster. He got up and stretched, weaving his way between broken glass. He pulled a milkcrate up beside the plant. His face propped up in his hands, he dug his elbows into his thighs, the jolts of pain helping him to stay alert. He squeezed one of the leaves that had started to peel away from the plant, thick but yielding, glutted with fluid. It throbbed steadily.

What had Emily called it… a Euphoria Obscura?

***

In the alley once again, his unwavering nightly ritual.

‘Feed me, Seymour,’ said to Ezra to himself, smiling crookedly in the dark.

However, there didn’t seem to be a need to feed the plant. Where it drew sustenance from was a mystery; it hadn’t rained in days, nor had he taken to watering it. Nevertheless, it flourished in this dark corner of concrete jungle. The plant was no longer orb-like at all, it had elongated, and after just one week of tender, loving care had grown to the size of a small dog.

Satisfied with the plant’s progress, Ezra headed home early. He trudged upstairs, dodging his roommate’s offer to binge the second season of some ‘truly mind-blowing television’ he hadn’t seen the first season of, kicked off his shoes and fell back on top of the covers. Sleep claimed him instantly.

Hours later, Ezra found himself bolt upright, taking in great gulping breaths. He peeled his tee-shirt and undershirt off and flung them to the foot of the bed, both as sweat-drenched as the sheets. He was vaguely embarrassed to recall that he had shouted something as he awoke. He flung himself back onto the covers then turned on his side and curled up in the foetal position. Ezra felt as though he were still submerged in the dream world he had abruptly exited; he closed his eyes to try to recall the dream.

He walked deeper and deeper into a primeval jungle. The constant hum of cicadas in his ear, the crunch of ferns underfoot. He stumbled over tree roots slick with moss and cloaked by a thick mist.

The thrum of his heartbeat grew louder and louder, unbearably so. Dread. Pure dread suffused everything, every fibre of his being and every molecule of the jungle.

Thick vines clung to his body; the more delicate tendrils also wound around his limbs, equally unyielding. His progress was excruciatingly slow now. He felt as though he were treading the bottom of a lake. At last, he found himself completely immobilised. His clothes hung off him in tatters. No, that wasn’t right, he wasn’t wearing clothes… it must be his skin that had sloughed off. If he freed himself of it, he could keep crawling through the underbrush.

He reached a clearing, a dark pool stretched ahead. His face stared back at him, pinprick tears in his eyes, his reflection unmistakable though constantly distorted by the rippling of the water. The surface reflected the Milky Way above him, such a multitude of stars as he had never seen in waking life. Ezra leant in for a closer look and all at once slipped beneath the surface. No mammalian diving reflex kicked in, no panic. The water was warm; it filled his lungs.

Ezra awoke to the chiming of the alarm he’d set on his phone. But that means... it's Monday? It can't be.

***

Ezra screened his girlfriend's calls; he doodled pictures in his notebook during meetings at work, trying but failing to get the veins in the leaves just right. His days were inchoate fever-dreams, while the nights were vivid, real. He only felt alive in the alley watching the plant thrive, or else each night when he slipped into unconsciousness and fought his way through the jungle, drowned in the dark, bottomless pool.

***

‘Coming for Bradley’s going away drinks?’ asked a co-worker. A new hire, pretty, about his age. He couldn’t recall her name.

‘Nah. Still got loads of work to get through.’

‘At least tell me you’re coming to the Halloween party?’

‘Wouldn’t miss it.’

Ezra waited less than a minute before deciding it was safe to grab his jacket and make a mad dash to the other set of lifts. He hit the button four times. No, there isn’t time. He hurtled down the fire-escape, swinging around the balustrade of the ground floor landing and pushing the door open with both arms outstretched. He ran, his heartbeat an erratic tattoo all the way to the alley. Time for what?

Relief swept over him as he uncovered the plant. It’s still there, it’s still there. Larger than last night even. He felt exulted. Giddy, even. The plant had grown to the length of a fully-grown man and resembled a mummified body. Or a cocoon.

Before his eyes, the plant began to unfurl, tantalisingly slowly. At last, it presented its fleshy inner chamber to him, the colour and texture of the inside of his cheek. A yawning, salivating maw. Ever so gently, he brushed it with his fingertips.

Ezra whistled a tune as he loosened his tie. The watch his parents had given him for his 21st — Swiss-made, titanium bracelet — made a sharp, satisfying crunch as the glass shattered on impact. His hands trembled but nevertheless he made deft work of divesting himself of one of the too tight shirts Emily always insisted on gifting him. He unclipped his staff security card, before moving onto his belt buckle. He stepped out of his expensive, rigid dress shoes. Bouncing up and down on the balls of his cold feet, he smiled, and padded to the plant. Its fleshy inner chamber glistened, radiating warmth.

Dark clouds overhead, and glinting out from the tattered gaps, the stars of an ancient, unpolluted sky. The view grew smaller and smaller as the plant closed around him; moments before it disappeared entirely, Ezra shut his eyes. For a brief, sweet moment he basked in the pulsating heat enveloping him; savoured the whole and complete darkness.

And then everything dissolved away.