Carries Cabbage

Chapter one.

I watch Tom from the corner of my eye. He's beautiful.

I'm holding a bunch of carrots. Fresh ones. They're pretty dirty but I take a small bite from the bottom of a small one, its crunchy at first, and then soft and squishy I chew it slowly. I wonder if it is the dirt that makes it taste like that.

I put the carrot down on the old wooden counter.

The man behind the counter snatches it up, “ma’am you don’t want this one…its got this here, little bit thing right here”

I grab it out of his hands. When I look down and see the a white speck glinting, my eyes narrow. What the fuck is that.. I turn the carrot in my hand. There is a small opening near the bottom that Is damp and, as I watch, it moves, slightly pulsating. One tiny triangular tooth is poking out. It looks smooth and sharp like a canine. I hold the carrot up closer to my face… “what in the Fuck is that” i breath.

Then I hear it aaa, aaa, haaa, its breathing, the fucking thing is breathing… its.. it's struggling to breath? A droplet of blood falls on my palm and I see blood oozing where i bit it. My stomach churns.

“What… the fuck!” I throw the carrot onto the counter. "You sick mother fucker!" The man's with the lopsided face is sweating.

“ma’am some a dem vegetables... they .... co... come out like that, the govern....ment they engine-er out seeds… pa says”

I can’t stop looking at the carrot laying on its side gasping for breath. Making a small pool of blood on the counter.

“pa… come out er!”

I start looking around quickly at the bins full of produce. Tom is standing beside me completely quiet. I look at him pleadingly. i I have lost my mind? My eye focuses on a bin of potatoes to my left. I walk over carefully. One potato near the top has a leg. Just a squishy limp tiny human leg poking out of potatoes skin. A tiny hole for a mouth, clear slime drips from the hole onto the other potatoes. A crescent flap flickers.

I look at Tom, getting mad now that he hasn't said anything. There’s a potato with a fucking leg and he hasn’t said a thing.

“Tom are you seeing this shit? This potato has a leg, a fucking leg!”

“Excuse me miss” there’s a new man in the room now, I know he is walking to the counter to pick up the bleeding carrot but I can’t take my eyes away from the potato. I ate some of that carrot, I fucking ate it. My stomach feels violently ill. I puke and it lands on the old oak floor boards with a splat.

“Miss?” I feel a hand on my shoulder so I turn around quickly pushing his hand off of me.

“What the fuck are you doing here? I start backing up, "What is that fucking thing…it’s not right…Tom ... lets get out of here” The room is quiet just then and I hear the gasping gurgling of horrible mouths struggling to breath coming from all over, I though it had been a fan…


The man walks over to one of those large wash tub sinks and puts a stopper in the bottom and turns the water on. I watch him silently.

“It first happened a year ago. When we got our new seeds. Seeds have to come from the a plant now… Farmers like us aren’t allowed to just plant seeds any more… They make them up in Bargers-ville, only certain seeds are allowed, they make them special those genetically engineered seeds. So they grow faster and they can’t be killed by bugs and such..."

The man, PA I guess looks up at me… He is not like his son at all, his smile is straight and white teeth poke out. His head is covered in thick brown hair and I put he age around forty. He sighs heavily and I can see the stress lines around his eyes. He gestures me to come closer.

I approach slowly, and stop when I can see into the tub, it’s a quarter full now. The man turns of the water and wipes his hand on the front of his jeans.

“Only one out of a hundred come out like this… even though they are the same seeds” The carrot is gasping softly on a piece of paper towel. The farmer picks it up like it is a child, softy and gently, and places it in the tub. It sinks to the bottom and I can see it start to wiggle a little, a few bubbles rise to the top of the water and it’s mouth opens and closes a few times and then it goes still.

The farmer looks up at me with what i know to be sad eyes. "Some how I feel bad for them things…. I think they are like my boy… they don’t know… do you know what I mean..?”

“yeah I think I do.. what are you doing about it” I ask

“Nothing I can do, the seed company they wont believe me I already tried. ”

“Someone has got to hear about this, someone is going to care…. Don’t worry about that” I say righteously

“Thank you,” the farmer takes a carrot off the pile, it is big and fresh and clean and defiantly not alive. “Here take this,” he hands me the carrot.

“Thanks”

All the time Tom is just standing by the counter. I tug at his arm, “were leaving”

We get to the truck and I start the engine before either of us says anything.

“What the fuck was that?” I say as I hit the gas.

“I don’t now man” Tom says as he lights up a joint.







Chapter two





The road is long and dirty. We keep the windows up so the dust doesn’t get in. There is no radio out here so it is just quiet. Tom is barely speaking, I guess that weird fruit really fucked him up. It seems like forever before we get to the rocky cliff part of the road. I try to focus on the road and not the crumbling rock face and steep cliffs below me. I’m not the best driver I know. But I try to be confident and sure so not to scare Tom. I keep thinking about the sound of the gasping vegetables. There were more of them.. Hundreds maybe, it sounded like a fan going but it wasn’t… and he killed it, drowned it in that tub.

Did it hurt.. Did it feel pain.. Did it have a brain… it couldn’t even be possible.. It didn’t make sense.. Maybe it didn’t even happen. I look over at Tom wanting to ask him if I imagined the whole thing but he is just staring out the window. Tom was from around here wasn’t he? I try to think who knew the lady whose cabin we stayed at was it tom…or was it Amber?

Finally the road widens and I know the rest is not so bad. We cross over the small bridge and pass the giant willows.

I see the back of heathers white car.

They have all the chairs out in a circle and they are passing around a joint.

“Hey, how was the drive…!” Amber says holding out the joint. I wave it away. Tom takes the joint and inhales deeply “We found this farm”

“Yeah a farm? Really? Out here? Rick laughs.

Heather punches her boyfriend in the arm, everyone is laughing “what kind of farm is it ?” she asks curiously.

I see the rolling fields of wheat and corn and potatoes…..the winding dirt road the old farm house at the end with the red barn and the sign.. Charlie’s Fresh Fruit and vegetables all year…

I look at Tom wondering what he is going to say. He hasn’t been the same since we left the farm.

“It was fucked up….” Tom says finally looking at me.

“What do you mean?” Heather says laughing again. “it’s a farm right?”

I look the circle of chairs and find everyone is looking at me intently. “There were these things, like the vegetables…but they weren’t vegetables. ” even as I say it sounds ridiculous.

“If they weren’t vegetables what were they?” Rick asks, his voice sounds suddenly very serious.

“I don’t know..” I look at Tom for help but he is looking at Rick. Amber is staring at Tom and Heather is looking at me with huge blue puppy dog eyes.

Tom, suddenly bursts out laughing… “you have to see this shit! Its crazy!”

Rick jumps up from his seat, “alright lets go”

“Amber you ride with heather and Carrie in the Toyota, Tom and I will take the truck”

All six foot four of his impressive frame are standing in front of me and his hand slips in mine and the keys fall into his palm. The chairs and cooler are tossed into the truck bed.

And Rick is revving the powerful truck engine banging his hand on the drivers side door.

“I don’t think we should go back there…..” I try to argue but my voice is being drown out by the truck.

“I’ll drive” Amber says.

“shotty” Heather says excitedly and we all pile in the car.

The road seems much shorter on the way back. We are passing the bridge and the willows and the rocky cliffs and then we are on the dirt road and the landscapes folds and becomes rolling fields in the distance I think I see the tips of wheat. My stomach knots. Suddenly it all seems very sinister the sign the pristine fields the horribly dangerous road to get here. The red barn, the cottage. The slow boy with the crooked smile and stuttering words voice. The farmer, I close my eyes and try to remember, I visualize the farmer picking up the carrot… it was a carrot wasn’t it? A carrot but it had a mouth sort of on one side, it tasted funny when I bit it maybe even a little chewy? The farmer he picked it up …. Like a baby and …. His nails… were so clean… perfectly manicured, trimmed and spotless and shiny and …and his shirt and jeans also were so clean.. He didn’t really look like a farmer at all did he?

I look up and see Amber's eyes watching me in the rear-view mirror. I look away uncomfortably. Outside looks like a painting, an artist rendering of the perfect country scene. We get to the sign for Charlie’s fresh fruits and vegetables. Charlie’s weathered peeling face stars back at me. Up ahead I see Rick and Tom already out of the truck and heading into the house.

“wow it is so pretty here” Heather says from the front

When we stop, I see Amber looking at me again in the rear view mirror. I had met Amber first. Then through her, her brother Rick and their friend Tom and then Heather started dating Tom when they met at a party…. It was Rick’s idea to come out here for the weekend. Amber didn’t really want to come… and then Tom… had asked me after we left the pub that night, under the stars when he had walked me home if I wanted to spend the weekend with him out in the country…

“lets go” Amber said turning off the engine and opening the door. Heather skips along at her side and I fall back behind them following them slowly.

They disappear behind the door and the bell chimes cheerfully.






Chapter three


The sound is gone. It is entirely quite, gone is the sound of gasping breaths. I know right away that they are all gone. I look around rifling through bins of produce to find a breathing mouth or wayward leg but they are all just regular vegetables. Rick and Tom are no where to be seen and the slow boy is missing from behind the counter.

“what are you looking for” Heather is looking at me strangely.

I run to the potato bin “the potato it had a leg..” I stammer, the door leading into the back is swinging open, and Amber is gone.

I run into the back, and find myself winding through a strange hall. At the end is a door. A metal door white and shiny set in a wooden frame. I push It open.

“what…the fu-ck?” I whisper to myself. I’m In a lab. Metal tables glisten and fridges and fans whir, while test tubes gleam from steel shelves.


I keep going and peak through the window into the next room. The farmer is there talking to Rick and Tom. But he isn’t dressed like a farmer anymore. He is wearing a lab coat. I open the door.

“Tom, I think we should go”

They are looking at a cabbage on a steel table. The farmer starts to cut into it and it screams. Blood pools out on to the table and starts dripping on the floor. I think I am going to be sick.

The farmer looks up at Tom, “where is your sister, did she come out too?”

I start backing up knowing something here is very, very wrong.

Amber pushes open the door. “I’m right here.”

Heather comes in all blond hair and bows and perfume. Rick goes to her and leads her over to the table. I see Rick’s hand tightening on her arm.

“Get out of here,” Amber whispers to me “now run”

I am running as fast as I can. Behind me I hear Heather screaming. I’m vaguely aware that they are chasing me. I hear tom calling me to stop and come back. I run through a field of wheat and don’t stop until I am in the tree line. I hear some shouting and I listen carefully as the sounds slowly die down and fade away. I start through the trees.

I sit under a tree and try to catch my breath. I hear rustling behind me that grows into a trample.

“Carrie? Carrie ? It’s Amber are you out here”

My heart is beating wildly. I listen for the footsteps and wait. One two three. They are getting closer and closer. I jump.

Amber hit’s the ground hard and I land on top of her. I pin her shoulders to the ground.

“what the fuck is this Amber!” I am crying and hitting her, but my arms are tired and she blocks almost everything. She is much stronger then me and soon she has me pinned on the cold dirt.

“shhh.. Just calm down ok! Do you want them to hear us?”

A gun fires in the distance and then another, and another. three of them.

“They are starting.. They are going to hunt you now, we have to keep moving they have dogs.”

“who is going to hunt us?”

“My father, Tom, Rick, Bobby”

Amber is pulling me to my feet.

“where is heather?’

“Probably dead, now get the fuck up or you will be too”