Mothersgrove - I got a job in a fruit factory but there is something weird about the fruit - final part

April 14th

I called in sick today.

Said I had a migraine. Not far from the truth. My head does hurt — a slow, pulsing throb behind my eyes like something’s trying to dig its way out.

I told myself I needed rest. But instead of staying in bed, I went out into the gardens. Sat on a bench with Anna’s sketchbook resting on my lap like some kind of shield. I told anyone who walked by that the fresh air helped me feel better. No one questioned it.

I spent the whole day watching the greenhouse.

They call it the orchard, but it doesn’t look like any orchard I’ve ever seen. Tall glass panes mottled with condensation, vines twisting up the inside like veins under stretched skin. The door at the front is always padlocked, but I noticed something else today: the gardeners use a different entrance — a small side door tucked near the back, half-hidden behind a curtain of ivy. It has a keypad. I watched three separate shifts of gardeners come and go. Always in pairs. Always quiet. Always the same series of beeps.

Four notes. I started listening carefully.

Around noon, I saw one of them pause before going in — his gloves were soaked in something thick and dark. He wiped them on his apron like it was nothing and tapped out the code. I didn’t catch all of it that time, but I did the next. And the next.

I think I know the sequence now.

No one went in after sunset. They never do. The last pair left just before the sky turned pink, chatting softly, pushing a covered cart between them. Something dripped from the corner. I don’t want to think about what it was. I watched the one with the clipboard loop the chain through the front gate and lock it tight, but they didn’t even glance toward the back.

So now I know.

I know where they go in. I know when they leave. And I know that tomorrow night — when the gardens are quiet and the moon is high — I’m going to find out what’s behind that door.

If Anna’s still here, that’s where she’ll be.

If she’s not… then I’ll finally know what happened to her.

Either way, I can’t keep pretending anymore.

I woke with a calmness I didn’t trust.

A strange, solid resolve rooted itself in my chest like a second spine. I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything quite like it — this quiet certainty that tonight, I would finally break the rules. Step over the line. And find her. Or the truth. Or both.

Once I made the choice, the rest of the day passed in a kind of soft blur. I called Julia again, feigning the same story: migraine, blurred vision, nausea. I said I hoped to be back in tomorrow. She didn’t ask questions. Maybe she already knew I wouldn’t be.

I started preparing.

Dug through drawers and closets. Mismatched blacks, charcoal greys — anything that could pass for shadow. I hadn’t worn half these clothes since Carl. They still smelled faintly of old smoke and stale apologies. I shoved a torch into my coat pocket and tested the batteries three times. I found an old pocketknife — the one Carl insisted I carry on hunting trips I loathed — and slipped it into my sock.

Then I paced. I must have circled the apartment a hundred times, glancing out the curtains every few minutes. Watching the greenhouse sit there like a bloated glass lung, silent, misted over, waiting.

When the sun slipped under the horizon and the world grew quiet — no more gravel crunching, no more gardeners’ voices — I stepped out.

The night air was warm, clinging. I crept over the grass, avoiding the gravel paths. The greenhouse loomed closer with every step, tall and glistening like the ribcage of something long-dead.

At the back, I pressed my ear to the door — the one I’d watched the gardeners use. Nothing. No hum. No shuffle. Just my own frantic heartbeat pounding in my head.

I typed in the code slowly, praying I’d remembered the pattern. The keypad chirped softly… then clicked.

The lock gave.

I slipped inside.

The door closed with a hiss behind me, sealing me into the dark, humid silence.

At first, I was in a small antechamber — glass walls, shelving units stacked with crates. Each box was stamped with grove numbers: 2, 5, 7. Most were empty, but some bore the faint smudges of something dark and sticky — dried sap, maybe. Or not. The smell hit me next: sweet and sharp and vaguely coppery.

I moved carefully, stepping between crates, mindful not to disturb anything.

Beyond the second door was the orchard proper.

It opened before me like a cathedral. A vast corridor of trees, rows and rows on either side, climbing toward the glass ceiling above. Mist sprayed gently from the pipes overhead. A warm, wet breath wrapped around everything.

And the trees… the trees were wrong.

I kept walking.

The first I passed bore the plaque Grove 1. The tree was dying. That much was clear. Its trunk twisted like a spine hunched in agony, bark split and weeping red sap from open fissures. One root jutted from the ground like a bent leg, arthritic and raw. No leaves. No fruit. Just stillness and rot.

I moved past it quickly, heart thudding louder than my footstep

Grove 2. These trees weren’t dead — but they weren’t alive, either. Their trunks curled inward as if recoiling. Grooves in the bark formed awful patterns: leering mouths, hollowed eyes, knotted swellings that mimicked breasts. In the misty light, they looked almost human. Almost. I told myself it was my brain playing tricks. But something deeper said no.

The further I walked, the thicker the air became. The scent of rot layered itself over wet soil and copper tang. I gagged once, muffling it in my sleeve.

Grove 3. The trees had waxy leaves now, lush and dark, but their branches reached down like fingers. Their fruit sagged low — veined, distended pods pulsing faintly in the humid dark. I thought of insect queens and their swollen brood sacs. Of larvae. Of things waiting to hatch.

Grove 4. I heard whispering. Faint and rustling, like gossip through leaves. But purposeful. One tree bore a bulge low in its trunk, pale and round like a distended belly. Another had what looked like a clenched fist frozen just below the surface. I paused, staring. Somewhere inside the bark, something shifted — and I didn’t wait to see what.

I kept walking.

Grove 5. Fruit lay in clusters now. Too uniform. Too… eager. Bloated sacs, twitching with subtle spasms, some shuddering in time with something inside. I slipped on the dark soil and caught myself against a trunk — and recoiled. It was warm. Sweating. Like fevered skin. I looked up — and locked eyes with a face embedded in the tree. Not bark. Not wood. Flesh. Eyeless. Mouth agape in frozen horror. I screamed without sound and staggered back, knees buckling.

I stumbled back, hand to my mouth, shaking. No, no, it can’t be. That’s not possible.

But it was.

And I was only at Grove 5.

I forced myself to keep going. I had to know what was at the end. I had to know if Grove 9 held Anna. Or what was left of her.

Each step took me deeper, and each tree grew more grotesque — more animate, more aware. As if they could feel me now. Watch me.

I passed Grove 6.

I could barely stand to look at it. The trees here sobbed. Or creaked like sobbing. Their bark had softened — smoother, more like skin. Fine down covered the surface, catching beads of condensation like sweat. One tree slumped as if broken by grief. Sap oozed from hollows where cheeks might have been. And still, the fruit fell, soft and wet, smacking the ground like muscle hitting tile. I watched one split open, the pulp writhing. Something inside it shifted. Alive. Dying. Both.

I practically crawled to grove 7. My legs were revolting against me.

They didn't want to go further.

To be honest I didn't want to go further.

I was scared if I kept going whatever I'd see at the end of the row would break my mind and there would be no coming back once I jumped over that edge. I held the shape of Anna in my head and carried on.

I couldn't stop myself from looking up at the tree rooted in grove 7, long vines fell from the roof of its branches like thick green braids trailing down the willowy body. The trunk was supported by what looked like an industrial strength iron trellis. Almost shaped like a crucifix.

The shapely waist of the tree creature was tied brutally to the metal stand the arms held up against the sagging form in the middle. There was no denying it now, no explaining it away.

These trees weren't just like the form of women. They were women. Poor contorted corpses grown into rooted abominations.

I looked over noticing thick tubes poking deep within the soil at the base of the woman. Thick oozing liquid being steadily pumped into it. There were pipes that seemed to be pierced roughly into the backs of what should be hands. I bent over and wretched against the ground throwing up whatever was left inside me.

Then Grove 8.... I felt my mind began to shatter shaking lose from the sanity I had thought I had always lived in.

The woman here was barely hidden. Stripped. Slumped. Her skin was splitting in places, curling into bark. Roots wormed around her ankles, greedy. Tubes stabbed into her veins, flooding her from the inside. She wept silently, her body trembling with every sob. Her fingers were long now, trailing clusters of pale leaves. I couldn’t look away. She was changing. Becoming part of the orchard.

Then I heard it.

A thud. A slick, wet slap against the ground.

Something had dropped.

I turned — one of the pods had fallen, ruptured open. Inside lay a small, glistening fetus. Not human. Not entirely. Its limbs spasmed. Its mouth opened, and from deep within, a baby’s cry gurgled out, soft and choked, like air through wet lungs. It reached blindly, crawling on elbows slick with birth-slime.

I stepped back, choking on my own scream. My vision blurred. My knees buckled.

I wanted to turn around. Run. Scrub my memory clean with bleach and steel wool.

But then I heard her.

A cough. Hoarse. Wet.

Then a whimper. My name.

Like a man walking to the hangman's noose I forced my legs to carry me to the last stop of our grotesque tour.

I felt hot tears stream down my face, blurring everything ahead.

Grove 9’s plaque caught the light like a small, cruel lighthouse, guiding me in.

Crucified in a frame of pipe and root, her bare body sagged under the weight of ruin. Her feet were shredded — a butcher’s pincushion of needle marks. Her stomach bulged, grotesque and unnatural. Drips fed her from above and below. Her arms hung limp. Her hair was matted, stuck to her face with sweat.

But I knew her.

“Anna?” I whispered. “Anna, please…”

She stirred. A jolt — pain, or memory — rippled through her limbs. Her eyes opened slowly, not with recognition, but with horror. Hollowed sockets, wide with the weight of everything she had endured.

She wept without sobbing. Tears slid freely, but her mouth made no sound.

A manic hatred bloomed inside me. I fumbled for the penknife stuffed in my trousers pocket, hands slick with sweat as I sawed at the roots binding her to the trellis. A lonely scarecrow in a field of silence.

When the last rope gave way, she collapsed into me — a ragdoll of bone and breath. So small in my lap. Her eyes found mine.

“I waited so long in the dark…

I thought maybe I’d imagined your voice. But you came.”

With shaking hands, I pulled free the tangle of tubes and wires that pierced her flesh. No more thick liquid pulsed into her veins.

She smiled — soft, grateful — and for a moment she looked almost free.

Then the convulsions took her.

A final seizure, like something shaking itself loose from her ribs.

And then she was gone.

Gone from this cruel world that taught her how to hate and fear.

Gone from this garden of Eden that hides the rot better… with prettier lies.

I don’t know how long I sat there, cradling her body. Rocking her as the sun rose behind the frosted glass — a twisted tableau of root and death. But the sun still shone, and the orchard still grew.