The Secret Garden

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The secret Garden 

My father was an odd man . Growing up , i would see him talking to himself . Gibberish , that's what he would say . Nothing that made sense , never a familiar word . Until came the day when he fell terribly ill . Although he was very distant , i loved my father dearly . At his death bed , he spoke sanely for the first time ever . 

" listen to me son , my entire life i have cast myself as an outsider , all this time away from society , but for a reason . You see son , i was trying to find out the meaning of life . I sentenced myself to solitude so i could think , and think i did . I inflicted things upon myself that i cannot even speak of . But at last , my search has paid off . The meaning of life lies in the center of the secret garden . You see the secret garden is a -"  he stopped talking . His eyes closed . And his heart stopped . He had died before being able to tell me what the secret garden was . What the meaning of life was .

But i gave it no thought . I had no interest in knowing what the meaning of life Is .

Months later , while i was having dinner with my wife Sara and our daughter Linda , my father's words suddenly flashed back into my mind . For no reason whatsoever . I looked at my wife , then at my daughter . They were the meaning of my life . My family is my life . Why am i thinking about this ? I didn't want to think about it . But somehow the topic forced itself into my brain. I started researching the secret garden but found nothing useful . And my obsession started . It was far worse than my dad's . I trusted every single website that guaranteed that their  instructions will lead me to the garden . And every time i was met with disappointment .  And the instructions were terrible things involving dead animals and blood drinking and self-harm . Things i cannot describe . I'll spare you these details for now , because the worst is yet to come . 

After becoming sick of stupid fake websites i moved on to books . I went to the house where i grew up and asked my mom to get me dad's books and notebooks . She told me that my father had burned all his notebooks before he died but had left the books intact .

After taking the box of books and saying farewell to my mother i drove back home and started reading .

Getting to the secret garden required great sacrifice , that's the only thing that these books had in common . In the process of reading them and following their instructions i had to kill our pet cat , Whiskers by slicing it's head off . Then i drew a circle with it's blood on the white tiles of my office . The door was locked and so where the windows . At 12:00 AM i started lighting up the candles and doing the chant required by the book . The windows suddenly flew open . I felt a cold gush of air hit me as they did . I started hearing terrible laughter coming from everywhere in the room . But i couldn't see anyone . The wind knocked down one of the candles , it fell next to the circle of blood . And just like gas , the circle of blood turned into a circle of fire , and i was trapped in the middle of it . 

I woke up in a hospital room . I had mild burns on my face and the doctors said i'd be ok . But my wife was growing worried about me .

After this incident i grew more and more distant . Read more and more books . Performed more and more ceremonies of the sort , always getting hurt at the end . Somehow i got addicted . 

A year later , none of these books proved useful . Why would my dad keep these books ? I didn't understand it .

Maybe he kept them to throw off anyone who wanted to get their hands on the information!

This assumption , that had no evidence whatsoever , got me paranoid . I stopped trusting everyone , my mother , my wife , my friends even my own daughter ! 

So i rented a car and parked it in front of my mom's house , behind a tree and sat there all day waiting for her to leave . When she finally did at 6:30 in the after-noon , i went into the house and straight into the attic . 

I went through the boxes , but none of them had what i wanted . My sanity was fading and i felt anger take over me . Before i knew it i was throwing boxes around the room breaking everything in my way . 

My anger fit ended when i heard the front door opening . I raced down the stairs to see  my mom coming in with a bag of groceries .

" hey mom "

" hey" she greeted with a large smile .

" when i asked you to give dad's books , did you give me everything ?" If he used those other books as decoys then he had to have a book that was worthwhile that he had kept for himself.

" no honey , i made sure not to forget anything "

" LIAR !" I yelled anger gushing right back into me . 

I took out my gun and aimed it at her .

"LISTEN UP OLD LADY !  YOU TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW OR I SHOOT YOU !" I yelled again .

She didn't answer , she just started crying .

She cried and cried and cried and i couldn't take it anymore. So i shot her , straight between the eyes . 

Moments later as i processed what just happened . I went crazy . But who wouldn't after shooting their own mother ?!

I was way worse than my father . 

I sat down beside her body and begged her  to forgive me , to come back to life . But she just laid there , a lifeless body .  

So , i was gonna make her alive .

I took her body , face still bleeding , to the living room , sat her on the couch and turned on the tv. And we were watching the simpsons together .

An hour later the police came . Apparently the neighbors heard the sound of the gun and called the cops .

A few days later i was taken to the electric chair . I was a threat to myself and society , they said , and had to be put down .

And that's when i got it ! Right there when i was being electrocuted , that's why there wasn't a book ! The answer wasn't in a book !!! The secret garden , the meaning of life , is death .

By Mada El-Horr