Mint

When they told her not to plant mint in her garden she thought they were overreacting.

“It’s mint,” she had said with a laugh. “What could it possible do?”

It’s a bully.

It’ll overrun your garden.

It’ll escape.

It will take over.

It will spread.

But how could any of that be possible? Mint was just mint! Refreshing, cool, perfect for mojitos. She had needed the mint.

“It’s mint,” she muttered to herself, staring out her window. Her face was painted green by the sunlight coming through mint. It had consumed her garden in little more than two years. A year after that her and her little house was now covered. The mint rose up from the ground to impossible heights, taller than the sunflowers the mint had attacked, destroyed, pushed out.

It was growing from everything. The breaks in the pavement in her driveway. The dirt between the flagstones of the walk. The lawn is completely gone, replaced by mint that spreads out, up, reaches for the house and for the sidewalk. The neighbors have complained but what can she do?

It began to grow inside. She found it sprouting from drains, corners, under sinks and around toilets. Her house has never smelled fresher. It burned her nostrils, gave her weird dreams where she was lost in a never ending maze of mint, sipping from a violently green drink.

Her friends reached out to her the night before.

Didn’t we tell you this would happen?

As a matter of fact, they didn’t.

Everything is fine! I’ve got the mint in control. I’m thinking of planting begonias!

She lied to them. She had to. The mint was in the house. It was watching her through the window. If she told them the truth, who knew what it would do.

And anyway, they wouldn’t believe her.

It whispers to me at night is what she had wanted to write. Her fingers had been poised, hovering over the keyboard. Maybe if she had written and sent it fast enough, the mint would have missed it.

It was a chance she couldn’t take.

She finally gave up, logged off and shut down her computer. Got ready for bed. Brushed her teeth with strawberry toothpaste. Washed it down with water from the tap. Minty. Everything was minty. Went to bed. And listened.

sssssssssssssss

sssssssssssssss

sssssssssss-ssssp-ssssspread

spread

spread

Cats had been disappearing from the neighborhood.

The next door neighbor had taken a torch to the mint trying to grow on his side of the fence.

She hadn’t seen him in a few days.

spread

Even in the darkness, the whole room looked green. She pulled the covers over her head, trying to block the smell, the sound. The mint stopped speaking. But she could still hear it. Growing. Spreading.

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