(Flashback: Circa 2010s – The First Bloom)
The blades were dull. They’d been dull for weeks now. Owen Mallory had meant to sharpen them, meant to oil the wheels, swap the air filter, clean the deck — all the little rituals that once filled weekends with the kind of purpose no one thanks you for. But time slips faster when it’s rusted, and the mower didn’t complain, so he kept pushing.
His boots crunched frostbitten grass, the dead kind that bent but didn’t break. The early Verdancy infection had crept in weeks ago — roots that pulsed beneath the soil, whispering green comfort and chlorophyll lies. It hadn’t bloomed yet. Not fully. But the warmth was wrong. The air was too sweet. And the silence buzzed with a strange kind of waiting.
Still, Owen walked the yard in wide, slow arcs, guiding the mower like a casket on rails. There was no one watching, not anymore. The neighbors were gone. Some disappeared. Some… changed. His radio hadn’t worked in days. His phone lay dead in the shed. But this wasn’t about communication. It never had been.
Every year on her birthday — rain or shine — he’d mow her name into the back lawn. Not the whole thing anymore. That took too much fuel. Too much space. Too much noise.
Just the four letters:
L-I-Z-Z.
Elizabeth.
His daughter.
He never said “I love you.” Couldn’t. Wouldn't. Maybe he just didn't know how. But she’d look out the window and see those letters, cut clean into the backyard, and she’d grin like she knew what they meant.
Maybe she did.
The mower sputtered. Coughed once. Then gave up with a tired wheeze. Out of gas. No more cuts left to make.
But Owen didn’t stop.
He hunched forward, fists white on the handle, and pushed the dead Honda, wheels barely turning, its weight suddenly tenfold. His breath came in short, shuddered bursts. His eyes stung — not from grief, not from pollen, not even from the lies floating in the air.
They stung from the sheer effort.
From keeping it going.
At least, that's what he told himself.
The hallucinogenic spores had long invaded his lungs, pumping psychoactive alkaloids through his system with every staggered breath. They weren’t subtle anymore. They didn’t need to be. He was alone. Weakened. Nearly spent.
To his left, he saw his family.
Not just flickers or silhouettes — but bodies made of vines and muscle mimicry, grown from twisted shrubs and draped in the skin of memory. His wife in her gardening jeans, hair pulled back. His daughter sitting cross-legged in the grass, popsicle in hand. His old dog Bucky, tongue lolling, tail wagging too smoothly, like playback on a loop.
The illusion was close enough — close enough to make him hesitate.
They waved at him.
Smiled.
Said nothing.
To his right, his childhood home stood again, reconstituted from weeping willows and synthetic nostalgia. Porch swing swaying. Smoke curling up from a grill that hadn’t worked in decades.
The air smelled like corn on the cob.
Like sunblock. Memories of decades past.
Like summer Saturdays where nothing was wrong, even if everything was.
But Owen kept pushing.
The vines had begun creeping up his legs — slow and patient, not constricting, but caressing. Coaxing him downward. “Come home,” they said without saying. “You did enough. We’re proud of you.”
He grunted.
Didn’t answer.
His foot caught on a root, and he stumbled — catching himself on the rusted mower handle as the dead machine creaked under the strain. A sharp pain shot through his knee - he was overdue for a replacement. With the disappearance of most of the townsfolk, so went the doctors.
“Dad?”
His daughter’s voice — wrong in tone, too soft, too patient.
“It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean to leave. I know you didn’t mean to yell. You were just tired, right?”
He didn’t look at her.
Because she never said things like that.
Because she called him "Pops" or "Coach", when she wanted to be a smartass.
Because forgiveness was never easy with her, and that’s how he knew it was real.
This voice? This Liz?
Too kind.
Too clean.
“You forgot my birthday last year,” the hallucination said — gently, with no accusation, only understanding.
He clenched his jaw.
The ache in his knee had spread to his chest.
Each breath was like dragging barbed wire through his ribs.
But the mower moved another foot.
Then another.
The vines caught in the wheels, slowing them.
But with Sisyphean effort, Owen leaned forward, growling now — not like a soldier, not like a hero, but like a tired old man who refused to leave a job half-done.
Behind him, his fake family walked barefoot in the frost, hand-in-hand.
Ahead of him, the last corner of the letter — the second Z — waited.
One more arc.
One more line.
His vision blurred.
He could hear them crying now.
Or maybe laughing.
Or maybe calling him inside for dinner.
Didn’t matter.
As a wheel fell off the mower, he collapsed to his knees beside it.
With one stiff hand, Owen dug the final line into the frost with his fingers — carving through the moss and lies until the dirt bit back. It wasn’t clean. It didn’t need to be.
He collapsed fully then — on his side, breath shallow, lungs full of green lies and half-frozen air. His hands bled where they scraped root and gravel. The vines moved in, gentle as a cradle.
But the name was there.
Finished.
“Happy Birthday, Lizz.”
And as he closed his eyes for the last time, the vines took him.
But not the name.