Right now my worst daffodil is just starting to look like it drank some poison. There’s something resembling a grimace on its spent, little, seedhead face. Or, maybe, it’s a look that says, “Hmmm, the martini I drank at this Mediterranean casino was surprisingly unpleasant.” Its eyes cloud slightly as it scans the room for the assassin. Soon there will be an all out spastic collapse and it will flail and flop and then finally drape its rotting ass self all over some innocent, happy, healthy, perennial just emerging, which itself will wonder, “WTF kind of world am I coming into?”
And soon there will be heard a thundering cascade of hundreds more daffodils writhing about in their death throes, getting all Shakespearean and shit.
Arriving home from work, seeing the daffs failing as everything else is coming into its own, I mutter aloud, “It’s enough just to witness this hideous display of suffering and death on our planet. Thank God I can’t hear all the moans!” I enter my house.
That’s where I hear the wailing of my wife and children. They are at the window watching the carnage, the latter clutching the skirt of the former, all of them spewing tears as if from a blown hose. My wife approaches, dragging the children across the floor with her. “Oh please, my darling. Oh please, my strong, handsome, and incredibly good-in-bed husband, “Please, please, please do something.” Realizing she just said that last part in front of the children, she blushes. I glance at the little tykes and can’t decide which is more appalling, that they seem to know the meaning of what she just said or that they obviously don’t believe her.
I decide to take action. As if an employee at a track and a race horse had just broken its leg and is flopping around like an English soccer player, I grab my gun. “Don’t worry, honey,” I say. “I’ll put it out of its misery!”
I stride out into the yard, assume position, and take aim. Just then, a long, dark stranger arrives. It’s a woman from the Daffodil Society, and she’s beating her breasts. “No, no, no!” She implores. “You can’t do that. You must wait until all the foliage dies back so the bulb can receive all the energy it needs to bloom again next spring.”
I pause and think to myself, “Next spring seems a long way off.” I look at the Daffodil Society woman and then I look back at my wife and children, gesturing wildly, albeit silently, in the window. I turn my attention to the daffodil. It’s all but begging for mercy and things are really starting to get out of hand. “Stand back,” I command, taking aim. “I am going to free this wretched soul of its mortal coil!” And then the Daffodil Lady does something unexpected. She throws herself over the daffodil. “Dammit!” I exclaim. “What the hell?”
“We must,” she sobs. “We must let nature take its course. Otherwise…” She can’t finish. I stand there perplexed, still pointing my gun in a flaccid sort of way.
Just then the cops arrive. Seeing me with a gun, they taze the living hell out of me. Multiple, multiple times. And now it’s me flopping all over the front lawn. Like a fish. Howls of laughter come from every direction in the neighborhood. Apparently, this is the funniest damned thing the neighbors have ever seen and I’m thinking, “Are daffodils worth all of this? Seriously. Same thing happened last year. Same thing will probably happen next year too. Are they worth it?”
At the county lockup, forlornly scrolling through photos on my phone in my cell, I see all the good times in my life as if in a weird dream. There’s Christmas. And New Years. Someone’s birthday or something. And then that first daffodil of spring. And the second. And the third. And right then, before I can forget, I find my calendar app, scroll to some random date in August, and type, “Order more daffs.”
The end.
Daffodils Die Big, Dumb, Dramatic, B-Grade, Silent Movie Deaths: Worth it? originally appeared on GardenRant on April 19, 2023.
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