We at The Flail pride ourselves on providing intelligent, relevant, hard-hitting material. But we’re living in the real world. We know what sells. We know what people want. So, here’s your biannual sexy article, you animals. I hope you come back next week for some real journalism.
You’re driving to the florist’s shop for a simple checkup. You left the house about 10 minutes early — call it a whim — and crack the passenger side window to let in the warm, wet smells of spring. You drive by casually tended lawns where purple crocuses press skyward, lush and supple blooms of indigo resting in the soft earth.
God, you’re just loving this, you sick freaks. I wish I could stop.
The scent of a mineral-rich soil compels you to stop the car and soon you find yourself walking into a nursery. The greenhouses are bursting with unbridled life, vines sensually caressing the aromatic cedar structures, the weathered glass walls.
You see a large greenhouse marked with the sign “Mature Fruit Trees” and cannot stop yourself from entering, you predictable, simple, sexual fool. Ugh. You swore this would never happen again.
Inside, pulling a blue metal cart heaped heavy with young saplings, is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen. She’s wearing an old green sweater that goes all. the. way. down. Her haircut is like nothing you’ve ever seen or conceived. As the hem of her sweater catches on a laden pear branch, you briefly glimpse her bare feet, and yes, they’re dirty. With mineral-rich soil.
God, what I wouldn’t give to be writing a good, clean, accurate article right now.
The woman catches you staring and seems unsurprised. She extends a finger in your direction and crooks it back — seeming to say, “Follow me, traveler” — and continues to make her way through the greenhouse. Kindled, you follow the blue cart. You can see her strong forearms bulging through her sweater sleeves as she pulls the cart. She does not look back.
It is such a travesty, such an abomination that I have to write these articles. Every click-clack-clack of the keys shames me. But groundbreaking, paradigm-shifting, brilliant articles that shatter illusion and reveal the world, dewey and new, don’t sell. Sex sells. Erotic nursery scenes sell. Anyways.
You find yourself immersed in young trees in an area behind the nursery where saplings sit in many rows and columns, until they are of buying age. You must have been daydreaming for a moment and you’ve lost your bearings. The blue cart is there, but the woman is nowhere in sight. From within the peach saplings, you hear a soft laugh and the breaking of a twig. Ah, a game’s afoot. Into the young fresh wood you go.
You are late to the florist’s.
