Story: The Gnomes of Eden

I was gazing out the window when Jeff’s elbow suddenly dug into my ribs. “How bout that gnome, man?” His face was turned towards me, but his eyes fixed on a still figure crouched in a garden across the way.

“That is surely a gnome,” I answered and turned back towards evening. Outside, the steady hum of crickets was just beginning to call, but my attention to it was abstract; preoccupied by a startling sense that beneath my clothes I could feel my own nakedness- outside of them even- like I was back in the garden, on the verge of original sin, only the fall this time was backwards; a reverse stumble over the branching segments of human perception: its categories, its knowledge, its naming. Every opposition, sun and moon, hot and cool, seemed to occur now simultaneously, like an unfolded coin.

The sky alone was different- strangely soothing in its inconsistency. Like a murmuring stream the colors of evening drifted into one another: tidal shades of crimson rolling against the clouds, and swirls of amethyst deepening, then lightening. Reclining in my seat I watched it all absently, finding relief in the sky’s slow alternating rhythms; the steady breath of change… But then there were gnomes.

“I think I’m going to go get it,” Jeff said, suddenly recalling my thoughts.

“What?”

“The gnome, man. I’m going to go get that gnome. Don’t you want it with us?”

I shook my head and blinked, as if a pebble had just struck me on the forehead. “Get the gnome? Have you lost it?” I asked. But the syllables rang without conviction. The truth is I could not say whether it would be good or bad to have the gnome, and thus confused, I quickly became indifferent. “Just don’t let anybody see you.”

And so he crept carefully across the lawn towards the front garden. It was that moment of clarity which always occurs just before sunset, when things are most vivid. The grass bristled underfoot as he lifted the plaster figure from beneath a twisted tree, and there was a ridiculous strain on his face as he heaved it into the backseat and reclaimed his seat behind the steering wheel.

“Smooth,” I said, and he grinned as we slowly fled the scene, riding for a while in silence. I tried to think of something to say, something to distract me from the backwards tumble, but found myself unable to speak. There was a conversation in my head, but my imagination seemed to fill in both sides, so a confused silence settled between us.

At last one spoke:

“Can I have something to eat?”

“Fine with me,” I said.

There was a pause.

“What?” Jeff’s eyes left the road for a moment to scan my face.

“I said, ‘Food is fine with me’.”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Jeff replied, annoyed, “but weren’t you the one who just asked for it?”

“No.”

And the next scene unfolded as if through a lens: A shot of Jeff and I in the front seat as the car comes slowly to a halt. Wide eyes turn and meet one another, exchanging glances before each gaze falls on a spot in the back seat where a plaster figure sits, hungry for French fries.

The scene snapped back suddenly into real-time as peels of laughter erupted from deep in our stomachs. Making a U-turn, Jeff sped off to Wendy’s, where still giggling, he ordered three bacon cheeseburgers and a large French fry. As he passed back the gnome’s portion the girl at the window didn’t seem to mind what must have been a rather strange spectacle. We drove off munching happily on our food.

Jeff and I had a difficult time eating though, finding ourselves constantly interrupted by spastic fits of laughter that caused us to cough and nearly choke now and then. But eventually we settled and continued to drive, the ability to differentiate slowly descending now like the distant glow of familiar lights.

Speech finally issued from the back seat after a little while, penetrating the comfortable reverie we’d allowed ourselves to slip into:

“Can I go back now?”

Our features froze with alarm as our sense of the situation suddenly dismantled. Something was wrong with the question, with the speaker we realized, and in another moment of cinematic unfolding we looked into the back seat and were horrified to find, not a plaster garden gnome, but a very live little girl!

“Holy shit!” I couldn’t tell whether it was something we’d actually said or just a flash of psychic cohesion- a thought, a vision of terror we found ourselves suddenly both inhabiting.
Jeff drove faster now, speeding through the winding, sub-divided network of pale houses until, guided by the little girl, we finally made it back to the familiar lawn with the bristling grass (now obscured by darkness).

An interior light shone in the windows, but nobody was in sight as Jeff got out of the car and knelt before the little girl. I sat wringing my hands in the front seat as he grasped her shoulder at arm’s length and produced from his pocket a crumpled wad of bills. “Look at me,” he said harshly, desperation distorting his voice. I could see beads of sweat gathering on his forehead, and upon the girl’s face was a terrifying expression of vacancy. “Here’s all the money I have in my pocket.” He placed the wad of cash in her hand, and still grasping her shoulder, held up a single finger in front of her face. “Now listen to me… You must never talk to strangers.” And his grip on her shoulder tightened. “Alright? Promise me… you must never talk to them.”

And pocketing the money, she nodded her head, returning without a word to her still position beneath the twisted tree. Interior lights continued to glow as Jeff and I drove away silently, eyes fixed ahead of us, neither looking back.