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Weed

My mom´s garden was almost entirely covered with plants. She had left a space in the middle only with grass for walking, playing, or any other activity that involved being outdoors in a garden. Every weed that began to grow between the grass, slowly pushing its way out of the ground, was mercilessly pulled by her. This happened to every single one of them.

And that is how my mother kept her garden clean from weeds. Every single day, she looked for more, and found more, and pulled more. That garden was her pride and joy. She used to spend lots of time out there. When she wasn´t taking care of it, she would go out and read a book or something. She would walk around on the grass and observe the plants around her. She admired her own work.

This all stopped one day, when the only weed she couldn´t pull out began to come out of the ground.

That day, a small lump appeared on the ground, just in the middle of the garden. It looked as if the ground were being pushed by something below. My mother quickly noticed and tried to flatten it, without any success. There seemed to be something under it, pushing its way up. The lump grew by the next day, and even more by the next one. Only a week after its appearance, we could figure out what it was: a human head.

We were terrified. The police did not believe the story. And I understand them in some way: how could a head push its way out of the earth and appear in a garden? The worst part was that it seemed to be alive. It had an old man´s face, with grey hair and a wrinkled skin. The eyes were wide open and only looked forward. I couldn´t tell if it could breathe because I never got as close to it. No one did. We just left it there, in the middle of the garden.

Another week passed and half a torso had appeared under the head. It had a dirty white shirt on.

I had nightmares in which that thing would come out of the ground and enter my house. He would just stare at me while I laid still in bed.

After two weeks, an entire old man stood in the middle of my mother´s garden. He wouldn´t move or react to anything. He just stared at the same place as always. We wouldn´t go out to the garden any more. What if he was just waiting for one of us to get near and take us to wherever he came from?

We wondered if he was a human being. It clearly resembled one, but how could someone come out of the ground just to stand there, in the middle of the garden? It almost looked like a plant. Sometimes I would look out the window, wishing that what stood in the garden was a tree instead of a man. My mother, instead, thought that it came straight from hell to torment us. And, although it didn´t move or showed signs of being alive, it did.

We had to live for four months with an old man with a white shirt, a pair of jeans and brown shoes in our garden. After that time, the man simply disappeared. It happened from one day to the other. The only trace he left was the hole where he came from. We don´t know whether he finally came to life and left or got sucked back into the ground. Still, we don´t step into the garden any more.

After some time, I have made my own conclusions about him. I think that maybe he was just one more weed. A pretty crazy thought. I don´t know, maybe it was one that had learned to keep itself alive through fear. After all, the only thing that we people are really afraid of is other people.