Genesis

‘Wouldn’t life be easier if we were placed here on purpose?’ - the first thing Benedict has said all day. He’s a fan of the profound, the sort of man that likes to ask vague questions about existence and turn his back whilst you scramble for something interesting to say in return. He’s hunched over one of the glass jars I bought. A layer of soil fills most of the space, speckling the sides - I question his proportions, bringing over the small brush for clean up. Benedict is silent, breathing clouds into the new terrarium. I stand by the door to leave, throwing words into the room about dinner and laundry and what needs to go on the shopping list. I’m familiar with this part of the evening; the unmoving stance, inspection of his handiwork, an inability to respond. It’s like he’s trapped beneath the layers, mind tangled in the plants he’ll place and the wildlife he’ll cage. I’ll leave his dinner outside the door, knock once, and wake up to find the plate washed and dried in the kitchen.

—

On my hands and knees, plucking snails from an overgrown plant, I wonder what it would feel like to be sealed inside one of Benedict’s terrariums. I fill a shoebox with fern leaves and creatures I can’t identify, tipping it from side to side, watching the wildlife mingle.

Benedict sits at his desk, tweezers between wrinkled fingers, misshapen moss forming his layers of undergrowth and bushes. I place the shoebox beside him. Small balls of different materials sit in formation on the desk. I nudge the one closest - clay.

“Are these something new you’re working on?”

Benedict removes his tweezers from the terrarium, stretching across and picking up the clay ball – dropping it into my shoebox collection. A leaf curls beneath its weight.

Benedict asks if I wouldn’t mind doing some cleaning - "just avoid the attic, there’s no space to move around there, it’s where everything is stored.”

“Of course,” I say, shutting the door on my way out.

Benedict’s house is hard to live in - the curtains always close with a gap. My room is on the second floor, purgatory between the workshop and an attic of family relics. It feels wrong to hover in this space. I’ll sleep there, but nothing more. My suitcase lives in the wardrobe - empty. My clothes are unpacked on a chair in the corner.

Hours to fill until he wants me, I explore the house and the grounds. I uncover the beginnings of a vegetable patch in the garden; a box of tools and various decorative items at its centre. Build Your Own Fairy Garden, unboxed, miniature doors and figurines strewn across the soil. At the end, a sign - Orcherd.

I mention the misspelling to Benedict when I bring him his coffee. The next day I find the mug, full, by the vegetable patch. The sign - Orchard - lays on the ground.

I dreamt of living in the middle of nowhere for most of my adolescence; not because I disliked people or city-life or craved the youthful drama of reading classics in a tree. I just always thought it would be nice to see something untouched - virgin land. Though, I was quick to discover that all grass is walked on and all trees are scarred from pocket knives and charcoal rubbings. I’m not as disappointed as I thought.

—

I’ve quickly become used to our quiet dance. I relish in the freedom to explore and sit and read and wonder. I understand when he’ll need me, like I’m running on a separate clock to the rest of the world, my body taking residence in the terrarium in his mind. I move as purposefully as the moss he places, kept breathing in a workshop I don’t quite understand. This house satisfies a craving I wasn’t aware of. I am free to be mindless.

At first, the gifts were hard for me to respond to. They came without conversation - usually as a thanks for something I’d done, but more frequently becoming a kind gesture. Terrariums of many designs live in my bedroom now, stacked like a spine against the wall. All are built inside identical glass boxes - all depict somewhere in the house or the village.

Benedict has taken to joining me in the evenings, sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, occasionally asking what I’m doing with certain ingredients. I explain in unnecessary detail, he offers an ‘ah’ in response. At first I wasn’t sure how to present the food I’d cooked; usually it would be plated on something practical and left outside the door of his workshop. Now, I’ve found myself hunting through cupboards of dusty crockery, piling meals on ludicrously decorated china plates, and placing them in front of Benedict at the counter. I eat mine from a Tupperware bowl, standing opposite him - when I’m finished, the lid goes on and I’m grateful not to have to cook myself lunch the next day.

We’ve begun to wander the house together, Benedict touching things with the gentleness of a guest. He points to a few old photos, not offering much detail. The most I get it is, ‘I had a wife and a daughter. What should we have for dinner tonight?’.

I ask how his projects are coming along, he says that he wishes he could put more than just bugs and critters inside, that the boxes are alive but they’re missing the essence of life. I say that I think most things would lose that essence, trapped in a terrarium.

He leaves for his workshop, but first he tells me that I can store things in the attic - there’s a space for me now.

Continuing to explore the house, I try to make up my own stories for the pictures. Painted portraits of his wife were made by him on romantic weekends in Italy; A photo of them on a beach was obviously taken by an aspiring artist that just had to capture that moment; and one of his daughter, wild brown hair messy with leaves, must’ve been from a family walk in the woods to collect pinecones.

Benedict is busy for the evening, but the attic door has been left open. Perhaps I’ll just leave my suitcase in there.

—

I’ve become used to a bath. Most evenings I feel my limbs laced with the dust of the house, a second skin that never quite washes off. Submerged for hours at a time, the water performs surgery on my youth, stripping naivety and leaving a boldness in its place that I’m not used to. You can hear everything from the bathroom. Though Benedict is mostly silent, the shadows of his movements vibrate the pipes and walls and ripple in the water. It is the place I feel least alone. I sink beneath a warm, bubbly surface, opening my eyes against the sting, and watch the light tiptoe above me. A new vibration begins, gentle - the base of the staircase. If I hold my breath, I think I can sink deeper.

The vibration climbs.

Deeper.

Another step.

Sink through the water.

Another step.

Sink through the floorboards.

Top of the staircase.

Deeper, still.

Knock. A vibration translated to sound and I’m out of the bathtub and I’m wrapped in a towel and I’m feeling an unfounded sense of panic and I’m opening the door to find a box sat outside.

The box is a terrarium, made just for me. A house contained in glass; four walls I recognise, the garden path I painted as a child. I place it on my bedside table, watch it as I try to sleep. When I lived there, I would flick the lights on and off every night, a signal I created in a language I couldn’t decipher. In the moments before I sleep, my face is there, in the window, staring back from a childhood bedroom I can hardly recall. Perhaps she longs to speak to me through the glass. I try to remember the names of the books on the bookshelf.

This morning, I deliver his coffee to the workshop - empty, but I’m sure he’ll appear soon. It’s not my job to keep this room clean, in fact I believe Benedict would rather I didn’t. I don’t pay attention to the mess, or the contents, simply acknowledging the terrariums with a politeness I believe they are owed. Though, there is something wrong. Projects I’ve never taken any notice of are covered, draped in sheets I didn’t know we owned. A few on the shelves but most on the desk, a wall of white. In front of the boxes, Benedict’s latest experiment now seems to resemble dolls of various sizes. Six lined up, appearing to hold hands. One is almost finished - the smallest - a face I think I recognise, hidden beneath a curtain of mousy hair tangled with leaves. There’s another doll beside them, standing, turned away from Benedict’s chair. I’m compelled to pick it up, to see the face that can’t bare the sight of its maker. But Benedict is here now, standing in the doorway.

—

At night I’m unsure if I’m dreaming. I think that the house by my bed is flashing lights. I think that there’s a cockroach living in the room that used to be mine, watching me sleep from inside the glass. I think my mother is pulling the grass up from the garden, scrubbing my chalk from the path. I know it’s not possible. People can’t live inside terrariums, they’d lose their minds.

By the morning, the chaos has stopped.

By the morning, I’m not sure I’ve slept at all. Rolling over, I see the chair is empty, my clothes hung neatly in the wardrobe.

He’s leaving the house more often, pottering about the garden, occasionally coming back with a small creature cupped in his hands. One night I sat in the workshop with him, reading my book in the back corner. I wonder if he’d forgotten I was there, but it wasn’t long before he began to show one of his bugs to the dolls he’d created. Apparently he wasn’t happy with all of them, only two sit on the desk. They look female - one smaller than the other, the larger wrapping her in her arms. They are so intricately designed, if I could just get closer, maybe I could make out their faces. He places the bug at their feet, strokes the hair of the smaller and kisses his finger, touching it to the forehead of the larger. Feeling as though I shouldn’t be watching, I look around the room, searching for new projects. I find that the best way to understand Benedict is to decipher what he builds. On the floor beside my chair is a new shoebox. Sometimes I wonder where he’s getting them all from, I’ve only seen him in the same pair, old and tattered and with glittery laces. Inside the box, a doll with a face I’m sure I’ve seen reflected somewhere. I must make a noise - Benedict is staring at me now. As I leave the workshop, I’m sure the larger doll on his desk reaches for me.

—

Another strange night. The house in the terrarium was screaming at me. I couldn’t turn away, couldn’t close my eyes. Just the repetition of my mother, in the box, tearing at the ground and walls and windows until her fingers were bloody, the house crying and the cockroach that I think is me.

Benedict is at my bedside in the morning, a damp towel against my forehead.

“I have something to show you.”

In his workshop, he shows me the doll he’s been working on - my hair in its scalp, fabric from my clothes making its outfit. On the desk, a small glass box with a bathtub inside.

I turn away from him, staring at the wall of a home I’m too comfortable in, imagining that if I squint hard enough, I’ll be able to see right through.