I walked out into the garden and saw my sister standing under the leafless tree, reaching up into the vines that had grown out across from next door’s fence and entwined themselves in the branches there. She was swaying slightly back and forth, lost in some unfathomable reverie.
“What are you doing?” I said and she jumped at the sound of my voice, turning sheepishly to look at me, pulling her hands out of the air and putting them back into the pockets of her jumper.
“Have you seen these?” she said, pointing up at some bulbous swellings hanging from the vines. “They look like runner beans but…” She rubbed her fingers delicately down the side of one them. “But they feel like… velvet. The purest velvet I’ve ever felt.”
I saw a shiver run through her entire body, from the brain on down.
I didn’t move. I didn’t even say anything. Just watched her fondle a runner bean for longer than I should have. Than she should have, too.
“Go on, feel one. They’re…incredible.”
She stepped up onto her toes and whispered the last word in my ear.
“They’re just fucking runner beans,” I said. “How incredible can a runner bean feel.”
My sister grabbed my hand and brought it up to the thing and I felt it and it was everything she had said and more. It looked like a swollen runner bean yet it felt like heaven beneath my fingertips.
I took my hand away and felt a moment of loss and then I reached up again and stroked another one and everything was okay everything was better than okay everything was perfect as long as I could feel the touch of it against my skin.
“What are you to doing?” screamed our mother from the back door.
We both flinched and turned and looked at her as if we were waking from a dream.
“Have you seen these runner beans?” we said. “Have you seen what they feel like? It’s really strange. It’s amazing.”
Mother dried her hands on her pinny and stepped out into the garden towards us. Towards the beans hanging bulbous from our dead tree.
In this way, they enslaved the earth. Only the handless were spared.
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Notes:
1. Written on September 6th, 2017
2. Based on a true story