Entry #13

From The Archive: A Fictional Account of Memory and Myth

If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is an entry from my on-going serial fiction experiment “The Archive.”

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Day 71 – Afternoon

Inside the greenhouse, the air wraps around me like a living thing—hot, green, hungry. Moisture beads on glass walls and drips down like sweat or tears, carrying the mingled breath of sage, lemon balm, and secrets buried in loam. The amber vials on the wall catch afternoon light, transforming it into liquid gold, each one a captured sunset holding who knows what transformations.

I’m leaning against the workbench when Demi finds me, my arms crossed not in defiance but in an attempt to hold myself together. The vials draw my gaze like magnets, each label written in her precise hand promising knowledge or oblivion.

She doesn’t startle at finding me here—doesn’t even blink. Just releases a breath that sounds like surrender or strategy, wiping soil-stained hands on her apron with the deliberate care of someone buying time to choose their words.

“You said you were good at asking.” Her voice mingles with the greenhouse’s humid breath. “So ask.” The invitation lands between us like a gauntlet thrown, or perhaps a key offered.

The questions tangle in my throat like thorny vines, each one sharp with implications. I watch a drop of condensation trace its way down a nearby leaf—slow, inexorable, like truth finding its path to light. When I finally speak, my voice emerges soft as falling petals, but with steel underneath.

“You’ve been forthcoming about everything in here.” My fingers trace the edge of the workbench, feeling every nick and scar in the wood. “Teaching me the good and the bad.”

Like which plants heal and which ones kill, which ones sleep and which ones scream.

“But what about the stuff in the back shed?” The words hang in the humid air like pollen, potentially toxic. “You keep that locked.”

Demi moves through the greenhouse, her steps precise and measured. Each movement seems choreographed, yet natural as breathing. She reaches for a bundle of drying lavender, cradling it in her palms like a talisman or a weapon. The dried flowers crackle softly as her fingers work through them, releasing their sweet, sharp scent—a reminder that even gentle things can carry power.

“Because it’s dangerous,” she says, her voice carrying the weight of old wisdom and older warnings. The lavender trembles in her hands, casting lace-like shadows on the wooden surface. “And not everyone knows how to handle danger gently.” The words settle, beautiful and deadly.

Time stretches between us like pulled taffy, sweet and strained. Outside, a cloud passes over the sun, and the greenhouse dims momentarily—all our shadows growing longer, darker, more honest.

“I’m not a child,” I say, and my voice carries echoes of every hard lesson that brought me here, every scar earned, every truth learned the hard way.

“I know.” Demi’s fingers release the lavender, letting it fall to the table with a whisper of dried stems. She settles against the edge of the table across from me, hands folded like she’s praying or making promises. The afternoon light catches in her eyes, turning them to amber, like the specimen jars in the shed. “And you’re not wrong to be curious. Or cautious.” A smile ghosts across her lips. “That’s what got you this far, right?” The question carries layers of meaning, like sediment in still water.

I study her like I’d study a new plant—noting every detail, every subtle shift. The lines etched around her mouth speak of laughter and grief in equal measure. Her eyes meet mine steadily, unflinching as a cat’s, holding secrets like water holds reflections.

“So what is all of it, then?” My voice barely disturbs the humid air. “Just in case?”

The sound that escapes her isn’t quite a laugh—more like breath escaping a wound. It carries none of the warmth from our morning in the garden. “It’s not about malice, Ari.” She speaks my name like she’s tasting it, testing its properties. “It’s about control.” Her fingers trace patterns on the table’s scarred surface, drawing invisible sigils. “The world took away our systems, our safety nets, our illusions. I’m just building new ones. Small ones. Ones I can carry in a bottle.” The last words hang in the air like smoke signals: a warning, a confession, an invitation.

Her hand moves with the fluid grace of a conjurer, selecting a single vial from the rack. Afternoon light catches in the amber glass, making the liquid inside dance like trapped fire. She holds it between us like an offering or a test. “You know what this is?”

I shake my head, watching the liquid swirl against glass, hypnotic as a snake’s dance.

“Foxglove tincture.” Her voice drops to a whisper, reverent as prayer. The vial catches another shaft of light, and for a moment, the liquid inside looks like liquid gold, like bottled sunlight. “Too much, and your heart stops.” She rotates the vial, letting the light play through it. “Just enough... and it keeps beating steadier.” The glass catches her reflection, multiplying her smile. “Same plant. Same roots.” Her words carry the weight of darker knowledge, of midnight gardens and moonlit harvests.

She returns the vial to its place with the delicate precision of someone handling nitroglycerin or prayers. The glass makes a soft, musical sound as it settles back into the rack—a single, pure note that seems to vibrate through the greenhouse’s heated air.

“I’m not hoarding poisons to hurt people.” Her words float on the steam rising from the herbs drying overhead. “I’m cataloguing what’s still powerful.” Her fingers trail along the row of bottles, each one humming under her touch like living things.

“I’m questioning what I can give to others that’s no longer available. What still has rules, when everything else doesn’t.” The afternoon light catches in her hair, creating a halo effect that makes her look both sacred and dangerous.

I look down at my soil-stained hands, feeling the weight of every loss press against my chest—the library’s collapse echoing in my bones, Finn’s voice whispering in the spaces between heartbeats, that desperate scream from the city still ringing in my ears.

“There are no rules now,” I say, though my voice wavers.

“I disagree.” Demi’s voice carries the inexorable force of roots cracking concrete, of vines pulling down walls. “Nature always wins, Ari.” She gestures to the greenhouse around us, where even now plants reach and twist toward light, following ancient imperatives.

“We play by its rules or not at all.” The air seems to thicken with the truth of it, heavy as storm clouds ready to break.

“Then what’s the point?” The question scrapes my throat raw. “Why bother at all?” I’m not just asking about her garden of poisons and possibilities—I’m asking about everything: survival, resistance, hope itself.

“Because when you know the rules,” she says, each word dropping like stones into still water, “you also know how to break them.”

Her eyes gleam with something that might be madness or might be truth—in this new world, sometimes they’re the same thing.

Day 71 – Evening

After dinner, Demi took my hand and led me to the rosemary and blackberry brambles.

The padlock on the shed looked different in twilight—more honest somehow, its dark metal reflecting the last rays of sun like a warning or a beacon. Demi produced a key from somewhere within her clothes, the metal catching light like a fallen star. Not a twisted piece of wire picked from a greenhouse wall, but a proper key that spoke of proper permission. The lock yielded to her touch with a click that seemed to echo through my bones.

“C’mon then,” she said, her grin like the edge of a blade. The invitation hung in the air between us, heavy with the weight of choices and consequences.

The shed’s interior had transformed in the honest light of evening. What had seemed sinister during my midnight trespass now felt sacred—each jar and bundle part of a carefully curated arsenal of survival. The box with my name still commanded the center of the table, but it no longer felt like an accusation. Now it looked more like a gift. Or perhaps a test. Maybe they were the same thing.

The scrape of wood on wood shattered the silence as Demi pulled out two chairs—sturdy, practical things I’d somehow overlooked during my midnight exploration. The sound echoed in the close air like bones shifting underground.

“Let me ask you a question,” she said, settling into one chair with the fluid grace of a cat claiming territory. Dried herbs crushed beneath her feet released their scent—rosemary, thyme, something sharper that made my nose itch. “In the pharmacy... what drugs did you see left?”

I sank into the other chair, the wood still warm from the day’s heat. Memory flickered like a damaged film reel: empty shelves stretching into shadow, broken glass crunching underfoot, that pervasive scent of decay and lost hope. But pharmaceuticals? The shelves had been picked clean, like vultures stripping a carcass.

“There was pretty much nothing,” she says, her voice taking on the rhythm of someone sharing ancient wisdom. “Everything had been raided, hoarded, taken, right?” Her fingers drum a soft pattern on the table’s scarred surface. “It’s obvious that painkillers are valuable to everyone, but especially to junkies.” The word ‘junkies’ falls from her lips without judgment, just fact, like identifying a plant species. “But what about the quiet medications? The ones that kept people’s hearts beating steady, their blood from clotting, their minds from spiraling?”

The questions are ripples of understanding spreading outward. My throat tightens as the implications sink in—how many people had died not from violence or hunger, but from the simple absence of daily medicine?

My mind drifts to the empty orange bottle buried at the bottom of my pack, label worn illegible from worried fingers. I think about my anti-depressants, about brain chemistry and survival instincts, about whether the constant thrumming anxiety is better than the medicated fog I used to live in. Did I even need them anymore, in a world where every shadow might hide death? Maybe running out was the universe’s way of forcing adaptation, like plants growing thorns under stress.

“I had a neighbor,” Demi continues, opening a notebook filled with careful drawings of plants, chemical compounds I don’t understand. “Sweet old woman. Made the best damn peach cobbler you’ve ever tasted. She had a heart condition. When her medication ran out...” She trails off, jaw tight.

She pulls out several small vials, arranging them like chess pieces. “Did you know that French lilac—we call it goat’s rue now—was what they originally used to develop metformin? For diabetes?”

She holds up another. “St. John’s Wort. Not as effective as SSRIs, but it’s something. And this—” she taps a dark bottle “—that’s from mushrooms I’m still learning to work with. For pain management.”

She reaches for a jar filled with dried purple flowers. “And did you know that willow bark contains the same compound as aspirin?”

She releases a breath that seems to carry the weight of years, of choices made and paths abandoned. The air in the shed thickens with unspoken stories. “I didn’t tell you everything about me pre-collapse.” Her voice drops lower, intimate as a confession. “I was in pharmacy school before I moved back home.” Her fingers trace invisible formulas on the table’s surface. “I was almost finished and then Ma got sick so I never finished, but I learned enough.” The last word hangs in the air like smoke, heavy with implications.

The pieces slot together in my mind like tumblers in a lock. The careful labels, the precise measurements, the books with their cryptic notations—suddenly it all makes a terrible kind of sense. “You’re rebuilding a pharmacy,” I say, understanding blooming like one of her careful herbs.

“More or less,” she says, but her eyes say something else entirely. They speak of power and possibility, of knowledge transformed into survival. The shed’s shadows seem to lean closer, listening.

“But it’s not just about making medicine. It’s about...” She searches for the words. “It’s about having something to offer besides violence. When people come here—and they will come here—I want to be able to help them. But I also want to be able to protect us. Every culture had medicine before pharmacies. Before pills. I’m just... reaching backwards to move forward.”

“But why lock it all up?” The question emerges soft as a night breeze, carrying the scent of doubt. My eyes drift to the walls lined with their mysterious bottles and bundles. “You have plants that can cure and kill in the greenhouse, already.” The words ‘cure’ and ‘kill’ taste the same in my mouth—bitter, potent, true.

“This stuff is...” Her pause fills the air with possibility, with danger. “Experimental.” The word settles like frost on glass. Her eyes meet mine, steady as a surgeon’s hand. “Dangerous. Not exactly what I want to advertise if certain people were to come here.” The memory of those men in the city flashes through my mind—their hungry eyes, their sharp grins. I understand suddenly why she keeps these secrets buried behind thorns and locks. “It makes us more vulnerable.” The ‘us’ catches in my chest like a barb.

Then, she finally opens the box with my name. Inside, there are more notebooks, dried specimens, careful measurements. “I’m building this for you because I saw how you handle the garden. How you catalog everything. How you understand that knowledge is both power and responsibility.”

I remember my own locked drawer back home. My own careful records. “Is that why you didn’t confront me? About breaking in?”

A small smile plays at her lips. “Would you have, in my place?”

I wouldn’t have. And maybe that’s the point.

“Will you teach me?” I ask, the question surprising us both.

Demi’s smile is both relief and warning. “Yes. But Ari? This isn’t like learning which herbs make a nice tea. One wrong calculation...” She doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t need to.

I nod, thinking of all the ways survival has taught us to be dangerous. “Sometimes healing and hurting use the same tools. It’s about intention.”

“Exactly.” She starts laying out her journals, her measurements, her careful maps of what plants can do. “Now, let’s start with the basics. First rule: respect the dosage. Always.”

Updated Ration Log:

• 1 pocket vibrator (saving for… I don’t even know)

• 1 water bottle (have never been so hydrated)

• 1 granola bar (still here)

• 1 plastic baggy with seeds and seeds and more seeds (the future)

• 1 box of super secrets (a Hail Mary)

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