The Pruning of Clara Vance

Fiction

The shop smelled of wet peat, sulfur, and the sharp, chemical tang of liquid seaweed. It was a small room with peeling linoleum and a single, heavy leather chair that had seen better decades. Milo didn't look up when Clara walked in; he was too busy scrubbing a clump of dried sphagnum moss off the footrest with a stiff brush. "Sit," he said, gesturing with a chin toward the chair. Clara sat. She felt the familiar, irritating itch at the base of her skull, the kind of heat that suggested the growth was accelerating. She wore a high collar to hide it, but the fabric was already fraying where the nettles had punched through. When she leaned back, the collar shifted, revealing a dense, tangled mass of dark purple berries and jagged, serrated leaves. Milo leaned in, his breath smelling of peppermint and tobacco. He poked at a cluster of nightshade with a calloused finger. "You've let this go too long. The berries are already ripening. If one of these pops against your skin, you'll be numb from the jaw down for a week." "I've been busy," Clara replied. Her voice was tight. "Busy is for people who don't have poisonous nightshade growing out of their cervical vertebrae," Milo muttered. He reached for a spray bottle filled with a cloudy, grey solution and misted her neck. The liquid was cold and smelled like old dishwater. It dampened the foliage, making the leaves limp and easier to grip. He didn't use a mirror. He didn't need one. He worked by feel, his fingers digging into the grit of potting soil that had accumulated in the creases of her skin. Clara winced as he found a particularly stubborn root of stinging nettle. It wasn't a clean process. There was no ethereal glow or humming energy; there was only the metallic click of heavy-duty pruning shears and the wet snap of stems being severed. Every clip sent a jolt of sharp, localized pain through her neck. It wasn't a deep ache, but a precise pinch, like a needle hitting a nerve. With every severed stem, Clara felt a strange, hollow relief, as if a secret she had been forced to keep for ten years was finally being leaked out of her. "Who is it this time?" Milo asked, his voice muffled as he leaned closer to excise a stubborn shoot of nightshade. "The cousins in the valley? Or is it still the argument over the estate?" "It doesn't matter," Clara said. "It matters for the treatment," Milo countered. "If it's family spite, I have to use the copper sulfate. Otherwise, the roots just coil back around the bone and come back twice as thick by Tuesday." He spent the next twenty minutes hacking away the overgrowth. The floor around the chair became a graveyard of purple berries and stinging green shards. Clara stared at the ceiling, counting the water stains on the plaster, while Milo worked with the clinical efficiency of a man who viewed human biology as just another garden to be weeded. When he finished, he wiped her neck with a coarse rag soaked in rubbing alcohol. It stung, but the heat was gone. He stepped back, surveying the jagged, uneven stubble of green that remained. "That'll hold for a month," Milo said, tossing the shears onto a metal tray. "Keep it hydrated, but for god's sake, stop talking to your uncle. You're practically growing a forest of toxins." Clara stood up, felt the lightness in her neck, and paid him in cash. She walked out into the sunlight, the smell of fertilizer still clinging to her skin.