The Tomato Plant

The tomato plant is there when you open the store. Sitting there, as if it belongs, in the middle of the mannequins that Stacey dressed up yesterday with the new Autumn display. A pumpkin, you could maybe understand. But it’s egregious, its plum red off-season fruit and healthy green leaves standing out against all that brown and beige and terracotta. You put the keys in your back pocket and cross to the storeroom. You lift the phone off the receiver, to give Stacey a piece of your mind. You think better of it: who wants a call at stupid o’clock in the morning about a fucking tomato plant? Like those people who send an email that takes longer than just doing the task themselves. You move the plant to the storeroom.

 The morning is quiet. It always is, in the mornings, you don’t know why we’re open. One man comes in, buys a beige jumper for his wife. You make him take the receipt; she’ll be in next week to change it for something that fits, no doubt. Honestly, you forget all about the tomato plant. Instead, you think about your real work, your PhD project. The quantum entanglement machine nearly works. You’ve had some success transporting small things from one reciever to another: a pin, a hair, that sort of thing. The trouble is Schrodinger’s Uncertainty Principle. Because the location of the molecules can never truly be predicted, sometimes strange things happen: a blueberry exploding across the lab, a sock disappearing, a battery turning into two. These sorts of things.

 Yesterday, you brought the beta version of the quantum entanglement machine into work, and it’s running equations in the storeroom. You know you’re not supposed to bring personal things into work, but if you could just solve Schrodinger’s Equation…

 At eleven, Stacey shows up for shift. You have words with her about the tomato plant, but she doesn’t understand: what tomato plant? Annoyed, the joke no longer funny, you march her to the back and yank open the door. Vines spill out, adorned with perfect red fruit. You gasp. Stacey steps back; what the…? Inside is a curled mass of greenery. It swallows the tiny kitchenette, the table with the coffee stains, that chair Stacey broke last year and you repaired with duct tape. You can’t see the spare mannequins set up in lewd positions, the quantum entanglement machine, the three preorders packaged up for customers. A vine hangs through the open door, taunting you with a curled green finger. Stacey forces the door closed.

 There’s a small rush of customers before lunch, a distraction for which you’re grateful. At twelve, Stacey goes out to get gardening supplies. You eat half a packet of hobnobs from under the counter and stare at the door to the storeroom. When she returns, you count to three slowly, your heart pounding in your chest, and open the door. Out it comes, pouring into the small corridor and up into the store. Bravely, Stacey hacks at it with the secetares, the inside of the storeroom now so thick with greenery it’s black. You can’t even tell if the light’s on. It takes half an hour, but she manages to cut enough of it that the door will close. She looks at you wordlessly with alarm in her eyes. She’s right, there’s nothing to say.

 You think about the tomato plant all afternoon. Your stomach growls - you’ve only had biscuits since breakfast - and you wonder if the tomatoes are edible. A grotesque image from Hannibal flashs into your mind: a plant growing through your mouth, your ears, your nostrils. You decide you can afford to skip a meal. Stacey is nervous, so she chatters. She wants to know who put the tomato there, primarily. She has several theories; someone with the key, like the manager, Greg (who you doubt even knows what a tomato is); some highly trained lock-picking thieves (who did not steal any of the contents of the safe); aliens. She also wants to know how it is growing so fast, although this is considerably secondary in her discussions. She is mid explaining how it seemed like the sort of prank a group of rogue teenaged gardeners would pull when the storeroom door explodes.

 You know that ‘explodes’ is not an exaggeration for a door that’s been smashed off its hinges. It is not a euphemism. The door literally shatters into thousands of tiny splinters. Stacey shrieks. You fling yourself under the counter. The plant is quick to fill the space, unfurling into the small corridor, treading down into the single toilet and racing through into the storefront. You grab Stacey’s arm and together you run away from the counter into the centre of the room. The vines climb the walls and swallow the cash register. They eat racks and clothes and displays. Dumstruck. Awed. Watching grass grow is meant to be an analogy for wasting time but the tomato plant takes over the store faster than any human can. It is like watching time in fast forward.

 Underneath it all, your quantum entanglement machine must still have been working, thinking, calculating, unharmed by the weight of the vines. That’s the only explanation you have for what happens next. Two things, simultaneously. Firstly, all of the ripe, red fruit explodes. Juice spatters the whole space, covering everything with crimson. Neither Stacey nor you scream, you just stand there, sodden. Secondly, the remaining tangle of vines just… disappears. A faint pop. Gone. Pot included. You manage to pocket the machine before Stacey notices it.

You recant this story to Greg at the end of shift. You and Stacey have done the best you can to clean things up, but the store looks like a bomb has exploded. A tomato bomb. He doesn’t believe you, you can tell, but you can’t think of a lie that would be any more believable than the truth. And you’re not supposed to bring personal things into work.