G.O.D’s Miniature Planet

By Doug Jacquier

It was not the way that Geoffrey Owen Davies had envisioned his retirement working out. He had made it to the finish line in the Department of Construction with his home paid for, a lifelong income from his superannuation, and some untraceable accounts in the Caymans. His wife had left some years ago and was now partnered up with a man who apparently offered more excitement and a sense of adventure. But that suited Geoffrey just fine.

Never a keen gardener in the past, growing had now become an obsession, albeit one with an emphasis on orderliness and strict boundaries. Over time, his wife’s penchant for eclectic planting had turned much of their modestly sized garden into a jungle—a riot of randomness that offended his eye and troubled his soul. After she left, he mercilessly uprooted it all and created useful raised beds of vegetables and fruit trees in large pots.

Of course he could not eat even a small portion of the seasonal harvests, so he gave most of it away to initially grateful—and then later inwardly groaning and discreetly binning—neighbors. Having used every square inch of arable land he owned—including what had previously been lawn—he had now taken advantage of the street gardening movement to colonize the verge in front of his home. He grew mostly herbs that he imagined passers-by would gratefully snip off to add to their evening meal. He even had a pair of scissors on a string hanging from a street tree. Geoffrey had failed to observe that most of his neighbors still worked, rarely cooked, and never walked anywhere.

When Mrs. Sidebottom at No. 23 was taken into a nursing home, her grandson, along with a few of his pals, moved into her house allegedly to maintain the property until such time as the house was sold. As anyone could have predicted, that part of the contract was never met. The parties lasted until dawn and most of Mrs. Sidebottom’s armchairs and couches ended up permanently residing on the increasingly weed-infested front and back lawns.

Geoffrey had never been comfortable with conflict, and, unlike his neighbors, he hadn’t called the police. He had also refused to sign a petition that was circulating to have the lads removed.

However, there came a fateful day when a line was crossed, and Geoffrey would never be the same again. One morning he was doing his rounds, inspecting his crops when he stopped in his tracks. He stood gazing in horror at the carnage in his herb bed on the verge, clearly created by vehicles owned by those attending the latest booze-and-drug-driven bacchanal at No. 23.

He walked briskly back inside and began to coldly map out his dish of revenge, followed by world domination—or at least that part of the world that comprised the street on which he lived.

Well aware that even the most meticulously planned strategies rarely survive the first exchange with the enemy, he allowed for some flexibility on the sequencing, but he knew that success depended on two key factors: contacts and anonymity. He congratulated himself on not having engaged in the mob rule tactics of his neighbors, including their futile attempts to seek firm police action that would potentially have left a trail to his door.

Crucial to his plan were his contacts within the building industry and local government. Mysterious deliveries of gravel and sand began appearing in the driveway of No.23, blocking their cars in, or out, as the case may be. The Council health inspector discovered an infestation of rats emanating from the premises. A “routine” visit from the building inspector discovered termites were threatening the structural integrity of the home.

When Mrs. Sidebottom’s lawyer was contacted by the representative of a buyer, protected by commercial-in-confidence, with a halfway reasonable offer, they hastened to accept while quietly wondering who this nutcase could be. The grandson and his cronies vanished from the scene.

Over the next few years, Geoffrey picked off his less desirable neighbors one by one. After the party boys came Cactus Man, with his front garden resembling the Mojave Desert and, shortly afterward the young people who believed the perfect garden involved red tanbark and gravel and a “classic car” parked on it while it awaited restoration that never seemed to commence.

With each acquisition, he transformed its garden into the orderly and productive space it should always have been. His shelf-company corporation engaged agents to rent the properties to people screened for their green fingers and their lack of desire to split asunder what God—or Geoffrey in this case—had put together. Any transgressions were met with instant eviction, encouraged along by men with many tattoos and few teeth.

A decade from the commencement of his crusade, Geoffrey felt confident in claiming victory. He had created a miniature planet which was quiet, ordered, productive, and civilized. His street verge gardens fed and flavored the surrounding streets, which had now become highly desirable moons orbiting around his world.

In the years following, more than one PhD thesis has been written about this phenomenon, and various theories have emerged as to how this had been achieved. Needless to say, none of them ventured down the path of speculating that this may have been the work of a benevolent dictator, drawing on the detritus of social democracy to create a new branch of social hygiene. Meanwhile, Geoffrey just smiled, confident that he would take his secrets to the grave and returned to his plans for the neighboring streets.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Doug Jacquier‘s writing meanders amongst the peaks and the swamps of various forms of short story, flash fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, from the lunatic to the lucid. For readers prepared to come along for the ride, he likes to make them think, laugh, cry or groan (and, sometimes, all of the above). His poems and stories have been published in Australia, the US, the UK and Canada.

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