Sleep didn't just fail to come easy that night; it actively mocked you. Every creak of your apartment building, every distant siren, every hum from the refrigerator seemed amplified, distorted, whispering fragments of Arthur’s frantic cursive:

  

  It’s listening. The roots are in the language.

  You kept seeing those spidery red lines on the map, superimposed over the mundane reality outside your window, pulsing faintly in the dark. You saw the old man’s drawing of your face, the vacant eyes, the grotesque white bloom sprouting from your lips. You tossed and turned, the sheets twisting around you like shroud bindings. When dawn finally broke, painting the perpetually grey Stillwater sky with shades of bruised purple and dirty orange, you felt like you’d gone ten rounds with your own sanity and lost decisively on points.

  Showering felt… different. The water pressure seemed inconsistent, pulsing slightly. Was that a faint, crystalline pattern forming in the condensation on the mirror, or just soap scum and sleep deprivation? You scrubbed your face raw, trying to erase the memory of the charcoal portrait. The scar on your knuckle pulsed, a dull counterpoint to the frantic rhythm in your chest.

  Planting season my ass. Fuck that old creep.

  The commute was worse. You usually zoned out, listening to podcasts or the same bland morning radio show. Today, every snippet of overheard conversation, every talk radio caller, every billboard slogan seemed laced with potential menace. Did that DJ just say ‘cognitive traffic jam’? Did that ad really promise to ‘re-root your financial anxieties’? You gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white (paler than usual?), convinced you were hearing things, seeing connections that weren’t there.

  Paranoia, you told yourself. Stress. But the feeling persisted, a low-frequency hum beneath the surface of the ordinary.

  The Municipal Annex felt different, too. Or maybe you were different. The usual drone of office life–keyboards clacking, phones ringing, the wheeze of the ancient HVAC system–sounded subtly off-key. People’s voices seemed flatter, their expressions harder to read. Was Brenda from Parks & Rec always that pale? Did Gary from Zoning always have that slight tremor in his hand as he reached for his coffee?

  You forced yourself towards your desk, trying to project an aura of normalcy you absolutely did not feel. Your own ergonomic chair seemed vaguely hostile today. You booted up your computer, the familiar city logo flickering onto the screen. You needed to check on Arthur. His last email… that wasn't just Arthur being Arthur. That was more likely a distress signal wrapped in obsessive historical research.

  You sent him a message through the internal system:

  Minutes ticked by. No reply. Usually, Arthur responded almost instantly, his replies precise, punctual, almost robotic. You checked his status. ‘Away.’ That was unusual for 9:15 AM on a Thursday. Arthur was pathologically punctual.

  You tried calling his extension. It rang. And rang. And rang. Finally, it clicked over to his voicemail, his recorded voice sounding unnervingly calm, clipped, normal.

  

  You have reached the office of Arthur Penvarnon, Senior Planner. I am currently unavailable. Please leave a detailed message, ensuring all relevant project codes and temporal parameters are clearly stated. I will respond at my earliest convenience.

  Temporal parameters? Who the fuck says that on their voicemail?

  A knot of genuine worry tightened in your gut. This wasn't right. You got up, ignoring the pile of unread emails demanding your attention. Screw the traffic calming scheme on Maple Avenue. Screw the Elm Street garden relocation. Something was wrong with Arthur.

  His office was on the fourth floor, tucked away in a corner usually reserved for dusty archives and forgotten filing cabinets. Arthur preferred the isolation. As you approached, the usual meticulous order seemed… disturbed. Papers weren’t just stacked; they were piled, threatening to spill onto the floor. Books lay open, spines cracked. And taped haphazardly to his door, covering the official nameplate, was a hand-drawn map–a crude, almost childlike rendition of Stillwater Creek, marked with thick, frantic black lines that seemed to converge on the Annex itself. In the centre, where your building should be, someone had drawn a jagged, crystalline shape, vaguely resembling the Still-Blooms. Below it, scrawled in the same shaky hand as the email margin note, were two words.

  IT HEARS.

  Your blood turned to ice water. You pushed the door open. It was unlocked.

  Arthur’s office was in complete chaos. Maps–historical surveys, modern zoning charts, hand-drawn monstrosities like the one on the door–were plastered over every available surface, held up with excessive amounts of tape. Red string connected points on different maps, forming a tangled, three-dimensional web that crisscrossed the small space. Books on linguistics, urban planning, local history, mycology, geometry, and even obscure philosophy were piled precariously on his desk, his chairs, the floor. Sticky notes covered everything, bearing single words or cryptic phrases: ‘Linguistic Vector,’ ‘Semantic Rooting,’ ‘Cognitive Resonance,’ ‘WEFT UNRAVELLING,’ and, repeated dozens of times, ‘Still-Bloom.’

  The air was thick with the smell of stale coffee, dust, and something else… something faintly metallic and cold, like the smell of ozone before a lightning strike, or the scent clinging to the white growths.

  And sitting on his desk, nestled amongst the papers like a malignant paperweight, was a small, undeniably real, Still-Bloom. Smaller than the ones you’d seen outside, maybe the size of a golf ball, but unmistakably the same bone-white, faceted structure. It seemed to pulse faintly in the dim office light.

  Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. He’d brought one inside? Or had it also… grown here?

  There was no sign of Arthur himself. His computer monitor displayed a corrupted screen saver–not the usual city logo, but a shifting, fractal pattern that seemed to writhe and rearrange itself, echoing the patterns you’d seen on the growths. Lines of nonsensical code occasionally flickered across the bottom.

  You backed out slowly, pulling the door shut, your heart hammering against your ribs. The chaos in there... the maps, the strings, the frantic notes... and that thing on his desk.

  Arthur wasn't just stressed. He wasn't just obsessed. Something was terribly wrong. The evidence screamed that he'd fallen deep down the same rabbit hole you felt yourself circling. Had he gone looking for answers about the Still-Bloom, that Veridian Weft, and gotten... lost? Overwhelmed? The state of the office felt less like research and more like a mind unraveling, tangled in the very patterns he was trying to decipher.

  Fuck, Arthur, where are you? What happened in here?

  You leaned against the corridor wall, trying to breathe. What do you do? Call security? Call Dave? What would you even say? ‘Yeah, Arthur’s office looks like a conspiracy theorist exploded, there’s a weird rock on his desk, and he’s missing? Oh, and I think it’s connected to weird words people are using and growths I found in derelict lots?’ They’d think you were the one who’d snapped.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  No. You needed proof. Something concrete. Something that couldn’t be dismissed as stress or eccentricity before you dragged anyone else into this potential whirlpool of insanity. You needed to understand what Arthur had found, what he was afraid of.

  You went back to your desk, mind racing. Arthur’s research… the historical incidents… the Silent Winter of 1907, the Ash Meadow Riot… he mentioned civic disturbance archives. Maybe there was something there, something documented, something official that hinted at this madness before.

  The city’s digital archives were notoriously clunky, a patchwork of outdated systems barely held together with digital duct tape. But it was a place to start. You logged in, navigating through layers of poorly designed interfaces until you reached the historical records section. You searched for ‘Ash Meadow Riot 1892.’

  The results were sparse. A few digitized newspaper clippings mentioning ‘labour unrest’ at the old textile mill near Ash Meadow, ‘public intoxication,’ and ‘minor property damage.’ Official reports were heavily redacted or listed as ‘missing.’ Nothing about linguistic confusion or unfounded beliefs. Typical bureaucratic whitewashing.

  Then you tried ‘Silent Winter 1907.’ Even less. A single entry from a municipal health report noting an unusual spike in ‘melancholia’ and ‘unspecified seasonal affective disorders’ during the winter months. No mention of people forgetting their way home. No mention of anything… weird.

  Frustrated, you leaned back. Was Arthur just connecting dots that weren’t there, driven mad by overwork and arcane research? Was the Still-Bloom in his office just some bizarre mineral formation he’d found and fixated on? Were the strange words just… coincidences?

  No. And somehow, you believe your gut.

  You’d seen the growths. You’d heard the words. You’d seen that drawing the old man made. This wasn’t just in Arthur’s head. Or if it was, it was leaking out.

  You decided to broaden your search. Forget the official terms. What about the words Arthur and the old man used? You typed ‘Veridian Weft’ into the archive search bar.

  

  No results found.

  You tried ‘Still-Bloom.’

  

  No results found.

  You tried ‘cognito-shift.’

  

  No results found.

  You tried ‘thought-murk.’

  

  No results found.

  Of course. Why would these terms be in the official record? They were part of the… the infection itself. The language of the madness.

  Then, on a hunch, you typed in ‘Thoughtless Garden.’

  The system whirred. For a second, you thought it would return nothing again. But then, a single result popped up. Not from the official archives, but flagged as originating from a ‘Decommissioned Psychiatric Ward Records Sub-Archive (Restricted Access - Level 4 Clearance Required).’ The file name was simply: ‘Case_Study_7B_Patient_Redacted_1908.’

  Level 4 Clearance? You didn’t have anything near that. You clicked on it anyway, expecting an ‘Access Denied’ message.

  Instead, the screen flickered. Lines of garbled code, similar to the ones on Arthur’s corrupted screensaver, scrolled rapidly. The speakers emitted a burst of harsh static, making you jump. Then, the file opened.

  It wasn’t a text document. It was a scanned photograph. Black and white, grainy, poorly lit. It showed a figure sitting rigidly upright on a simple metal-framed bed in what looked like a bare, padded room. The figure was humanoid, but… strange. Its skin was pale, almost translucent, and seemed stretched taut over an unnaturally thin frame. Its face was indistinct, blurred, but the eyes were wide, staring, utterly vacant. And covering its hands, its forearms, parts of its neck and scalp, were pale, intricate, fractal-like growths. Like fungus. Like porcelain. Like the goddamn Still-Blooms.

  Below the photograph, a single line of typed text, barely legible: ‘Patient exhibits terminal stage ‘Conceptual Integration.’ No longer responsive to verbal stimuli. Physical structure undergoing rapid… biological reassignment. Recommend compassionate termination / further study under Bio-Containment Protocol Gamma.’

  Conceptual Integration. Biological Reassignment.

  Thoughtless Garden.

  You slammed the laptop shut again, harder this time, the plastic creaking in protest. Bile rose in your throat. That… that thing in the photo… the vacant eyes, the pale skin… and those growths. Fractal-like, pale, covering its hands, its neck… just like the Still-Blooms. Is that what the old man meant? The terminal stage? The ‘Thoughtless Garden’ his grandfather talked about? People turning into… that? Growing fungus? Being ‘reassigned’? The clinical horror of the text below the image–‘Conceptual Integration,’ ‘Biological Reassignment,’ ‘Bio-Containment Protocol Gamma’–painted a picture far worse than mere madness.

  It was a transformation.

  The static hissed from your speakers again, louder this time, even with the laptop closed. It sounded like voices, thousands of them, whispering just below the threshold of understanding. Whispering words that felt sharp, cold, and utterly alien.

  You stood up abruptly, knocking your chair over. You had to get out. Out of the Annex, out of the office, away from the humming electronics and the whispering static.

  You practically ran out of the building, ignoring the questioning looks from colleagues, bursting out into the damp, grey afternoon. You needed to think. You needed to find Arthur. You needed to understand what the fuck was happening to Stillwater Creek.

  As you stood on the pavement, gasping for air, trying to push the image of the ‘Thoughtless Garden’ patient out of your mind, your phone buzzed in your pocket. You pulled it out, expecting maybe Dave demanding to know where you’d stormed off to.

  It was an unknown number. A text message.

  You opened it, heart pounding.

  The message contained only three words, stark white against the black screen:

  Followed by a single, attached image.

  It was a photograph. Taken from a high angle, looking down. It showed you, standing right there on the pavement outside the Municipal Annex, looking small and lost against the sprawling concrete. The photo was timestamped just seconds ago.

  And hovering in the upper corner of the frame, partially obscured by the grey clouds, was something impossible. A shape that shouldn’t be there. Faceted, bone-white, immense. Like a shard of impossible geometry piercing the sky, visible only to the lens, or maybe only to whoever–whatever–sent the message.

  You looked up, frantically scanning the rooftops, the clouds, the empty grey expanse. Nothing. Just the oppressive Stillwater sky.

  But you knew. You knew it was there. Somewhere. Watching. Listening.

  Planting season.

  The roots were deep. And the Bloom was reaching for the sun. Your sanity felt like cheap concrete, cracking under the pressure. You weren’t just surveying the problem anymore. You were part of it. And whoever sent that message knew it too.