Caravellum

He had tried to communicate with Ben a few times before, through whatever means he could. He had interfered with the Wi-Fi in morse code signals, whispered through the white noise crackle as Ben tuned his radio, and had even written symbols in the fog of the bathroom mirror. Of course, Ben had been oblivious to it all, having the approximate intelligence of a walnut. His not-quite-girlfriend-but-lets-not-label-this-right-now at the time had called a man from Gumtree claiming to be a spiritual guru/exorcist/sexual health therapist. The guru/sexual predator brought a small aspergillum made of tin, sprinkled tap water over the room for twelve and a half minutes, and then charged Ben two hundred and fifty dollars. Mr Moriaty had been furious at the water left to seep into the hardwood flooring. However, the not-quite-girlfriend left Ben a week later to travel Costa Rica with the man from Gumtree, and took her disgustingly pungent essential oils with her. So, all in all, Mr Moriaty found the exorcism to be a great success.

Ben disagreed, wallowing in self-pity over the girl. He wailed terrible love songs for Diana, which confused Mr Moriaty as the girl’s driver’s licence – which had fallen under the couch from her discarded jeans on their first night – said Joanne. On the eve of his mourning period exceeding the duration of their acquaintance – being a grand total of thirteen days – Ben’s friends had arrived with gifts to cheer him up. The first was a seance board which Mr Moriaty initially thought indelicate to remind Ben of the circumstances of Diana/Joanne’s infidelity, though he settled when he realised Ben’s vestigial brain would not connect those dots unless they were connected for him. Mr Moriaty refused to participate in the charade out of principle. They were asking highly personal questions and he was a highly private man. He instead sat on the cracked leather couch, and took solace in the sense of minor discomfort that a young man with eczema was getting from sitting inside of him. The second gift was an okra plant, which grabbed Mr Moriaty’s attention. He examined its fledgling seed pods with joy as Ben and his friends convinced each other it was a new strain of marijuana. They spent the rest of the night being placed on several federal watch lists by searching tutorials on how to grow weed, where to buy hydroponics, and how to establish a controlling stake in the drug trade of South Perth. By the end of the night, after they had searched up whether potting mix was specifically for pot, they had been removed from those lists.

Now, the potted plant sits on the kitchen table beneath an impending house-fire in the form of an exposed lamp bulb taped over with blue cellophane. Ben had shown varying levels of dedication to his new business venture, pouring a glass of water onto it each morning, but then also adding the dregs of his instant coffee and using its potted soil as an ashtray for his cigarettes. Mr Moriaty fumes as he watches the plant slowly suffer, a powdery white mildew forming over its leaves as it wilts in the sweaty room with no ventilation other than the breeze whistling through the cracked kitchen window. When Ben returns from what Mr Moriaty presumes is work – though he struggles to imagine a job that a small chimpanzee might not serve more suitably than Ben would – Mr Moriaty makes an effort to move the planchette across the seance board. It takes a long time for him to figure out the knack of physically substantiating himself to twist the small wooden piece along its castors. It takes even longer for Ben to notice the desperate scraping sounds coming from the loungeroom. Eventually, when he sits down to watch the television, and Mr Moriaty is able to bump the planchette into his foot, he notices.

“No way.” Ben mumbles. “Diana was right.”

Mr Moriaty ignores him, refusing to give up on delivering his message as the man-child reads along the marked letters with the comprehension skills of a sea cucumber.

“Let.”

“Me.”

“Reach.” Mr Moriaty scrambles the marker in frustration.

“Teach.”

“You.”

“Now.” Again.

“How.”

“To.”

“Garden.”

“Let me reach teach you now how to garden?” Ben says. Mr Moriaty launches the small wooden marker at his forehead.