The Perpetual Garden of Raymond James III - WWE, 9/19/12, Cucumbers

"The townspeople say I'm mad, but I'm not really crazy.  Just scared.  That day haunts my dreams, leaving me housebound; afraid to go outside.  When I look out the window, my day mares begin.

It all started when I invited the towns folks to see my lovely garden.  One of them screamed, saying, "It's got his leg."  Then they all screamed and ran away, leaving me wondering why my ankle was aching.  I looked down and a vine had wrapped around my foot and began constricting my ankle.  Quickly I pulled my machete from my jeans pocket and hacked it away, but there was still vine on my leg.  I ran inside and started pulling it off my leg and at the same time it, and I, grew cucumbers.  Finally, I got it off and slung the vine out the back door.

Winter's on now.  Snow covers the ground, yet they grow... on me."

As the snow fell and winds howled, the warmth and gentle glow from the hearth seemed to ease the torment. But, it was almost as if the cukes thought they were being nursed, cared for like an infant at its mother's bosom. The feeling was intensely disturbing while at the same time, offering a strange sense of contentment.

'Enough of this', he thought, as he reached down to begin harvesting the crop that now extended from his ankles to his nether regions. But with the first cucumber yanked free, there was a roaring pain and a momentary synapse when it seemed the pain had just been inflicted upon himself!

Then, it dawned, "It's not the plant... it's me!"

And with that realization, he suddenly found himself able to hear the onions in the kitchen bin griping about their loose skins, the potatoes arguing about the best way to extend their tubes outside the basket and the hothouse tomatoes praying for a fate better than a plain tossed salad. He placed his hands over his ears but the noise was coming from within his head. There was no escape...

(Scene: Calendar pages ripping away in the wind)

"Dear Diary,

It's springtime now and the cucumbers are slowly falling off on their own. I really don't have the heart to eat them myself so I had them taken to the market where I am sure they will all find good homes."

By the following winter, he had finally made up his mind that, as much as he had come to feel a symbiotic affection to the vine, it simply had to go. And it was with that last decision that his passing was noted in the local paper:

"Raymond Edward James III, age 43, passed away Sunday evening last. Cause of death was extended exposure to subfreezing temperatures. His last will requested that flowers be deferred for a cucumber garden on and around his final resting place; their perpetual care to be funded by his estate."