This year I’ve decided to try something different and picked up a new hobby - home gardening. If you don’t know what that is - it’s, basically, trying to grow some veggies or herbs for consumption within the space of your apartment. After reading tons of articles, reddit posts and watching a countless number of videos on YouTube - I was prepared.

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Ordered some pots and trays, soil and seeds, watering systems and lights - a pretty expensive thing to try out, if you ask me. My girlfriend didn’t share my excitement at first, stating that I have troubles with taking care of myself already, and that those poor plants are doomed since day one. But after I’ve arranged everything around nicely and began taking care of my new neighbors - she finally recognized that spark of interest in my eyes and started to support it, checking on progress with me, sprinkling and all that stuff.

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I’ve picked up cherry tomatoes, some dill and parsley for my first attempt at growing something, as guides promised those were extremely easy to take care of. I was worried through first two weeks, as nothing showed up from the soil and at some point I started questioning my actions: what if I picked the wrong brand or used too much water? What if the nutrients were too active and sorta killed the seeds?

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Nevertheless, after two and a half weeks - the sprouts showed up. It was quite an excitement, for me, the guy who never done this before. Jane was impressed too and shared the mood.

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I’ll cut to the point though, as I believe, not everyone finds description of slowly growing plants amusing.

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Couple of months later we had several grown up tomato plants, some dill and, unfortunately, not a single parsley bush. Something went wrong there. But, anyways, things turned out nicely.

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Tomatoes bloomed already and tiny green spheres of future fruits emerged here and there on the branches. The dill got really big at some point, so I had to cut it here and there, as I’ve read, that when it gets thick - it becomes somewhat bitter and hardly used as intended.

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Surprise came unexpectedly. One morning, as I was making coffee in the kitchen as Jane called from the room:

“Hey, Jake, check this out. This one looks like a face!”.

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I went to see what she was all about and indeed, one of the tomato fruits resembled a human head - you could clearly see brow ridges, a fold in shape of open jaws and some bump that looked like a nose.

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Have you heard of all those cases of “divine presence”, when people saw Jesus or Holy Mary on piece of a toast or in a cloud shaped weirdly? Well, I was not that type of guy, so I just expressed my surprise and said something like: “Well, the pets always resemble of their masters, right?”. We had a laugh and that was it.

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Couple of days later we made another discovery, not just that single tomato looked like a human face - each one of them did. Tiny vegetable screaming faces.

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“Well, that must be one of those decorative species, if you ask me” - Jane said - “You know, like butterfly orchids, or those heart shaped strawberries.”

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“Yeah, that must be it.” - I’ve replied - “Though I’m pretty sure I’ve ordered basic cherry tomato seeds. They must have messed up something when packing”.

By the end of the month we got the first harvest - a bowl of tiny face-resembling red tomatoes, not bigger than a thumb nail.

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I couldn’t think how to use them better than in a salad, so I’ve cut and mixed them with some lettuce, olive oil and sesame seeds. It was fantastic. Tomatoes were so rich in taste and aroma. All the greenhouse ones they grow for sale are absolutely no match.

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I was excited, proud and making plans for my future batches.

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Strange things started to happen next, as we went to bed.

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No, no. We didn’t get any food poisoning or anything like that. Vice versa - I slept as if I was hit with a log. Though Jane gave me creeps. I woke up suddenly around 5:00 in the morning due to her shivering and moaning in her sleep. So I’ve gently shook her shoulder: “Hey, are you ok?”.

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She opened her eyes, returning back to reality, took a moment to gather her thoughts and said: “I just had the weirdest dream ever. It was as if I was buried alive and somebody kept throwing shovel after shovel of earth above the pile I was under. So frigging scary…”

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I comforted her and soon we went back to sleep again. No more incidents that night.

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Though the next night it happened again. To both of us this time.

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I saw a dream, where I was lying in the dirt, being able to see just my torso and feet sticking up. It seemed I was a little boy. It was hard to breath and something bubbled in my lungs each time I’ve tried to inhale. To make it worse - somebody behind my field of view dropped earth on top of me. I've been buried alive. That moment I felt really vulnerable and unable to do a single thing. Even raising a finger was an impossible task.

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I woke up in cold sweat. So did Jane. We looked each other in the eye for a moment, and started to share the horror interrupting each other.

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What could possibly cause this? Were we experiencing too much stress lately? Maybe some horror movie we saw earlier decided to hit back hard?

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This continued for couple of nights straight. Sleeping pills and chamomile tea did no difference. We had our torture returning to us every night.

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So one day we just sat down and discussed the potential cause of this. (You’d rather ask - why not go to the therapy or sleep disorder specialist, in the first place? Well, none of us had medical insurance, and before throwing away money for this purpose - we decided to try figuring it out on our own).

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We never thought about this before, but the thing started right after we had those tomatoes in the salad.

“Think for yourself, those look like screaming heads - and what do you do in your dreams? You want to scream. You want somebody to save you, right? Look, Jake, I don’t believe in all that ghost monster spooky shit, you know me. But here, my intuition just going boinks.”.

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“Yeah, but… So we have a handful of cherries and now they pollute our sleep? That just sounds ridiculous.” - I’ve replied.

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“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fertilizer you’ve used. Is it toxic? Maybe you washed them not properly? I don’t know what to think” - she continued.

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“Fine, fine. I’ll check everything. And if nothing would be off - we’re going to hospital” - I’ve replied.

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So then I went through my order and checked every single piece of equipment and each expendable material I had in it.

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I’ve even checked if the pots were made of proper plastic and that it couldn’t spread any chemicals ending up in plants.

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The fertilizers were certified and guaranteed not to contain anything that could harm humans, animals or other plants.

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There was definitely nothing wrong with my tap water, or we would feel the symptoms much earlier.

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So by the end of the day I sent two emails: one with questions to the company that provided seeds and the other - to the provider of the plant soil.

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Surprisingly, after another cycle of nightmares - I had two responses in the inbox.

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First one read:

“Dear Jake, thank you very much for entrusting us to provide you our product.

We can ensure you, that we always deliver top quality seeds for our customers.

I’ve checked the order number you’ve sent in and can confirm that we sent you a 3-pack of cherry tomato seeds, so no mistakes were made.

Hope this answers your question. (And so on, and so on).

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The second one, though, was bit more interesting:

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“Hello Jake.

We are truly sorry to hear you are having problem with our product.

—skipping some lines on how good they actually are, and how they care about their quality—

We’ve tracked the batch of your delivered goods and will be running an inspection on the corresponding excavation site, to make sure our packed soil is of highest standard possible.

(and so on and so forth)“

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That was… interesting. Not amusing though, so I talked to Jane and we booked the doctor’s visit by the end of the week, as I had no other clues or ideas on what was possibly wrong.

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Couple of days later, we were having some dinner, watching our favorite show on TV, when suddenly the program was interrupted by breaking news.

It was a live report from what seemed like a forest area - I didn’t recognize the scenery, even though the news were local.

The reporter, who was standing in front of police barrier tape proclaimed:

“After numerous reports of faulty product distribution, Bloom Ltd. ran a sudden unscheduled inspection on one of the sites ,where they usually obtain the source for their production. Though a check up suddenly turned into the nightmare for Tim Little, the inspector. Tim?”

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The camera turned to a pale man, who was visually shaking under police blanket. He was in his thirties, starting to bald already.

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“Yes… I was taking the.. The samples for my examination, you know.. And then… Then.. Jesus Christ… I saw her… God…”.

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The guy looked really shocked, and reporter took back the initiative.

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“Multiple remains were discovered so far and the police is working on the site. If you possess any information or seen anything suspicious in the area of…”

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I was shocked. Jane looked like she was slapped in the face.

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We didn’t go to the doctor. After the news came to the public - our nightmares just vanished.

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A bit later we discovered that 17 bodies were found on the site, scattered around the forest clearing, where the company, I’ve ordered from, tended to pick source for their produce. It was a complete mess and our town exploded - men, women, even children were found in that improvised grave. The most horrible fact that went to public through a drunk talk between some police officer and a local bartender was that most of those poor people were drugged and buried alive.

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No connections between victims, no certain patterns, no clues.

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The whole town is terrified. Nobody wants to walk outside when it’s dark. Police is patrolling, but people are still scared. And I admit it - I am afraid too. I’ve already went through this in my sleep several times, I don’t want it to happen for real.

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I’ve checked on my tomatoes recently. Those are green and healthy. What bothers me though - the second batch of fruits coming up. And I’m afraid I still can see the screaming faces.