Onoclea Sensibilis

I walked up the path to my apartment building, my shoulders drooped, and my muscles ache after a long day at the gym. The doors greeted me, whispering a slight “hello” as I walked past. Elissa, my roommate, always told me that didn’t happen and that I was insane for even suggesting that they spoke. I made my way into the elevator, the 5th-floor button illuminated. The elevator dinged as I arrived at my floor, the doors sliding open. Same as every day, I thought to myself. My key turned in the lock with a click.

“Hey, watch out,” the door whispered.

“You’re not real. Shut up,” I told the door. The old man walking past me looked at me, brow furrowed. I put my hand up in apology. Finally, I opened the door, and five massive ferns blocked the entrance from the inside. The pots alone rose up to my waist.

“Elissa,” I called, my head beginning to spin. “What. Is. This.”

“Well, Bob,” she said, “you, of all people, should know.”

“Well, obviously it’s Matteuccia struthiopteris,” I said. “But why’re they here?”

“Exposure therapy,” she grinned, peeking her head through the fronds. “You can get out once you move them, god forbid you touch a fern.”

"You’re my least favorite person ever.” She shrugged her shoulders from past the fern line, retreating to the couch. I surveyed my surroundings, and maybe it was the adrenaline or something, but I noticed a gap on the right side of the semicircle that entrapped me. I shuffled my way past, a fern barely grazing my nose. I let out a soft scream, my face snapping towards the door, where I saw the old man from before standing just outside my doorway. He laughed quietly to himself, his face contorted in a sort of smile. I reached to shut the door, halfway between making my escape from these ferns and into my soft, soft bed. I missed the handle, but the door still shut. Maybe it was a draft, or maybe that old man. Whatever it was, at least he couldn’t laugh at me any more. Moving past the ferns, I glared at Elissa.

“I'll have you know that it's my name on the lease and I’ll have you kicked out,” I said, my face burning red.

“Oh, get over yourself,” she retorted, stretching herself out along the couch. “They’re just a couple plants. What are they gonna do to you?”

“So much,” I said, walking over to my room and closing the door behind me. I surveyed everything inside, and all of it was still in place. Every piece of furniture was left exactly how I had it before, every item placed meticulously. The one exception being my box of the trinkets I’d collected over the years, was shifted a couple inches right. I moved it back to its original position and opened it. I deserve to reminisce a little, I told myself. As I tipped the box open, I saw yet another thing out of place. A note. Don’t freak out, it’s not gonna kill you, check the closet, it reads. God, Elissa and her delusion of exposure therapy. Of course it’ll be a fern. What else would it be? My legs carried me toward my closet as my head begged me to stop and reconsider. As the doors creaked open, as did every door in this ancient building, I didn’t see any ferns. Instead, another note.

“Elissa, cool it with all the notes,” I said, pulling off an envelope from my favorite suit. “This isn’t a scavenger hunt.” I heard her laugh from the other room, but no response followed. I tore the envelope open. Inside was a flier for a job opening at the plant nursery down the street.

“Entering!” A man shouted.

“Hey!” Elissa said, walking into my room. I looked around, confused. Who said that?

“Do you have a guy over?” I said, looking past her to look for the new guy of the week.

“No? Why would you assume that?” she said. “That’s a weird assumption.”

“I just—”

“Anyways, you gonna take it or not?”

“The job?” She nodded.

Growing up, I loved plants, and I still do. One day when I was maybe five or six years old, my mom asked me if I wanted to go on a nature hike with her friends. Of course I agreed. The entire time I ran around the whole trail, pointing out each new plant I saw, and naming every one I could, along with their scientific name. The day before, it had rained excessively, and the trail was almost entirely mud. My mom and her friends could barely tolerate trudging through the mud the whole time. But the little kid me didn’t care and ran back and forth, ignoring my mom’s calls to be careful. Leaves lined the trail, causing it to be even more slick than it already was. Every now and then I lost my footing and fell, but I didn’t care. I was surrounded by some of the things I loved most in the world. As we rounded the bend a fern leaf lay on the ground in front of me, though at the time I didn’t see it. My foot landed squarely on the leaf, my right foot slipping under me and hitting my left. My head shot down the hill, not before I’d identified the leaf and shouted out,

“Onoclea sensibilis!”

The world spun around me, up and down, and up, and down, and up, and down. I don’t remember much after that; my head injuries probably knocked me out at some point. The one thing I do remember after that was ending up in a field of ferns. I lay sprawled out in the field, the ferns looming over me. The ditch or field I’d fallen into was poorly lit, trees above shadowing the sun and the ferns closing in over me. I remember sitting up quickly, my head ringing. Looking around, I saw no one; nowhere did I find my mother, only the ferns I’d believed had plotted (and thankfully failed) to kill me. Ever since then, I’ve refused to go near ferns in the slightest. What if they tried again?

Maybe Elissa’s right, I thought to myself. It’s a silly fear, and there’s no way the ferns had actually tried to kill me. Though the little voice in my head wondered if maybe they really had. I’d never actually admit that there was even a twinge of possibility that she was right. Either way, the ferns that had closed over me terrified me for the longest time. I don’t even remember how I got out. In the days after the “accident,” I had nightmares constantly, and the image of ferns closing in and suffocating me played through my head on repeat.

I walked over to the couch where my laptop sat, and pulled up the email they had listed on their website. I emailed my resume to them, closed my laptop and walked away. Elissa smirked at me.

“I knew you’d come around,” her eyes seemed to say. As days flew by, Elissa bothered me incessantly, asking constantly if they had gotten back to me. Eventually they did.

“I got it,” I said, walking into her room.

“Got what?” she said, looking around. “Oh wait, the job? Congrats!” I nodded. She threw her arms up in celebration, got off her bed, ran over to me and punched me in the arm.

“I start training tomorrow,” I grinned. She grinned back at me, the same smile she had from behind the ferns. The next morning I made my way to the plant store. To my surprise, the store was bustling with life, both plants and people. Hanging plants reached down from the ceiling and lined every shelf. I walked up to the person at the cash register and asked for the manager. She came out, and she was much shorter than I had expected. She was 5’2 at best and I towered over her.

“How tall are you?” I blurted out.

“None of your business,” she said, making it clear that that idea was done with. I don’t think she liked that comment very much. “You need to realize the importance of first impressions more, young man,” she scolded me, walking away and motioning for me to follow. As we walked through the aisles, I named every plant I could in my head noting the scientific name, and as many facts as I could about each. The plants were organized by the climate they typically live in; a smart choice, I thought to myself. My new boss, Margaret, took me around the store explaining the general layout (by climate, confirming my theory) and telling me my general responsibilities. She told me that the slow periods were the mornings on weekdays where I could find the work schedule, basic first day stuff. To my amusement, she was a frequently and easily distracted person. She went on various tangents about specific plants and experiences she’d had in her time working at the store.

Later, she took me over to the break room so I could gather my things on my way out. A large door on the east wall I hadn’t noticed earlier took me by surprise.

“What’s that?” I said, nodding my head towards the door as I went to grab my coat.

“Oh, just a storage room, I think,” Margaret said. “Probably some plants too. Can you turn the lights off on your way out?” I nodded, following her out of the room. My arm stretched around the doorframe, my hand fumbling to find the switch. As I turned my head back to the break room to visually find it, I noticed a light seeping through the bottom of the “storage room,” and heard someone humming.

“Hey, is someone in the storage room?” I turned to Margaret, but she had already left. I shrugged and left too, after finally finding the light switch. However, my curiosity was piqued. One day, I’m gonna find my way in there, I told myself. On my walk home I planned my way in. My phone illuminated my face as I walked, head down checking the schedule. My opportunity stared me in the face. I was closing in a couple days, working with just one other coworker and Margaret, though Margaret would only be there for around an hour the whole day. Then in my trance state and head straight down, I bumped into the same old man from before. This time, gears shifted in my head. I could ask him to distract Margaret for me while I got in the room, I thought to myself.

“Watch where you’re going,” he said, his voice quivering slightly.

“I’m very sorry sir,” I said, dipping my head in apology and continuing my walk home, unable to muster the courage to ask him. After all, I didn't know him in the slightest. More gears shifted in my head. It hit me. “Hey! Sir?” I whipped around, watching him turn his head around to face me. “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” His face crinkled at the question. Oh god, now it sounds like I’m trying to ask him out, I thought to myself. “I-I’m trying to get to know people better. I know basically no one in the building,” I clarified. His face untwisted, then crinkled again, friendlier this time. He nodded and began walking towards the building with me.

The doors whispered the same hello they did to me every time, the same one Elissa denied. The old man patted the door behind him as they did so.

“Did you hear that too?” I asked him. He looked shocked for a second, quickly wiping the look off his face, but not before I noticed. He shook his head, bowing it slightly as the elevator doors closed behind us. I wanted to press further, but decided against it. Inside, he sat down as I fixed a quick dinner, making small talk about my new job; normal things. It was more like me talking to myself; he didn’t speak very often. He sat at the dinner table, as I talked to him over our fake marble countertop as I cooked. Once I sat down to eat, I began laying out the steps to build up to asking him to help me get in the room.

“So…” I said, my tone of voice giving him every reason to be suspicious, “I need your help with something.”

“Oh, that’s why you invited me here,” he said, laughing to himself and shaking his head (he seemed to like doing that a lot).

“Well, hear me out please.” He looked at me expectantly. “So, there’s this door…” I trailed off, explaining to him the whole story of the mysterious room. Backtracking to how doors talk to me, going back to how it was humming. The whole thing was a rather circular story, but I think I got the point across.

“So,” I said, “the plan is for you to just walk in, talk to me, then follow my instructions. Got it?” He nodded. Dinner finished with more surface-level conversations and he left. A couple days came and went quickly. Then, came the day to execute the plan.

It was a weekday, so it was slow and uneventful. My coworker and I sat around, not doing much, checking on the plants and staring out the window every so often. Margaret, however, paced back and forth checking her plants, double checking, triple checking, god forbid she forgot to check her favorite plant of the day. Honestly, I thought the plants were going to die from so much attention. 10 minutes before Margaret was to leave, I hid her keys in the microwave. No way she checks here, I told myself. I shot a quick text to the old man, asking him to come in in 9 minutes, and he did. Perfectly on schedule. I watched Margaret go to the back room, right as he walked in.

“See that plant over there?” I told the old man, motioning to Margaret’s plant of the day. “The one in the yellow pot?” He nodded, a man of few words. I guess not much changed since our last talk. “That’s her favorite plant. I’m gonna tell her you wanted to know more about it, and just let her talk for a solid 10 minutes, okay?” He nodded once again. I ran to the break room, to see Margaret searching through her things, her coat folded over her arm.

“Hey, Margaret? There’s a guy outside asking about a plant.” She turned to me, exasperated.

“Can’t you do it? You’re the new hire. You’re ‘sposed to be the plant guy.”

“Yeah,” I said, my shoe tracing an imaginary circle on the floor. “It’s your plant of the day, though. I thought you might want to talk to someone about it.” Her eyes lit up, carrying her things out to meet the old man I had planted. I took the keys out of the microwave and walked over to the massive door. Okay, I thought to myself. Just try the keys, one by one until something fits. Quickly, I tried the big keys first, but there were so many on just one ring it was impossible. And of course, none of the big keys worked. So now the small keys. This one, nope. Another, nope. Okay, then it’s definitely this one, nope. Thankfully the last key turned in the lock. Deep breaths, I told myself. The handle was cold to the touch. That means no one’s been in here recently, right? I asked myself, hoping the answer was no.

My head peeked through the crack of the door, scanning the room. The room was filled with mist, or fog, a condensation of sorts. The room appeared to be a sort of closet space, but then again what kind of closet space has condensation this thick. The room was seemingly safe, so I closed the door behind me. Briefly turning to make sure I’d closed the door all the way. I saw it, and it saw me. A giant face sat attached to the door.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” its voice boomed.

“What the heck are you?” I asked, taking a couple steps away from that thing.

“A door. Haven’t you seen one before?” He said, every word coated with sarcasm.

“Doors don’t have faces.”

“This one does.” It grinned. My hands shook as I began backing away. It smiled an unpracticed smile, one that was fake and creepy. I turned and ran, hoping what I once thought was a small closet was larger. Fortunately, I was right. What I had thought was a small storage closet turned into a room the size of my living room. Granted, it wasn’t that big but at least I had more room to run away from that stupid door. As I made my way to the opposite corner, as far away as I could be from it, I noticed the objects surrounding me.

Every type of fern you could imagine lined the numerous shelves, even so far as the fairly rare Stenogrammitis myosuroides, sitting on a far shelf. They, like the normal part of the store, were organized by climate. Presumably so they could localize climates like they tried to do with the main store. However, the whole room was filled with mist, so I’m not sure how they managed to do that. Warm red grow lights hung above every plant, giving the mist around them a soft red glow.

The awe at the sheer variety of ferns and the creeping feeling that they were all going to encroach upon me and suffocate me clashed inside me. The eerie mist wasn’t helping either. I could either face these stupid ferns or run back toward that face-door thing. The image of the door’s smile danced around my head. Thank god I couldn’t see it from here. Of all things, why would they fill this room with ferns? It’s not like they’re all super rare plants or anything. They could just as easily put them on the shelves in the main store, why keep them inside? What good does that do? But no, instead they filled the mysterious room with them.

I guess it had been my idea to get over my fear. It was really embarrassing to walk down the street and jump away after seeing a plant. The strange looks I got so often ran around my head. But this isn’t how it was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be controlled, supposed to be on my own terms. I realized I was crouched on the ground, my elbows hugging my sides in comfort. The mist cleared up slightly, and I could see the door staring at me stifling a quiet laugh. I looked away, choosing to ignore that terrifying thing. The door was the one humming, how does that even happen? I unbunched myself and sprawled out on the cold concrete floor. The cold soothed my body as I began to consider my options, staring at the ceiling, or rather the mist that covered the ceiling. You know what, I told myself, it should be on my own terms to get over this fear. I’m getting out of here.

I sprung up from the floor, bolting towards the door, knocking about the carts of ferns that sat in my way. So what? I reasoned. It’s not like I’d ever see them again. That’s someone else’s job to clean them up. Someone who’s actually supposed to be in this terrifying room. I walked straight up to the door-face, trying the door handle, and attempting in vain to push the door open, but it didn’t work. Okay, maybe the handle needs to be pulled upwards instead? Nope.

“It locks from the outside, or I guess the inside depending on how you think of it,” the door said matter-of-factly, laughing a little to itself, just like the old man. “Don’t you have a key to open it, though?” I glared at the door. Thanks, Captain Obvious, I thought to myself, not daring to say it out loud, and patting down my pockets to find the key ring. I realized that in my curiosity to enter the stupid fern room, I’d left the keys to the door in the lock. Even so, shouldn’t it still be unlocked? I thought to myself. Great. Now I was stuck in this room with my least favorite plants ever and a creepy ass door. However long I’d been in this stupid room, I wasn’t sure the old man was even still there talking about the plant with Margaret, though I was hopeful that he was. I sat down next to the door where I could see no ferns, trying to devise a way to get out. Surely at some point, someone would come looking for me, right? Or maybe I could get through whatever was misting the air? No, the pipes are definitely far too small. Surely there’s a vent or something somewhere I could use. I walked around the room tracing the walls, hoping to find a vent, or really anything to get me out of there. I looked down at the floor, and up at the ceiling, but after tracing what I felt was every square inch of the wall, I came back to the door with nothing. The only piece of valuable information I had was that I found a small window at the top of a wall.

I began stacking shelves on top of each other, to build myself up to the window, not knowing if it could open or not. I ran back and forth, ripping the shelves off the wall and tossing ferns (only the common ones, of course) off the shelves and stacking their carts. I ran over to grab the last one, my past actions coming back to eat me. The ferns I had knocked off shelves and out of my way now lay on the ground, the mist leaving them as slick as that fateful day when I was younger. In my hastiness to grab the last cart, I stepped on a fern and slipped.

I’m not entirely sure what happened while I was lying there in the tangible world, but I do know that in my head I replayed my fall from just now several times, as its memory intertwined with my fall from my childhood. The memories danced around, mixing until they became neither of their own things, but a mess of the two together. They lightened one another until it became a sort of joyful memory. One that could be remembered and laughed about, not one that would wear me out with fear. Eventually, I woke up to the door laughing at me. He couldn’t have been laughing for more than a minute, so I must have only been unconscious for thirty seconds at most. Or maybe my fall was just so funny that the door laughed alone for minutes.

“Hey!” The door said in between his laughs, recognizing that I only just regained consciousness. “I can open the door for you, I just wanted to see what you would do.” I threw my head back in frustration.

“Please do,” I said, hoping that maybe manners would help win over the door.

“Well, normally people who come here have to make me laugh, but you’ve already exceeded my expectations,” he said, the lock clicking open. “But seriously, please leave now.” I scrambled to my feet, my legs carrying me towards the door, eyes fixated on the ground to make sure I wouldn’t fall again.

“I hope I never see you again,” I said to the door once I had exited the misty room completely. Turning my head back towards what was ahead of me, Margaret stood straight in my path. I shut the door behind me as if maybe it would make her forget that she just saw me leaving the room she told me not to go in. She rubbed her temples, a sharp exhale following.

“I- I can explain,” I stuttered.

“No, you don’t need to. You’re fired,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air.

“Please, give me another chance. I was just-”

“Nope,” she said, her gaze darkening. “Leave.” I obeyed, walking past the plants I had become so familiar with over the past couple of days. God, what would Elissa think? I got fired in my first week. That’s insane.

“And really,” Margaret said, interrupting my thoughts. “You could at least have actually had a customer, but you just completely made something up? Honestly, what poor planning.” I turned around to argue, confused as to what she meant. Wasn’t the old man there? However, I decided to cut my losses early. Instead of my usual routine, today I took the stairs up to our apartment, passing by that one previously dreadful plant that stood next to the door. I needed time to process and figure out what the hell I was going to say to Elissa. On my way up, I saw the old man once again.

“What happened to the plan? Why didn’t you stay there like I told you to?” I demanded to know. The man, without a word, walked towards what I assumed was his apartment. With a twist of black smoke of sorts, he merged himself with the door, his face morphing to the same face I saw in the misty room. My eyebrows furrowed as I tried to figure out what had just happened, then I nodded, and walked to my room. When I entered the apartment, Elissa was sitting on the couch.

“How was work?” She said, hopping up, a massive grin spread across her face.

“Fired,” I responded curtly, taking off my shoes and coat.

“What? Why?” She said, all her previous excitement leaving her body.

“Fern trauma.” A half-truth, sure, but better a half-truth than no truth at all. My footsteps treaded lightly toward my room, and my door shut softly behind me. I walked straight to the corner of my room with one of the Matteuccia struthiopteris Elissa had surrounded me with a few days ago, and curled up, taking a nap right next to it.