Upsetting Day: Flower Pot Men (Patreon)

Time now, children. Time to Watch With Mother.

Watch, now! Watch ever so carefully! Today we shall watch Flower Pot Men. Watch them. It is 1953 and the only other thing to do is ruminate on nuclear annihilation.

There once was a pleasant old house with a pleasant little garden where a man toiled. And in that garden was a decidedly unpleasant little weed. The weed's name was Weed. Weed could only writhe about and scream its name in agony. God played a funny trick on Weed, didn't he?

God plays a lot of funny tricks. God's a champ. He always stays ahead. But there are things upon this earth that are not of God, children, and if they are not of God then they must be of the Devil.

Atomic hellfire isn't looking so bad anymore, is it? Behold, The Flower Pot Men in all of their terrible, shuddering glory. They speak nothing we might recognize as language, uttering incoherent syllables as they set upon the Weed, investigating their surroundings with their grasping hands and terrible, wet mouths.

But hide now, Flower Pot Men. The Man Who Works the Garden is coming, and he mustn't know of you. Not yet. Not until it is too late for him. Gather your evil strength within your flower pot abodes. You live in flower pots. You are flower pots. To dwell within a home of that which is your flesh… what Cronenbergian madness be this?

Perhaps they grow out of their host pots, a sort of foul, babbling tumor of soil and clay. Should that be the case, then perhaps God yet smiles upon this blighted land, for though their mere existence is a terror, they are confined to—

They've breached containment. Children, hide yourselves now. Hide for mother. It's a sort of game. You must hide, and mother will throw the meat of her body into the path of these misbegotten homunculi which mock the divine form of man with their every step.

They gaze now, into the loam. What do they see within its unmoving darkness? They perceive the eradication of all things. The arrival of the universe at its perfect, final expression. A winnowing of forms down to that which is singular in its purpose: survival at any cost. Their names are Bill and Ben. They have forgotten which is which. It matters not.

They dance the steps which shall end the world. But this is not the Tandava of Shiva. No better world shall arise from the ashes at this jitterbug's completion. Only the formless void.

They exhort the earth to swallow up all that lives upon it. But some ingredient, some gesture is absent from their fell ritual. It is only by this omission, this failure in the memory of these unfathomably ancient beings, that we are spared. Thus obstructed, they confer with the Queen of Corruption.

"Weeeeed," she proclaims. "Weeeeed." The message is clear. They shall receive no aid from her. For reasons we cannot fathom — certainly not out of any kind of human compassion — we are saved. We are saved.

Wait. What nefarious deeds do they now enact?

Oh no. No.

They have reproduced. And the product of their incestuous union is something… else.

"You may look at me, if you like," this being says to its progenitors. "I'll stand quite still." They are awestruck by the fruits of their labors and loins.

"Am I not the most beautiful potato man you ever saw?" The child asks. "I am Dan, the Potato Man. You will never, never see another potato like me. Little Bill and Little Ben, you are only Flower Pot Men."

The creation usurps its creators. The beast they brought into the world, which they no doubt hoped might assist them in their efforts to unmake reality, now commands them to bow in his presence. Bill and Ben tire of this. One of them sneaks away, leaving the other to suffer the torments of their progeny.

But Flower Pot Men are not so easily defeated. Bill imbues another potato with life, leading it around before Dan the Potato Man to shame and humble him.

The message is clear: your existence is not unique, Dan the Potato Man. It is meaningless. You are a grain of sand in the infinite desert of the real. To the silence, now. We have no use for you.

Devastated by this existential truth, Dan loses the will to live. The Flower Pot Man essence animating his tuberous body dissipates and returns to its originators.

Existence is a privilege, not a right. The Flower Pot Men have demonstrated their worthiness to persist in the universe by their eradication of this lesser form. Aiat. Through Flower Pot Logic, reality is simplified, hollowed out. We use clay to make a pot, but make use of the emptiness within it.

One may ask: from what source did these Flower Pot Men spring? One legend tells that Freda Lingstrom invited them into our world in the year 1952 of the old calendar. Now, of course, we know that date as Year Zero. The witch Lingstrom pledged our world to the Flower Pot Men in exchange for a meagre fortune. They granted this wish by appearing in a number of televised dramas broadcast by the BBC. Look now, children, upon the face of the Great Betrayer. Do not forget it.

But another tale is told, whispered in the dark places where men dare not tread. It tells of another woman, Mrs. Hilda Brabban. In the year -1, she arranged a pact with the BBC whereby they would purchase her stories of two brothers and their antics. The names of those two brothers? Bill, and — indeed — Ben. The resultant confusion led scholars to attribute the original invention of the Flower Pot Men to Brabban.

The Lingstrom family dismissed the similarities as coincidence. But in her advanced age, Brabban — addled by stroke — began to claim that she was indeed the true, unlauded summoner of Bill and Ben. The Lingstrom estate prevented her from appearing on television to speak her version of the truth. And when she passed from this realm, they sought retraction of her obituaries, which attributed to her the creation of the Flower Pot Men.

To support their case, the Lingstrom family pointed to irrefutable details, such as "Weed was inspired by our sister" and "we invented the word 'flobbadob,' which the Flower Pot Men routinely utter, while farting in the bath."

Darkly amusing, the things we find to quarrel over in our brief lives. Two families locked in conflict over the origination of two dead-eyed, world-ending monsters. Would our time and energies not be better spent preventing their ascension? For what is a regular BBC residual payment worth if the earth itself is consumed?

Yet man is ever short-sighted. He will destroy nature's bounty for a quick profit, inflict suffering on future generations to enrich himself today. And so, nearly half a century after the Flower Pot Men first walked this earth, hubris again reared its terrible, prideful head. Humanity had grown complacent. They believed themselves to be wiser, more capable than their forebears. They thought, foolishly, that they could harness the power of Flower Pot Men to their own ends. They brought them back.

Thus resurrected, Bill and Ben went once more about their dark work. Inscrutable as ever, yet doubtless with an eye to the desecration of all that is beautiful and good, they struck.

Why did they choose as one of their first deeds the fellation of a turtle? We can only guess. But we can say this: four days later, the towers fell.

Two towers. Two Flower Pot Men. Coincidence? Perhaps. Yes? Yes. Or is it? Bill and Ben… Bill 'n' Ben… Bin Laden… think about it, children. With mother.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Harvey Penguini, who keeps an emergency potato in his pocket in case one of his children starts feeling special.

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