In the Garden of Love and Malice

Once upon a time, so the story goes, there was a petite young girl with doe-eyes named Maya who lived in this village. She had a beautiful garden. Her greatest pride in life was tending to the flowers that grew there. The Damas de Noche, a namesake rooted in a legend. Maya’s father had told it to her when they first planted the bushes. There had lived a kind princess named Dama. who loved the scent of jasmine perfume. She shared it freely with her subjects. When she died, a night-blooming flower grew from her grave. Her gentle spirit lingered in the flower's night scent. This, her father said, is how the night jasmine got its name—Dama de Noche—a whisper of love in the darkness. Maya was young when she first heard the story and loved to believe it was true. The legend taught young Maya empathy, convincing her that kindness might truly linger in the world, taking the form of fragrance.

For Maya, the garden was a place where the air grew sweet and dense with living memories: of love, longing, and her father’s beautiful legacy. At twilight, the moment arrives. The Damas de Noche—night jasmines clustered along the brick walls—are in full bloom. Their slender petals stir, unfurling softly to release their sweet, delicate scent. The fragrance drifts through the night air and quickly closes the distance to Maya’s open bedroom window.

The signal received, she slips silently to the cobbled stones beneath her sill and into the courtyard. She retreats to the corner where the night jasmines are thickest, sits down, and waits. She knows she is not the only creature that will be attracted to the flowers’ powerful perfume.

While she waits, the familiar scent of the night jasmines carries her back. She recalls her first encounter with a rhinoceros beetle years ago.

One night, a beetle thudded out of the darkness, landing near the Damas de Noche bushes. Startled by the creature’s enormous size and intimidating horn, Maya recoiled, eyes wide with fear.

Her father knelt beside her, calm and gentle. “Do you see, anak? He’s not a monster. He loves the flowers, just like we do.” He gently coaxed the beetle onto his finger, then into Maya’s trembling palm. Timidly, she watched it crawl toward a bloom, pausing as if savoring the scent before settling inside the petals. Her father smiled, steadying her hand. “Strong, but gentle for the flowers.” As Maya touched the beetle’s shell, her fear melted away, replaced by awe—a quiet kinship blossoming between flower, insect, and child.

Soon, her friends began to arrive. Dropping silently from the sky, the rhinoceros beetles settled among the Damas de Noche bushes. They clicked and hissed, and she greeted them in kind, with a warm smile and a gentle stroking of their shell-like elytra.

Then her favorite appeared—the great Lapulapu. She had named him for his gigantic size, far larger than the others. She sat cross-legged while Lapulapu explored her fingers and hissed softly. She told him of her gentle love for him, and then shared the sadness and longing she felt having lost her father. She liked to believe the beetle’s patient eyes understood.

For Maya, her love for these creatures was simple. She understood—in ways far older than her ten years—that the beetles kept her beloved flowers blooming, year after year. She watched, she cared, and each night she let them slip through the garden, coming and going as the flowers called.

The silence was suddenly shattered by a trike that sputtered to a halt at her front doorstep. She listened: the motor coughing, the metal gate slamming open, footsteps stumbling up the front steps, and a string of curses. He was back—her mother’s man, home too soon. He’d gambled and lost again, still reeking of Kalufa and cheap liquor.

Rafflesio lurched through the house, angry, muttering, bumping into furniture. Then silence. Maya barely breathed. When the bulb above the back door flickered and flared, panic shot through her—he was coming into the garden. She sprinted across the yard, pressed her small frame against the house, and vanished into the shadows, heart pounding, listening, and waiting.

Rafflesio staggered into the garden, swaying with each unsure step. He reached a dark corner of the wall where the Damas de Noche brushed the brick. There, he dropped to his knees and dug blindly in the cool soil. His fingers brushed something hard—the neck of a hidden Kalufa bottle. He fumbled with it, pressed it to his lips, and took a long, tremulous pull.

He tucked the bottle under his arm. Lurched forward, leaned back, and pissed on the night jasmine. Nearby, Maya’s fists clenched at her sides, her eyes blazing—but she said nothing. As Rafflesio continued to spray the Damas de Noche, his urine splattered the backs of the rhinoceros beetles huddled below. In the faint light, their shells—like dark, shimmering coins—were fouled.

He squinted. Big. Perfect. Champions, maybe. Odds and wagers buzzed in his head. Yes—he could make them fight. The idea was good, bright. He grinned, wobbling, and stepped back. The world tilted. He grabbed at a vine, steadied himself. The bottle slipped from his arm, hit the cobble stones with a loud crash—glass shards, quick curses. But the thrill wasn’t gone.

Rafflesio turned again to the cluster of beetles, swaying, eyes sharp with sudden excitement. Nearby, Maya’s breath hissed through her teeth, fingers curled tight in the shadow. He returned, arms heavy, head spinning. Found a sack—some old thing with a toothy mouth. The beetles hissed as he grabbed at them, scooping them one by one into the bag before they could skitter away. The sack writhed, furious in his grasp. The scent of Jasmine vanished, overwhelmed by the sharp stink of urine, liquor, and sweat. Rafflesio wiped his mouth on his sleeve, smiling lopsided in the dim light.

Maya burst from the shadows, rushing at Rafflesio. “Please, let them go.”

He jerked, startled, then barked a sharp laugh. “Yer father—hah—what’d he ever know ’bout bein’ a man?” He spat. “Plantin’, strokin’ bugs…sissy work. Real men drink, gamble, live hard. Not like that flower-boy.” Maya’s head dropped. Rafflesio waved the sack. “These…these monsters, they’ll fight. That’s what they’re good for—fightin’, dyin’.”

He turned, staggered away, sack swinging. Maya collapses to the ground, crying out loud and unrestrained. She cannot stop—rage, grief, and helplessness poured out as night closed in. She lay there, shaking and sobbing, until exhaustion finally claimed her. She slept then, making a cold bed of the cobbled stones.

Rafflesio, intoxicated and belligerent, accused a man twice his size of cheating during a beetles’ match. Harsh words flared into violence; both men drew knives, but the larger stranger quickly overpowered him. He drove his blade into Rafflesio, deaf to the trembling pleas for mercy that pierced through bursts of cursing.

The circle of gamblers, raucous and eager to bet only moments before, now recoiled, forming a silent ring around the dying man. No one stepped forward to help; not a single voice called for the police. One by one, the crowd melted away, until all that remained on the deserted street corner was Rafflesio’s body slumped against a lamppost, his blood smeared across the pavement beneath the cold glare of the streetlight.

But gardens are not lonely street corners. Knowledge of the night’s events carried on the air, reached the flowers, and they reacted. While Maya slept, the Damas de Noche recalled Rafflesio’s callous laughter as he splattered their soil with his hot reek. Their scent of love and moonlight soured, tainted, and became bitter, wounded. The flowers’ throats widened and thickened, shuddering out a release that suddenly chilled the night air with a scentless malevolence.

The air glistened with malice. The night insects trembled before it. There was a hush—and then, from beneath leaves, out of the crevices in the brick wall, from under composted logs and along the edges of trees, hundreds of beetles began to emerge in the moonlight. Their horns were raised, wings glinting, and their armored bodies gleaming. The garden itself exhaled a quiet, poisonous joy. The man had sown his own curse, and the Damas were now its keepers.

They came with a sound: a fierce, rising hiss and clatter, the music of anger, of old, unmet justice. The noise woke Maya. She opened her eyes to a dense swarm of winged creatures covering the garden floor. Then they rose—a churning cloud of black beetles spiraling upward, blotting out the moon as they passed. She could not help but wonder where they were headed.

Rafflesio clung to life, wounded, helpless, and propped against a post. His pain was blunted by the burn of liquor, but not enough to mute the horror. Drunk and delirious, he barely noticed the swarm closing in.

Beetles crawled and climbed, spilling over his body in relentless streams—clinging, biting—a living tide whipped into a vengeful frenzy. He screamed and thrashed, but the mass only thickened, their chittering rising to a fever pitch. The swarm dragged him down the street, pulling him along the gutter’s edge.

At the town’s border, his body was hauled across weeds, wrestled among briars, and lugged through rough undergrowth. Once they reached the riverbank, he was slid across the damp mud. The ground here was a graveyard of sun-rotted carcasses and sludge. The beetles had chosen this spot for Rafflesio’s final resting place.

The swarm stopped. Under a broken moon, they began to draw him into the foul sludge. Beetles below the body dug into the slop to soften it, allowing his corpse to slowly sink. Others above pushed and packed him down into the muck. They buried him among tangled roots and decaying wood, deep in a chamber thick with compost and waste.

Overhead, an outlet gushed raw sewage from an open cistern, poisoning the water and killing any creature foolish enough to drink. Beneath, the beetles laid their eggs in his hollowed flesh. Now a breeding ground for flies and beetles, larvae would soon feed, and the earth would reclaim its due.

When dawn broke, Maya found herself alone in the garden’s restored hush. She arose, saw the withered, drooping branches of the Damas de Noche, and gently gathered their brittle leaves in her arms. Tears she could not hold back touched the wilted edges of the leaves, and their bitterness seemed to drain away.

The Damas breathed sweetly once more, their perfume swelling on the morning air as if renewed by her love. The poison in the roots loosened its hold, bleeding into the earth until only purity remained. The blossoms, newly opened, turned their faces to her, trembling as if grateful to be spared their own darkness.

Lapulapu was gone, yet everywhere she looked, new blooms had opened, and with every pulse of life in the garden, her father’s spirit endured. The night had been cruel, but the dawn belonged to her—gentle again, perfumed with forgiveness.

The scent was jasmine, yes, but deeper—layered with something green, ancient, and sorrowful. It filled Maya’s lungs, settling into her bones. In that moment, her pain shifted: grief ripened to resolve, and loss became memory—a new knowing bloomed inside her.

They never did find Rafflesio’s body, but they say that down near the river—where the carcasses of dead animals line the shore—there grows a plant of particularly foul odor that seems to thrive in the rot. It is the Rafflesia, the corpse flower.

Once there was a man named Rafflesio who lived a life of similar decay and cruelty, one whom no one mourned. And so, they say, the flower that bears his name is fated to bloom only far from those who care for others or themselves, thriving best when rooted in unkempt, neglected ground that yields neither beauty nor profit. It is a plant unworthy of any garden—certainly not one tended by a loving child.

Maya sat in the stillness of her redeemed garden, her knees drawn under her folded arms, thinking about the kind of person her father had been, and the kind of man Rafflesio was. What her father had left behind was the sweet, forgiving perfume of the Dama de Noche, which draws living things closer in the darkness. What Rafflesio left was the heavy, sulfurous stench of the Rafflesia, which draws carrion flies to its decay.

She understood then that the actions we choose in life become our final, enduring scent in the world. A cruel heart poisons the earth, but a loving heart—even one broken by tears—always brings the sweetness back to bloom.

Maya left the village long ago, but the garden remains, much the same as it was then. It's a quiet and cozy refuge of bricked walls and cobbled stones, seemingly impervious to time, and filled with Damas de Noche.

To find it, they say, you must wait until dusk on a clear night and then follow the scent of the night jasmine on the evening air.