Episode 2: The Garlic That Never Came
by Sis Leah Muhammad
June 4, 2025 – Wednesday
I tried to order garlic again today. Real garlic. The kind you press yourself—the kind that makes your kitchen smell alive and makes whatever pain you’ve got feel a little more bearable.
The Walmart app said it was in stock. My cart said it was in stock. But when the personal shopper messaged me?
“Sorry. No garlic available.”
It’s the fifth time this month.
The funny part is, I don’t believe it’s out of stock. I believe they just won’t touch it.
I asked the last shopper directly, “Did you actually see the bin garlic is kept in?”
He replied:
“Yeah. I just… they ran out.”
He couldn’t get it.
Wouldn’t, maybe.
June 5, 2025 – Thursday
There’s a story going around now.
One of those half-whispered things you hear from the girl at the check-out, from the cousin who works third shift, from the friend of the friend who swears it’s true.
A teenage shopper had just started doing deliveries. Trying to help his mama after her hours got cut. One day, he picked up a jar of minced garlic for a customer. Somewhere between the store and the drop-off, it broke in the back seat. The smell soaked into the upholstery. Wouldn’t come out.
That same night, his older brother—folks say he was a user, a manipulator, the type always borrowing without paying back, calling it a loan when it was a theft—started choking. Just fell out. No virus. No heart attack. Just couldn’t breathe.
They say garlic killed him.
But not in the usual way.
The story’s changed over time. Now they say he was a blood sucker—the kind of man who builds his comfort on other people’s crisis. And garlic didn’t agree with his spirit.
Now personal shoppers won’t even touch it. Not whole, not minced, not powdered.
It’s like the garlic knows.
June 6, 2025 – Friday
I tried to grow some myself. Just a handful of wild bulbs near the fence where the soil’s still soft. Garlic takes time, but so do prayers. Some things don’t come quick—but that doesn’t mean they won’t come.
My grandmother used to tuck garlic under her pillow. Said it pulled bad spirits out of the house and kept the tongue honest. My mother boiled it with honey when we were sick. I never thought much of it growing up.
Now I think of it every day.
I think about how something so small, so humble, could strike fear into people bold enough to steal rent from a mother with nothing left to give.
June 7, 2025 – Saturday
There’s a quietness in Dayton I’ve never felt before.
Not the peaceful kind. The kind that creeps up your spine like you’re being watched.
A neighbor I barely speak to came by today and asked if I’d seen her landlord. She hadn’t paid rent in six weeks. Not a single call. No eviction notice. Just silence. His car is still there. Mail piling up. But no lights. No movement.
Another neighbor chimed in—her payday loan officer hasn’t called. No texts. Nothing. And this was a man who would text you three times a day if you owed even ten dollars.
That’s when someone whispered the phrase that’s been bubbling up more and more lately:
“They’re disappearing.”
June 8, 2025 – Sunday
We used to say, “They suck the blood of the poor.”
It was a metaphor.
But what if it wasn’t?
What if the ones who drained this city dry—the slumlords, the unlicensed landlords, the corner predators who sold broken appliances at triple markup—are really being taken?
Not by police. Not by God’s hand.
By whatever’s above us.
The lights still hover. They glide now, like they’re dragging nets of silence behind them.
I watch them at night. They don’t blink. They hum, but only if you’re really listening. They never come over the same street twice in a row. And it’s always the neighborhoods where someone with power used to live.
Then that someone’s just… gone.
June 9, 2025 – Monday
I had soup today. Thin broth, beans, half a carrot, wild greens I picked this morning.
I stirred in a sliver of the garlic I managed to find behind the fence. Not much. Just enough to wake the pot up.
The moment it hit the heat, I swear the whole house shifted. The floor felt heavier. The air cleaner.
Garlic is not just food anymore.
It’s resistance.
It’s remembrance.
It’s a reckoning.
June 10, 2025 – Tuesday
I lit a candle today for the missing.
Not for their return.
For the truth.
I lit it for Mrs. Fletcher’s landlord, who used to charge $950 a month for an apartment with no working stove.
For the man who ran the corner store and sold expired baby formula at triple price.
For the tax preparer who stole people’s refunds and called it a fee.
They’re gone now.
No goodbye. No body. No police report.
Only garlic-stained rumors.
Only the glow in the sky.
June 11, 2025 – Wednesday
The news doesn’t mention it.
Still talking about inflation, rising gas prices, the new digital currency trial. No word on the missing.
But the streets know.
And so do the mothers who don’t feel eyes watching their children anymore.
So do the elders who sleep easier now that their pensions aren’t being siphoned.
And so do the people like me. Who live in the places the rich once forgot—until they needed cheap labor.
We feel the air thinning. We see the judgment blooming in silence.
The sky has memory. And maybe… justice.
June 12, 2025 – Thursday
Tonight I saw a shimmer again. Not high in the sky—right above the vacant lot where that used car salesman used to set up fake auctions.
It held still for a full minute. Then it zipped away, fast as thought.
I whispered, “Go ahead. Take the rest.”
Then I chopped more garlic.
June 13, 2025 – Friday
This is still America. But not the one I was promised.
Groceries are luxury. Water is rationed in silence. Power flickers like it’s deciding whether or not to stay.
But the garlic still grows.
And so do I.
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