May 27, 2015

From “Lily of the Roses” by Yosef Hollister

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Their brutal emotions sated, the assassins buried Lily in the ducal gardens and took her head to the Marquess for their promised reward. The Marquess reveled in the destruction of whom she had been so intently jealous, and had the head cast into a sphere of pure crystal to set amongst her most cherished trophies in the crypt beneath her manor. It would serve, she thought, as both a reminder of her triumph and an immortalization of the beauty that she had pruned from the world.

The assassins, as it happened, buried the body beneath a weak and woody rosebush. The Duchess, distraught at the seeming disappearance of her only child, withdrew into herself and left the once-rich gardens to rot. There was therefore no gardener to arrest the sudden and intense rosebush growth that followed. It was visible to passersby through the locked and barred gate, and every day a few more stopped by to gawk.

In a way that few rosebushes do, the plant in the Duchess’s garden had a large and woody stem made from the seeming fusion of many smaller growths. In time, it was over five feet tall, with roses only at the end of two long branches; people began to notice shortly thereafter that the woody stem had developed on such a way, with twin knots above and below, that it resembled mothing so much as a female form.

Around the time the Duchess began to sicken, her mental collapse becoming a physical one as well, a bud appeared at the top of the “form” right around the place a head might have been. Wasting away took nearly six months for the poor Duchess, and during that time–in defiance of botanical logic–the bud grew larger and larger but never opened.

It was only with the peal of the bell announcing the Duchess’s death that an immense and blood-red rose opened atop the woody form. And it was only with her burial three days later that the humanlike form began to move.

Its ultimate destination? The Marquess’s crypts.

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April 12, 2012

From “Rasen Rosen” by Carla Luciano Mankel

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Ami came back to her townhouse only to drop the keys in shock at the vase and roses on her kitchen island. A few scenes from horror movies flashed in the periphery of her vision, but a moment’s though dispelled them. The small notice from the landlord tucked neatly beneath the vase quickly made it clear that silly romantic old Bethanie had been persuaded to deposit the flowers in her tenant’s kitchen.

There was a card on a plastic stalk jutting out among the fiery red-orange roses; Ami plucked it out.

Forgive me. K.

Two words and one letter struck Ami like a blow. After all he’d done, after all she’d caught him doing, he wanted forgiveness? He thought he could buy it with a dozen roses, a cheap vase, and a romantic spinster confederate?

No.

Ami seized the roses, ignoring the sharp thorns digging at her palm, and marched up to the second floor. She wrenched open the bedroom window and hurled the flowers onto the yard below. A moment later, the vase went into the clear glass recycling bin with a crash.

“Hmph,” Ami murmured, staring at the small spots of blood blossoming on her hands. “Even when he’s not here, he can still hurt me.”

In the cul-de-sac below, a neighbor was walking his dog and came across the fallen roses. “What a waste,” he said. “What kind of person is so rich and shallow that they can afford to dump perfectly good roses on the lawn?”