Tales From the Tomb - A Late Night Visit

An Unexpected Stranger - Pt. 1 of 3

As she walked up to the tombstone, she couldn't help but to fiddle around with her hands and the white rose she held. They always shook, there wasn't a time they weren't, but they shook a lot now. She picked off the thorns and smoothened out the tears, attempting to create perfection out of destruction.

She could remember picking roses with her mother as a little girl.
"You'll carry the basket, and I'll show you how to cut them so we don't hurt them, okay?" Her mother would tell her, especially on the days her hands would shake the most.

She stood there, soaking wet in the very same wedding dress her late mother once wore. Now she was a pile of bones, slowly decomposing six feet underground.

"Mama... mama please help me, I don't know what to do." She cried as she fell to her knees, the dress soaking up the rainfall from the soaked dirt beneath her. She clenched the grass with her fist and placed the white rose on the gravestone with her other.

"You take these giant scissors and we cut them just like that!" The storm roared overhead, the trees fought and lashed with the wind, snapping at the sky with fervor! She gasped as she regained her conscious mind, fighting back the memories that flooded it.

"And now, we cut off the thorns... isn't she beautiful?" Those sunny summer days were a thing of the past. Perfection is all her mother ever expected, even the most beautiful rose can be seen with spite if it's thorn cuts too deep.

But that's all she has ever given her mother, perfection.

The perfect grades.

The perfect sport.

The perfect extra curricular activities.

The perfect college.

The perfect boyfriend.

The perfect fiance.

The perfect abuser.

She had told her that love would come naturally, easily. She would know the moment it was there, and when she did feel it it felt like no stranger. He was so sweet and romantic. He was natural, easy, everything love was supposed to be.

"Of course, only a fool would would look at a rose with no thorns and think it's beautiful" The words crept up on her like a ghost, a shadow that would refuse to leave a room, a darkness in room full of false light.

She was raised to believe, raised to follow that cookie cutter life her mother had shown her. She made it look so easy, but men are cruel. She had had her thorns picked, her surface smoothened out, but men are cruel.

"I can't do it. Oh mama, I can't fucking do it. I'm sorry, I love you so much, but I will no longer be your rose!" She screamed at the gravestone as she grabbed onto it. Her eyes streamed with the rain, her emotions flooding the earth below.

"He hurts me so much. I do everything I can to make him happy, I do everything just like you. I try so hard to be perfect, to not say the wrong thing, dress wrong, eat wrong, BREATH WRONG."

But as she screamed to the winds, a sudden putter of footsteps approached her from behind.

"Miss! Excuse me, miss?" A deep voice crowed from behind her. As she turned around she saw the stature of a man, built like a Spartan and dressed for a funeral parlor. His ash gray hair draped gently against his forehead as the rain dripped off it. His eyes a piercing blue, peeking through the slits of his coarse hair.

"I don't mean to disturb, but I could hear you screaming and I just wanted to make sure you were alright." He said loudly, attempting to overpower the crash of the raindrops.