Bloom

Pine

Benjamin Bloom was loved by his parents for the four years that he blessed this earth. Marie and Ennis, devastated by the fire of 1986, and still reeling from the car crash of 1992, could finally say that they were once again a family.

The tiny mind of his could not develop a lot of situations yet, but the one thing he was sure of was flowers. All flowers. Any flowers. Every flower. Marie would constantly boast about how anything would go in her sons' mouth of his, if it could: all except flowers. A marble was more delicious than a daisy and a zinnia more precious than a sock and apparently that was all that he could process.

In 1995 Benjamin was two years old. There was a refusal to do anything of his own if he didn't have to. Marie would always feed him and Ennis would always pick him up, so why should the lad learn how to crawl? To talk? On one particular occasion Ennis has to hand the boy to Marie, for fear of losing temper with the child, and Marie had another idea. She sat Benjamin at one end of the garden, and herself at the other, with a bunch of daffodils. He dragged his bum along the grass and picked a daisy, handing it to the woman with the gentle sound of 'for oo'.

Everything was fine for the trio until tragedy struck again. Ennis had kept the knowledge of two sisters and a brother from the child until 1997, when the wrong photo album was placed on Benjamin's lap. Marie had always disliked the idea of keeping it from the boy but it never seemed to come up with the child and so she never made it.

By this time Benjamin was but four, and the childish mind was still whirring with possibilities and hope. The concept of such a large secret was astounding and Benjamin grew very upset. He did not let in on it, however, until Ennis went to fetch Marie (to try and right the wrong) and Benjamin ran as fast his tiny legs could carry. This turned out to be only the length of the living room to the kitchen. A postman stood at the door and as he knocked Benjamin turned the key and let himself outside. I do not know why the postman did not catch the child, for he was not a fast runner as is already seen.

Ennis and Marie came tearing through the kitchen to follow the child they were so close behind, but lost him as he ran into a forest nearby the house. Of course the parents ran after him, hoping desperately to not lose another child, but he hid well among the flora that seemed so friendly to him.

Many flowers found their end as the boy wandered for what seemed days but was in fact an hour, plucking and picking and pruning the beauties. Though he knew nothing of the struggle of being-grown up he blossomed into a kind young boy with the realisation and hope that there would have been an important reason as to why this was kept. The reason, he could not begin to fathom, as a tiny infant.

After a sizeable bunch was collected, he went home. His feet were weary and his eyes drooped sullenly but he found his way back to the well-trodden path that led back. A joyous re-connection occurred, obviously, as the old pair realised they still had their last child. Benjamin hid the flowers beneath his jumper and made a mental note to press them in a book and preserve them forever. This was very much forgotten in a minute's time when the family went to bed after a long and hearty meal.

Morning rose for Ennis but nothing else did. Not a wife, nor a child, nor an inkling of happiness. In the night there had been a robbery, yet Ennis had slept through: years of unrest and panic meant sleep was deep when it was found. Marie and Benjamin had fled downstairs in a flurry after loud thumping noises awoke them. The noise turned into people which turned to knives, which, eventually, turned to nothing at all.

Ennis was tortured by their own soul that very morning, as they hung onto the only living remnants of the family: a bunch of flowers. They were tied loosely with a long blade of grass, but together still, half dead from being cut but more alive than Ennis ever felt again. Overcome with a grief that paralysed the very being, Ennis called the police and promptly fell into oblivion.

Wildflowers were smashed and flattened by the heavy photo album that was angrily closed upon them, the flowers that Benjamin collected. They were not the first flowers to see the album.

But after the break-in of 1997 they were most definitely the last.