Rosebuds

Prolouge

Death is not a person. Death is not a thing either. Death is a concept of our reality we all have to face. It's what makes us human; We all have to die—Some sooner than others, and some now rather than later. Most of us are unaware of when we'll die and how, but I knew the moment I heard that shrilling shriek from my phone, I was on the path to my grave.

It was raining—it was always raining at the time—when I was sitting at the bay window watching blue tears drop from the heavens. God was crying before I received that phone call. It was a loud unwanted call that screeched into the night; a wake up call back to reality. The rain pittered on the window sill, but my ears drowned out the sound to the voice on the other line—It was the doctor who'd been taking care of my friend. I. . .I can't remember much of her. She was all I had before your father, but. . .She was dead. She was gone. How? A heart attack.

My mind was racing at that point—I had nothing left in that town. I started to feel the world close around me from the grief you always feel when something goes awry; that feeling of my stomach sinking. Collapsing and deflating to the pit of my fuzzy tummy, my heart throbbed—My head was spinning. I acted out of instinct to get out—to go away. . .

Where? Anywhere, so I grabbed the one thing I was still attached to: my car key and walked out of the house. (I grabbed my suitcase too and jammed it into the trunk.) Driving off the street I once knew, it started to rain again, but this time much harder than before.

I tried to quell the hard tears on the windshield with the radio, but when I made it to the overhangs of the conifers, there was barely a signal. The trees weren't really trees at the time but shadows of ghosts the plants harbored; They sucked out the oxygen from the air and suffocated me. However, I felt a calming presence with the ghosts of nature because I knew that my friend was among them. I think it was the radio yawning out beautiful poetry that calmed my nerves. You should never drive emotionally—especially when you're drunk. Daisy drove home drunk, and she inadvertently killed the bluejay that way. The radio sang out a beautiful song. . .of waters meeting at the end of a river. . .

From the roots of love. . .and heartaches in the woods. . .

Your skin tastes of gorse flowers. As we lie in the dark, your mouth is of sapphires. When you speak, there's a spark across the room.

Meetings of the waters
Heartaches in the woods. . .

The radio began to fuzz until it was lost all together, and my car wasn't far off either: It slowed to a stop in the middle of the road with my foot still pressed against the petal. There wasn't a soul for miles, but as I sat there for a bit, I decided to grab the red umbrella I conveniently left in the back seat, reminding me of my vitality coursing through those veins.

After that, I don't remember much. I remember the lights, the glamour, the roaring cars. I remember walking up to that enchanted house of wonders. It was a gorgeous home with beautiful lights from fairies and pixies—The door was wide open for me to waltz right in. I was a party buster, but from the way the room smelled, I stopped in my tracks: It smelled of delicious delicacies and burning cigarettes of the twenties. Inside was carpeted with vibrant bloody reds, so much so they seemed to be bleeding thick mucus of bubbling bloody tissue. You could hear in the distance a faint roar of laughter, the clinks of expensive glassware, and the clacks of the pool table amidst a game.

"Welcome miss, I hope you'd be staying for a while," The butler said in his fancy attire for the night.

I told him that my car broke down after I went out for a ride, but as I was telling him what happened, he paced steadily to not disturb my story, and closed the door. The last thing I remember was his white pristine gloves moving to the wooden exit, the blood dripping down his hand, and the sound echoing in my head before everything went black.