Lady of the Flowers

I stood inside the small staff bathroom as I waited it out, really not in the mood for trying to sweep loose dirt from the stalls when it’d just started pouring rain. I knew I was just being stupid, but it seemed my manager had no concept of how dirt turned to mud once it was wet, and of just how hard that could be to clean. I’d been in there for a while though, and the rain was still sounding on the tin roof of the building. I’d just have to try again, and waste my time and his money. It wasn’t going to look perfect and why the hell should it? This was a plant nursery. I think people expect there to be a little dirt about the place.

The rain had stopped and as I knew it would, that loose dirt had turned to mud and had caked itself onto the stalls and the floor, and now on the bottom of the broom I’d been using. I calmly placed it back in the shed, just about ready to snap it in half. I almost had on my manager’s fat head as he’d come round with his umbrella to tell me I wasn’t working fast enough as I was standing in the rain, my overalls soaked from top to bottom, but I managed to restrain myself. I needed this job, I really did. There were only so many times I could go crawling to my parents for money before I had to find my own way in the financial world. I’d called it after the tenth or so time. I guess that for a job, working at the nursery wasn’t as bad as it got. I got a lot of time to myself to think, and the customers seemed less annoying than that time I’d worked the registers at the supermarket. I hadn’t even lasted out the day in there. And so I held up my head and tucked my sodden hair behind my ears before getting back to my pointless task.

There was one customer in particular that I even went as far as enjoying the pleasure of serving at the nursery, as she was quite strange in her manners. She’d come by every few weeks, or sometimes months, and each time would purchase a bunch of flowers for her garden. I wondered why she didn’t just buy them all at once to save herself the trip. I’d asked her that once, actually, and she’d said it was because she never knew which ones she’d need. I shrugged, not really understanding her. A flower was just a flower.

I made my way out of the shed and sure enough, there she was, this time after only being away for a week or so. A smile creeped onto my face as I watched her wandering about the flowers section, as per usual, picking up some punnets and walking straight past others. She always took her time, this lady of the flowers. She was always careful as to pick the right ones, right down to the kind of point the petals had.

She couldn’t have been much older than 26 or so, though with her hair back like that perhaps looked a little older. I continued to watch her from the corner of my eye as I watered and cared for my section of the nursery that day, careful to not let her notice. I‘d almost forgotten she was there entirely until I felt a small hand on my shoulder and jumped just a little, the sudden sensation not something that I’d been expecting.

“Excuse me,” she’d started, taking a step back once she realised she’d shocked me just a little. “Ohh, I apologise.”

“It’s fine.”

“I need your help.”

I spent the next half an hour or so walking about the place telling her the usual things, like where she could find each family of flowers and the price range she could expect for each. These were things she was sure to already know, but I couldn’t really offer any more help than that. She sighed, clearly frustrated that I was wasting her time, and then turned to face me once more.

“What colour should I get?” she suddenly asked, and I really hadn’t a clue. Surely, it’d depend on where she intended to plant the flowers and what her favourite colours were, but I answered all the same.

“Purple?” She scoffed.

“You would say that wouldn’t you?” I stood there silent for a moment as I took in her tone, and tried to interpret how she’d meant what she’d said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Ohh please, honey. You’re what, 26? 27?”

“27, yes. What’s your point?”

“You look much younger. But I digress.” A small smile formed on the corners of her lips, a smile I wasn’t too sure on how to read, exactly. “Your hair is too long for a man, and the waves far too perfect for it to be a natural thing. You clearly style it. Your boots. You look to have got them from the ladies’ section of the store. I mean just look at you.” I stared across at the lady as she picked me apart like some asshole from the supermarket would as I served them, not knowing how to react to it when the birds and the breeze were doing all they could to calm me. “You hold yourself like a girl, and I don’t know if you mean for that makeup you wear to be so obvious but it is.” I hadn’t intended for my makeup to be a secret thing, as I knew I often applied it quite heavily. I didn’t understand what that had to do with purple flowers, though. “Of course you’d go and pick a colour like purple, you ponce, but I’m not after something like that. I’m after something more suited for a man.” I sighed, groaning inwardly at the pain of having come to the realisation that my lady of the flowers could be a real bitch when she felt like it.

“Orange, then.” That smile widened on her face and she nodded, looking about for some, I figured.

“Ohh, that’s a much better idea.” There was silence as she looked at the tags of all the flowers that were orange in colour and I thought about wandering off, seeing as she appeared to be happy there by herself, but she’d turned to me before I could escape. “Care to come round for a drink sometime?” she asked. She had to be out of her mind but of course, I didn’t tell her this.

“I have to go, miss. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Ohh, I have.” She smiled once more before turning back to her flowers, leaving me to finish my work in the nursery.

I’d taken too long to leave, but it’d been her fault. She’d been the last customer out the door, having taken her time as per usual, and I found myself cursing this lady of the flowers all the way to my bus stop as I ran. Of course the bas passed just as I turned the corner, but running for it had still been worth a try. It was only an hour until the next one turned up but it was getting dark, and I wasn’t in the right part of town.

A car pulled up beside me and I lost my shit for a second there, until I saw who it was through the window. My heart stopped racing and I unclenched my fists, though I wasn’t intending to make much use of them, anyway.

“You look like you could use a lift,” she commented, and the orange flowers bobbed their heads from their place on the backseat. “It looks like rain.” I raised my head just slightly to see the clouds rolling in and sighed as I realised she was right, before nodding my head and muttering what must have been the most emotionless thanks in the world. She smiled as I opened the car door and got inside, the smell of the flowers getting up my nose as the confined space intensified their beautiful fragrance. She laughed as I sneezed and then asked where I lived, and I hoped it wasn’t too far out of the way for her.

“You look troubled,” she started, taking her eyes from the road to search my overalls just quickly for that little white nametag I’d forgotten to take off. “You look troubled, Brian.” I was just thinking, really. I was feeling a little guilty for having thought the things I had about this woman not five minutes ago, when here she was driving me home out of the kindness of her heart.

“I’m fine, really.”

“Would you like that drink over at mine? Some tea, perhaps? I really could use the company.” So could I, if I was honest with myself, but I didn’t wish to intrude. She was still smiling as she slowed at an intersection, and I assumed that meant my place was one way and hers another. “It’s no bother, really.”

“Okay, sure,” I agreed, thinking well, what the hey. She took the left turn and we drove for quite some time down a road I’d never been on before. She lived a fair way out, though not so far to call it the middle of nowhere. She lived somewhere, just, it was a fair way from town. I, too, wasn’t quite as close as desired to the bright lights of the city.

I think my mouth hung open as she pulled into her driveway. I could see through the light still available to us as the sun set the beauty of the place she called home; the old trees, the birds, the plants, and the magic it all created.

“I guess it’s worth living so far from town if you get to live here” I commented, and she nodded.

“But I like it out here anyway. It’s quiet, and I’m hardly ever bothered.” She led me through to her lounge room, each of us carrying a couple of the punnets of orange flowers with us to the kitchen as we went, and she boiled the kettle before we left. I sat alone on her couch as I waited for her to return, bringing with her two steaming hot cups of tea. The feeling of the scalding liquid down my throat was nice after having been in the cold for a while.

“So, the flowers. The orange ones. Why did they have to remind you of a man?” She smiled that smile again before placing her cup on the coffee table, veering towards the curtains beside where we both sat. She pulled them from the view of the window and revealed something quite spectacular indeed. Outside was so much colour, even under the poorly lit sky. The blues, reds, yellows, and deep violets that graced her garden in peculiar patches were dazzling. It was clear she’d spent a lot of time choosing her flowers, even if I’d known this prior to seeing what she’d done with them. I recognised quite a few of the varieties, having remembered seeing her with them at the nursery at some point.

“That’s… really something, miss. Truly beautiful.”

“Thank you. Would you like to view it from up closer?” I nodded and started to get up, but her hand on my chest told me to stay. “Finish your tea first, silly.” My eyes stayed with the flowers as they gently swayed in the breeze, as if they were calling me. They were talking to me, whispering little secrets in soft voices.

“Why have you planted each type in a specific spot? I mean, why didn’t you mix them up a little?” She merely shrugged and took another sip of her tea.

“I planted them where they were best suited.”

“Well they’re beautiful anyway.”

I pulled my jacket back on as I passed through her backdoor, the breeze not but a breeze but a chilling wind instead. The sun had finally set and the moonlight illuminated the narrow path through the garden of pretty flowers. It really was a sight to be seen.

“This one here, the reddest of the roses, this one reminds me of my ex-boyfriend,” the lady of the flowers was explaining from behind me as we passed them. “He’d clung on so tight, and it felt as if he’d had thorns. It took a lot to rip him from me in the end.” I listened as she explained the meaning behind a few others, stopping by some tulips as they caught my eye.

“I planted the tulips for this girl I knew in high school who’d always beat me in running races and shove it in my face afterwards. She had really long legs, kinda like tulips.”

“Why would you plant a bunch of flowers for someone you don’t like?” I asked after a while, but I received no reply. She was still right behind me though, and so I thought that perhaps she just didn’t have an answer.

“Over here is where those orange ones will go,” she said softly, or perhaps in a normal tone. It was getting harder to hear things as I felt myself becoming distanced from them. I squinted into the darkness before me, but something had broken my concentration. A rat scurried past my feet and into that same darkness, and then another straight after. Rats in such a beautiful garden? I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to. I tried to see what they were chasing after, if anything, but I could hear that they were still there in that same spot.

“You have rats in your garden,” I called out, but I could hardly hear my own voice as my ears began ringing. I thought to call her name as I turned to find she wasn’t there, and then turned again to see down the other direction in which the path twisted, but I came to the realisation that I’d never actually caught it. “Lady? Lady of the flowers?” I heard a distinct giggle right behind me and turned, just in time to see the back of a shovel hit me square in the head. I fell to the ground then before my limbs got heavier and my thoughts more out of control. Had she just attacked me? I wasn’t usually so weak. She’d probably put something in my tea, I realised too late. I found myself slipping away as I thought of what she’d want with the ponce from the nursery, but I wasn’t given enough time before everything went dark and the sound all about me disappeared entirely.

I woke with soil pressed to one side of my face, and a rather sore forehead. I went to massage it to soothe the pain, but my hands wouldn’t reach my face. They were bound with rope and it didn’t take me all too long to find the same rope wrapped about my ankles. Panic set in pretty fast after coming to those few realisations. Not too far from where I lay I could hear something; a noise, the sound of someone digging, perhaps. I winced as I tried to free my hands and the rope only burnt my skin each time I rotated my wrists, probably leaving some nasty burning marks across them. But it was worth a try. I was willing to try anything. I’d got myself into some sort of situation, and I was sure I wasn’t going to enjoy whatever else was to come. Not only could my lady of the flowers be a bitch but it seemed she played a pretty good psychopath, too.

A rat ran straight past my head and over my chest as I lay on the ground, scaring the wits out of me as I hadn’t expected it in the slightest. I remembered there had been rats before and realised I was in the same place by the tulips, and their swaying had since ceased. I rolled over to see where all these rats were going to, and instantly regretted that decision. If I hadn’t already been scared and stressed beyond what I knew was possible, then I certainly was as I found myself faced with the half buried corpse of a decaying man, the rats crawling in and out from places within him that shouldn’t have been open like that. I screamed and it came out rather girly, which was what I’d expected to hear if I’d ever felt the need to scream. I couldn’t pull my gaze from the body lying but inches from mine. His face was quite masculine, from what I could make of it, and his hair cut fairly short. He looked well suited to orange flowers, or something of the like, and I suddenly realised her game. I took a closer look at the tulips beside me, and then at the rest of the flowers I could see. All these personalities were here, but not merely trapped within the image of a flower. I gasped as I came to this realisation and hurried to sit myself up, that noise from before becoming more and more apparent as it rang out through my head. In the distance I could see a figure in a tattered white dress, the mud staining several inches up from the hem. It was her, this lady of the flowers, and she was indeed digging.

“Please miss,” I began, trying to stop my voice from shaking. “Please release me. I don’t understand!”

“But I need you, Brian,” she replied, digging faster and deeper. “I’ve always wanted dainty purple flowers in my garden…” I turned my head towards the decaying man once again and then back to the woman still digging frantically, determined to talk my way out of it.

“I beg you, please. I won’t say a word of it to anyone, I swear! I’ve done some bad things in the past too, but it’s okay.” I thought of the one time I’d done anything remotely bad, and I’d only done it because I had to. I was starving and the supermarket never paid me for the shift I did, so I figured that it’d not really be stealing, then. Of course I didn’t mention this as it’d ruin the angle I was trying to come from, but she didn’t appear to have listened, anyway.

“Shut your trap or I’ll bury you alive,” she snapped, and that was enough to do it. I dared not say another word, but I couldn’t merely sit there and await my imminent doom. I took a quick look around for something, for anything to help me escape the situation and run for safety. I saw a sharp looking edge on the tiny fence that separated the path from the cemetery she’d created and crept over towards it, keeping my eyes on her all the while. I lined up the sharpest part with the rope around my wrists and started to cut through which to my amazement, actually happened. Relief flooded through my mind as I felt the rope loosening and the feeling returning to my fingers, and I had to hold back a laugh as I’d finally freed myself. I reached to untie my feet and then I was on them quicker than I thought to be possible as I ran through the pretty garden, looking for the way out. I couldn’t believe that I’d got myself lost, I just couldn’t, but I was starting to pass the same bunches of flowers twice. The wind picked up and laughter was carried my way, and I came to the realisation that the digging noise had ceased. There was nothing now but that tormenting laughter as it sounded from what felt like all directions at once and my own jagged breathing as I stopped to catch my breath.

“You can’t hide, Brian, honey,” I heard her coo, and it didn’t sound all too far away. I knew I was in with such a slim chance of escaping that it began to hurt, as she was sure to know her own garden like the back of her hand. She was the lady of the flowers, and I was not. I couldn’t think anymore as I turned about on the spot trying to decide on which direction to run. I couldn’t even breathe. I was coughing and spluttering from the cold and it terrified me as I knew how much it was giving away my location, and so I just ran. I ran in whichever direction I’d been facing and realised too late that it was the wrong one as I tripped and fell, the sound of footsteps paralysing me as I lay there unable to say another word towards a plea for my life. She stood there now, that shovel held up high in her dangerous hands. Its edge shone in the moonlight and served to only emphasise exactly how sharp it was, as if I’d needed that added reminder in the first place of what was to come. She was smiling down at me all the while as she struck me and I could do nothing but cower in defeat, her blows to my head the worst ones to have to come back from. One more heavy hit to the skull and I was a goner, my lady of the flowers and her hypnotic gaze the last thing I saw before I took the dark descent to another place.