A rose.

       On my windowsill.

       That’s different.

       My cat, Ralph, dragged me out of my groggy thoughts with an insistent screech.

       How dare mother place this item on my windowsill! How dare she encroach upon my sacred perch? Remove this vermin immediately, and while you’re at it, the meals this month have been quite lacking-

       “Shut up, Ralph.”

       I groaned and sat up in my bed, flipping myself over so I could get a better look at the flower. It was a bright red rose, the kind that you got for your Valentine when you didn’t know them well enough to get anything better. So what was I doing with it?

       I stretched thinking that getting my blood flowing might help my memories do the same, but it was no use. I didn’t drink that much last night, I thought, ruminating on the previous evening. My friends and I had gone to a party and wasted the night away dancing, drinking, and gaming. Despite all the alcohol that was passed around, I was careful not to overindulge. It was a school night; I needed to be awake for...

       Shoot. ...my Anatomy test. The one that, in all the madness, I forgot to study for. I rolled out of bed to get ready for school, hoping that I’d have enough time to study on the bus. “Whoa, careful there.” My mom’s voice echoed from the kitchen as I tripped over myself to get to the bathroom. “What’s the hurry? You don’t usually leave for another twenty minutes.”

       “I’m taking the bus today.” I told her about the anatomy test before remembering this morning’s mystery. “Hey, did you get me a rose last night?” I asked.

       My mom shook her head ‘no’ as she poured herself a cup of coffee, and the smell alone was enough to sharpen my senses. “Nope, no rose.” She reached for another mug and said, “You called Emily, right?”

       I sighed. Another thing I forgot. Except Emily wasn’t a thing, obviously. She was my best friend since eighth grade, and I had been her personal Uber nearly every day since I got my license. “I’ll do that now,” I assured her as I took my coffee. I chugged it then went to brush my teeth.

       As soon as I was done in the bathroom, I gave Emily a call. She picked up quickly, which I took as a good sign, but groaned into the phoned as she mumbled a tired, “What, Ginger?” I knew her well enough to know there was no use in stalling and broke the news to her.

       She let out another exasperated groan. “You seriously forgot? I thought you had all our test dates on that color-coded calendar of yours.” There was a loud thump followed by a long sigh. “I can’t believe it. My best friend has abandoned me.”

       “What? C’mon, I don’t think it’s fair to say I abandoned you...”

       “How ever shall I go on in the face of this betrayal?”

       At this point, I could practically hear the cheeky grin on Emily’s face. “Alright, now you’re starting to sound like my cat.”

       “Your...cat?”

       “Forget it. I’ll see you in class.” I ended the call, the twinge of guilt that had been nipping at my chest quickly fading.

       The ride to school passed quicker than I would have liked it too. Stress always seemed to stretch time in the wrong direction. When I got to class, I was glad to see that Emily had arrived in one piece; less so to see her hairband being aimed at my chest the moment I sat down.

       “That’s payback for making me ride the bus,” she laughed and reached over to retrieve her makeshift projectile.

       I shot back a small smile. “Whatever.” I opened my school-issued computer before turning back toward Emily. “Hey, you don’t remember anything about a rose last night, do you?”

       “No,” she answered, seemingly puzzled at the sudden inquiry.

       I shook my head and said, “Let’s just get this thing over with.” I opened our virtual classroom and clicked on the test. “That’s weird,” I muttered at the error message that displayed on my screen. I glanced over at Emily’s computer.

       She followed my gaze and confirmed my theory. “Mine isn’t working either,” she said, then shrugged it off, saying, “Mr. Martin probably just forgot to give us access to it.”

       We told our teacher, Mr. Martin, about the problem and he went to his computer, scowling and squinting. He was an older teacher, but he was a quick learner and usually knew his way around technology. He fiddled around for a bit, every few minutes telling us to refresh our pages and retry, but no luck. It seemed that the program was adamant on being uncooperative. “Maybe we just won’t do the test,” I whispered.

       Finally, Mr. Martin shifted in his chair with renewed purpose and announced that he would print off the test instead. “Or maybe we’ll just do it on paper. That works too.” Emily gave me two sympathetic thumbs up as we waited for our teacher to get the tests, but when he got back, he arrived empty-handed.

       “The printer is jammed,” he announced. “Not just that one...all of them.” He shook his head in disbelief as he sat back in his chair. “I suppose I can give you the rest of today to catch up on missing work, then we’ll take the test first thing on Monday.”

        A smile broke onto my face. I couldn’t believe my luck. I pantomimed wiping a bead of sweat off my brow and turned to face Emily, only to find her scowling at me. “What?” I asked.

       She grinned and said, “You could have given me a ride-”

       All of the sudden, a piercing scream echoed through the classroom. My eyes went wide as I turned to find the source: a small girl sat toward the back of the class, now perched on her chair trying to pick her jaw off the floor. She looked like she had seen a ghost.

       I sat up to see not a ghost, but a mouse. It lay on the ground in a puddle of its own blood. The sticky crimson liquid flowed out of the poor mouse’s mouth and dripped down its eyes, pooling around its head.

       “What happened?” I asked, still fixated on the poor creature. We were used to seeing mice scurry about our school, but witnessing this was something else entirely.

       The girl shivered and slowly lowered herself from her perch. “I dunno,” she supplied. “I saw it in the corner and it was fine, but then it started running over here and it just, it...I don’t know.”

       I watched curiously as the blood haloed the mouse’s head. It seemed familiar, even though this was a sight I was sure I had never seen before. The blood flowed almost imperceptibly, slowly but surely taking what I would later recognize as its signature shape.

       In the mouse’s crimson tears, I saw a rose.

       They say when you’re performing that the first note is the hardest. It gets stuck in the back of your throat, buzzes through your fingers, but doesn’t dare escape. It’s like static friction; the initial push is the most difficult part, but once you get going, things get a lot easier. The notes flow freely, gliding through the air, finding their way into every corner and crevice of the room. Sometimes you forget the audience is even there.

       Like holding my breath before an opening note, I tried my best to ignore the rose. I shoved it in a drawer and tried to forget. My cat had his precious windowsill back, and life could be normal again. No more mice or miracles or blood.

       I went to school the next day as if nothing had happened.

       Everything was fine.

       Until, again, it wasn’t.

       This time it was a math test. Despite having prepared for this one, I couldn’t manage to remember the quadratic equation for the life of me. I hummed “Pop Goes the Weasel” in quiet staccato, trying to use the tune to recall the formula, but the words on my mental radio cut out after “b squared” each time. I cursed my poor memory, twirling my pencil as though it would write out the answers for me.

       It didn’t, but something else did.

       I didn’t notice the change until after the scream. It was a guy this time, some six-foot-tall football player. His scream was much deeper and more of a gasp; he sounded surprised rather than truly scared at first. But I could tell by the way he fidgeted in his chair, his face a shade paler than before, that even he had been spooked.

       Then it was there as if it had been all along: the formula written across the top of the page. It was in my handwriting, too. No one would be able to distinguish between my knowledge and the rose’s. I aced that test, no thanks to me.

       As the weeks went by, the rose proved its loyalty to me time and time again. Everywhere I went, luck seemed to follow. It was my own personal familiar, stalking me through the halls, darting between corners and doorways, skimming for the perfect prey to snatch.

       I squirmed in my seat just thinking about the whole ordeal. Sure, it was nice to get out of a detention or two, or to race past every green light on my way to school, but I quickly realized that wherever luck went, death soon followed. My familiar needed its payment. An A+ on a half-baked project cost the life of a squirrel just outside the window. Wherever I went, more and more mice met the same fate as the first. People weren’t quite sure what to make of it, and rumors of this crazy “mouse disease” began to diffuse. The only reason that no one cared to investigate was that whatever this was, it was doing a better job at exterminating mice than the school had done in years.

       At least they’re just rodents, I thought, not people.

       Still, I had slowly begun to accept the rose, as demented as the whole thing was. After all, it was a great help. Besides, I didn’t know how to get rid of it. It wasn’t as if it had an off switch or a conveniently placed self-destruct button. So in my drawer it stayed.

       Emily’s voice brought me from my thoughts. “What is blood’s function within the body?”

       I went pale at the word. Blood. I had been seeing far too much of it lately. I felt my hands begin to drum a quick rhythm on my desk chair as the posters on my wall blurred into a collage of swirling colors.

       “Um...blood...blood...” I stuttered as images of mice and squirrels blended with boy bands and movie covers. Despite how attached I had become to my new friend, I couldn’t seem to get those horrid images out of my head. They attached themselves to me, drawn like tattoos all over my body, waiting for the perfect moment to attack. What was worse was that the only thing capable of quieting these thoughts seemed to be the rose, which only caused more images to spawn.

       “Alright,” Emily started, her voice deep with concern. “What’s going on with you? You’ve been acting weird all week. Like your brain took a vacation to Patmos.”

       “You read too much fiction,” I rationalized, suddenly fixated on the desk lamp beside me. “Nowadays Patmos is just a regular island with regular people like me, brains still in place.”

       “But you’re not acting like it.” She glared at me, golden flecks bringing out the intensity of her deep brown eyes. “What gives?”

       I let out a heavy sigh, my hands wandering from the lamp to the drawer where the rose was stowed away. “It’s nothing,” I replied.

       “It’s not nothing.”

       I glanced between the rose and Emily, whose eyes were still set on mine, drilling holes through my cardboard defenses. I liked the idea of having an ally, but what were the chances that she would believe me? I was still trying to wrap my mind around it myself.

       Silence fell upon the room, the absurdity of the situation and the guilt of being a part of it choking any words that might have come out of my mouth.

       “Fine,” she sighed at last, gathering her flashcards. “Keep your dirty secrets.” She promptly got up and began to leave.

       I finally opened my mouth to speak, but it felt like someone had dumped Gorilla Glue down my throat. Doubts poured through my head as the distance between Emily and I only widened.

       Static friction, I reminded myself. That’s all it is.

       I took a deep breath in and let out a desperate, “Wait.”

       Emily turned back.

       Before I could change my mind, I tore the drawer open and pulled out the rose, being just careful enough not to cut myself on any of the thorns that adorned its stem.

       I threw the rose at Emily, who had reclaimed her spot on the bed. “There,” I said, as if that was a sufficient explanation.

       She picked it up to examine it, taking in its beauty. Even after several weeks, the rose looked in its prime. “What is this?”

       “A rose,” I answered, earning an eye roll from my bewildered friend. Then I added, “A magic one, I think.”

       She dropped and looked at me like I had grown another head. “Magic?”

       I nodded. “Possibly. Probably.”

       “Now who’s reading too many books?”

       “I’m serious!” I argued adamantly. “It- it helps me with things, then takes things in return. It’s what kills all the mice in the school.”

       Emily shook her head, still trying to gauge my sincerity. “A rose, sitting at your house, is behind the mouse plague?”

       I nodded, then rolled my chair closer so I could look her in the eye. “Next time a mouse dies, you’ll see. The rose will leave its mark. It always does...”

       The next day, Emily and I needed a few extra minutes to get to class after lunch. We made it, luckily, but as always when luck arrived, death soon came knocking. A mouse scurrying through the halls was pierced by an intangible force, seemingly well except for the blood that drained from its face.

       “You see it, don’t you?” I asked.

       Emily nodded solemnly.

       “A rose.”

       “What are you going to do about it?” Emily asked.

       We had switched places, her in my desk chair and me on my bed looking for patterns in the ceiling. “I wasn’t planning on doing anything,” I answered. “It’s been pretty helpful, and it’s not like it’s hurting anything.”

       “But it is hurting things,” Emily retorted. “If everything you said is really true, then that rose has a lot of blood on its hands. Or...petals?

       I scowled. “But those are animals, mostly mice, too. Everything that’s died is nothing but vermin, and it’s for a good cause.”

       Emily scoffed. “Good cause? Everything that plant has done has been for you.”

       “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, tearing my eyes from my popcorn ceiling. I looked at her to see her face contorted in guilt.

       “I didn’t mean it like that.”

       I studied her eyes, trying to find some insincerity in her statement. When I didn’t, I said, “Whatever, it’s fine. But the rose stays. I just started to accept it, I’m not changing my mind and trying to get rid of it now.” I laid back on the bed and turned away, a final decision made.

       The room was quiet for a moment. I heard Emily unzip her bag and begin to pack away her things, our sleepover coming to an untimely end. As she got up to leave, I heard her soft voice pleading with me.

       “What if it was Ralph?”

       I shifted in my blankets, not wanting to look at her. I had never heard her so quiet.

       She waited for my reaction, but finally left when I refused to give her one.

       Her words echoed in my head the rest of the night. Visions of my little Ralph meeting the same gruesome fate as all the other animals flooded my mind, but I quickly shooed them away. My rose knows me, I reasoned with myself. It would never hurt someone I care about.

       Turns out, I was wrong.

       Memory is such a fickle thing. Within a few months, weeks, even days, people’s memories can change so drastically that they have almost no resemblance to reality. People can even create memories of things that never occurred, confess to crimes they never committed.

       I wondered if it worked the other way around. Maybe I could make it so that I never remembered this rose, remember what it did for me and to everything around me. I assured myself that my success was more important than a few scummy rodents, but I was worried that the rose’s victims might go beyond vermin. It would be easier to not be able to recall any of these events, to have some sort of plausible deniability.

       What better way to forget than alcohol?

       I downed my first shot of vodka the moment I poured it.

       “Whoa, slow down there.” Emily grabbed the bottle out of my hand as I went for seconds. “You have all night to get wasted.” Even over the blaring music, I could detect the leftover resentment in her voice.

       I ignored her, knowing that any sober conversation could quickly turn into an argument, and grabbed a different bottle.

       “Okay, I see how it is.” She poured a drink of her own then wandered off, leaving me to my own devices.

       Big mistake for someone attempting to monitor my alcohol intake.

       Several shots later, I don’t know how many, I wandered through the unfamiliar house in search of my Emily. The house seemed larger than when I first walked in, the walls seemingly expanding past where they should, and I wondered if the rose had that kind of power.

       “Rosey!” I scolded aloud to no one in particular. “Stoppit with the mazes. I wanna find Em.”

       A few long hallways and crowded rooms later, I found Emily leaning against a couch and flirting with a girl sporting hair like cotton candy.

       “Hey Em!” I said with a wave. She flashed a strained smile, the anger in her eyes instantly replaced with concern. “Whaaat?” I asked, leaning against her for support. I heard her say something about drinks then idly reached out to feel the bright mess of cotton candy floating in front of me.

       “Alright, that’s enough,” Emily said, pulling my hand away from the other girl’s head. She gave Cotton Candy Girl an apologetic look and asked her to get refills while she dealt with me. “Nothing for this one, though. She’s had plenty.”

       The other girl, whose name was apparently Winter and not Cotton Candy Girl, soon returned with two drinks in bright red cups. She handed one to Emily, who immediately switched the cups around, then took a swig. It didn’t take long for them to start looking like I felt.

       We fell on the floor together, giggling like maniacs. “Camels don’t sound like that!” I said through fits of laughter.

       “I swear on my heart of hearts, it’s true,” Winter promised. Suddenly, her face went all serious. “Guess what I got?”

       Emily scooted closer to her, intrigued. “What?”

       Winter reached into her cotton candy and pulled out a small bag of colorless pills.

       I grinned. “Only one better way to forget than alcohol.” I nodded toward the baggie and held my hand out.

       Winter complied, dumping a few of the tablets into my hand. “What are you trying to forget?” she asked.

       I scowled. “I dunno. I forgot!” I said with a giggle.

       Winter offered the bag to Emily, but she just shook her head and pushed it away. “Nah, I’ll pass. My head already feels like a bowling ball, I donneed any more crap.”

       “Aw, c’mon,” I frowned. “It’ll be fuuun!” I patted her head, suddenly distracted by her curly brown hair. I gently tugged on one of the strands then watched as it bounced up and down, up and down after I let go.

       “Hey,” she said, pulling me back to reality. “You don’t need any of that stuff either. You’re drunk enough already.”

       I pouted, giving her my best puppy dog eyes. “Pleeease?

       Winter joined in the protest. She waved the bag enticingly and told Emily the same thing I had, that everything would be fine and that we’d have a blast.

       “Fine,” Emily sighed after a few moment’s consideration. She reluctantly took a few pills for herself, glanced at them as if they might explode, but then downed them with a quick gulp of her drink.

       “Whooo!” Winter and I cheered, following Emily’s lead.

       “Haha!” I giggled as I walked toward Emily, my step turning into a lunge as I stumbled over my two feet. Three feet? Two feet. I reached toward her. “Bouncy hair.”

       “Careful,” Rosey said. “Don’t tell these people anything they don’t need to know. You wouldn’t want me to have to use my powers on them, would you?” My face scrunched up as I shook my head, turning away from a group of peers in the corner.

       I heard the mice scurrying and I feared what would inevitably come next. “What’d I do, Rosey?” I asked. “I try so hard. What’d I ever do to deserve you?”

       “AH!” Someone shrieked. It sounded like Emily, so I stumbled as fast as I could in her general direction. I let out a startled giggle when I saw the blurred mess on the living room floor.

       “Hehe, cotton candy with strawberry syrup!”

       Kids are absolute idiots. When we’re kids, we don’t know anything about this world or its booby traps. We live in our own little bubble, truly blissfully ignorant. Everything we do as kids seems so innocent; we don’t know any better.

       I knew better, though. I knew better than to be so hesitant, to think that I could look the other way and everything would end up all jolly and swell.

       All of the sudden, I heard a high-pitched scream coming from outside. I rushed to my window, clutching the wall next to it as a wave of dizziness overcame me. It felt like lava was pooling into my stomach as I regained my balance and pulled my blinds open.

       “What is it?” Emily asked, her voice trembling slightly.

       I heaved a sigh of relief. “Just some silly kids playing outside.” I plopped myself next to Emily, staring at the ceiling and wishing it would open up and swallow me whole.

       “I don’t get it.” I thought aloud.

       “They’re just kids-”

       “Not them,” I interjected. “Last night.” I sat up to get a better look at my friend. “Why wasn’t it an animal? It’s never not been an animal.”

       Emily shook her head. Her eyes, normally bright with sarcasm, were dull and sunken. “Maybe there weren’t any animals nearby. Maybe the rose needed something bigger than an animal. Maybe it just wanted to piss us off after we did something that stupid, or maybe we should never have trusted it at all, I don’t know, Ginger.” Her eyes brightened considerably as she said it, but now they glowed with anger.

       I faced her burning eyes with my watering ones. “I’m so sorry, Em. I never should’ve made you take those pills.”

       She looked down, droplets of water fighting against the flames. “I’m sorry too, but that won’t change anything.”

       I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I reached my arms out instead and pulled her in for a hug. She leaned in for a second before changing her mind and pushing me away. Her eyes didn’t meet mine as I searched her face, trying to figure out how to comfort her.

       “I should have just destroyed it myself,” she muttered, her voice hardly audible.

       “What?”

       “The rose, Ginger.” She turned to me, her eyes begging me to understand. “I should have snuck in here and killed it when I had the chance. You should have killed it when you had the chance.”

       Her words felt like knives in my gut. “I would have if I’d known something like this would happen,” I argued. “I thought it was my helper, not a murderer!”

       “I knew.” Emily got up and paced, back and forth, back and forth. Her hands moved wildly- pinching the bridge of her nose, running through her hair, pushing in her pockets- as if saying something she couldn’t. “I really didn’t want to say this-”

       “Then don’t.”

       “-but I told you so.” She came abruptly to a halt and looked me straight on. Whereas my eyes were overflowing with water, hers still raged with fire. “And you didn’t listen.”

       She began packing up her things. I let her, watching her leave my house angry for the second time.

       She paused in the doorway and turned. Looking down at my desk drawer, she said, “Kill that thing. Soon,” then left.

       I debated her words for a while, too overcome with shock and regret to move.

       “I can’t let that happen again,” I whispered finally. “I won’t.

       My mind raced trying to find a way to assure that without getting rid of the floral fiend completely. I had tried simply not making mistakes, but that didn’t work, it never would. It wasn’t like I was Jesus Christ myself; eventually, I was going to screw up. Then the rose would  intervene, and I had seen how well that worked.

       I drifted back to the party, trying to imagine what it was like for Emily. One moment she floated about semi-consciously, life slipping away, then woke up from the haze to face the nightmare in front of her. She had nearly demolished herself. Then the rose intervened on my behalf, shattering Winter instead.

       No, there was no way around it. This was it.

       I got up and gently grasped the rose, taking one last look at it.

       Then I grabbed it by its petals, roughly throwing it on the ground before stomping it to bits. “It’s over,” I proclaimed.

       My mom called down the hall that dinner was ready, so I headed to the kitchen. When I got there, I poured a glass of water and reached into the medicine cabinet.

       “Ibuprofen for dinner?” My mom asked.

       I nodded, taking the medicine and draining the rest of the cup. “My head is killing me.”

       She gave me a look that said, “Well, if you hadn’t had so much to drink at that party this wouldn’t be a problem,” but didn’t dare say it.

       I had just filled my plate when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A bird sat perched on the window, calling to its friends, when it suddenly fell from the branch and dropped to the ground. I realized with a start that my headache had gone completely, far too soon for it to be the medicine kicking in.

       I didn’t need to look in the grass to know that blood would be pouring out of the bird’s facial cavities, the rose staining its mark into the grass. My eyes went wide as I realized the bird might be dead, but the rose was very much alive.

       “Everything okay?” my mom asked, walking over with her own plate of food.

       I nodded unconvincingly. We went into the living room and turned on the TV, the cheering of game show contestants soon drowning out my thoughts.

       A few minutes passed before the droning of the TV stopped abruptly. My mom looked to me, setting the remote down and giving me that infamous “we need to talk” look.

       “Are you okay?” She echoed her previous inquiry, but this time it carried more weight.

       I glanced between the blank TV and my plate, pretending to be fascinated with my meatloaf. “Yeah, why?” I asked as though there wasn’t an elephant in the room, staggering about and slurring everything she tried to say.

       “Because this is the fourth time you’ve come home like this. I’m worried about you.” She turned toward me completely and I could feel her eyes on me, begging me look at her, too.

       I shoved another spoonful of potatoes in my mouth. “I’m fine. I came home in one piece,” I argued.

       “But you nearly didn’t,” my mom retorted, her calm demeanor never wavering. “You came home puking, you could hardly stand-”

       “I know, Mom, I was there.” Tears began to form, closing my throat and prickling at the back of my eyes. I stood up and grabbed my plate, heading toward my room when my mom called me back.

       “If you want to take this conversation in your room, that’s fine by me, but we need to talk about this.”

       “No, we don’t,” I said firmly, still facing away from her.

       “Yes, we do,” she insisted. At my protest, she added, “We do because you’re my daughter and I care about you. You could have gotten seriously hurt last night.” Her voice was aching.

       I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I stayed facing away from her, the tears that had threatened to fall now flowing freely. I solemnly nodded, hardly trusting my voice to speak or my mind to come up with the right words in the first place. “Later,” I croaked.

       I sunk back into my room, hearing no further pleading from my mom. I headed toward the rose’s desk drawer apartment. I knew in my gut what I would find, but I refused to believe it until I saw for myself.

       I opened the drawer and scowled at the sight of the crimson flower. It was as beautifully intact as ever. If looks could kill, I would have smothered the rose right then. I wasn’t even sure that would work, though, considering the fact that the rose looked perfect when it should have been in pieces.

       I threw open my window then hurled the rose out of it, a strangled scream escaping my throat. It landed on the ground several stories down. I wished that was enough, that a few stories of spaces would free me from this curse, but I knew it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t.

       I turned back to the drawer, which once again revealed the persistent rose.

       “Argh!” I cried, my scream echoing the delighted ones of the kids still playing outside. I wondered when it switched. What about this world makes us go from excited shrieks to distressed groans?

       I slammed the drawer shut and wandered to the window, looking wistfully out at the kids on the street. “At least they’re having fun,” I sighed.

       I watched for a moment before realizing that one of my hands was embellished with fresh blood from where I had grabbed the rose. I cursed my aggression before heading to the bathroom.

       I was carefully running a damp towel over my hand when I realized that, despite the clear evidence of injuries, there were no puncture wounds. I brushed it off as the rose helping me heal. There was probably yet another dead bird outside my window, the price I would have to pay for this gift.

       But then, something stranger still: when I wiped off the blood, the towel came back clean. As soon as it left my body it disappeared without a trace. I’d never seen that out of the rose before. Every time it claimed a soul, it left a body behind. Mice, squirrels, birds, and Winter: all still physically present. When the rose cut me, though, it was as if it wanted all of me. Body and soul.

       What would happen if I gave it? I wondered.

        I shook myself out of my thoughts, knowing that I shouldn’t spend any more time pondering over the rose’s powers. I wasn’t here to study the rose.

       I needed to kill it.

       Life is always depicted as such a fragile thing. I supposed it was true; we could die any second. The moment I climb into my car to drive to school, the chances of me leaving this plane of existence go up. It’s not just our transportation, either. From the food we eat to the air we breathe, everything around us is killing us slowly.

       Life is frail, but apparently, the rose didn’t get the memo.

       No matter what I did to try and get rid of it, it reappeared on my windowsill or in my desk drawer, wholly intact. Every. Single. Time.

       I chopped it into tiny little pieces, dissecting each section of the flower before tearing it to shreds.

       I took it outside and burned it, the sweet, burnt smell wafting through the air. I watched the flames inch down the petals and stem until nothing but ashes remained.

       I even filled my sink with water and held down the rose with magnets, trying to drown any life that resided within.

       I dropped it from tall buildings, buried it alive, I even let my cat, Ralph, have a go at it for a while. Nothing worked.

       Maybe nothing ever will.

       I sunk into my bed, thoroughly exhausted. It had become painfully clear that the rose did not rely on its physical form for survival, which begged one question in particular: how do you kill a spirit? My room was lit only by my computer screen and the glow of the moon filtering through the window. I strained my eyes at my screen, and my brain slowly turned to mush as I fell down the rabbit hole of websites like “Could Your Stuff Be Haunted?” and “Beginner’s Guide To Demons.”

       I poured through story after story of possessed antiques, ancient evil spirits, and mysterious deaths similar to the ones I had seen, but nothing ever matched exactly. It seemed that what I was dealing with was either very rare or unprecedented entirely.

       I kept all of my hypotheses in a notebook. An entire pen’s worth of ink bled through the   pages, spelling out half a dozen different theories and even more strange symbols to go with each. The first idea I had was to perform an exorcism and try to expel any demon that inhabited the rose, but a quick Google search told me that there is no evidence of demons possessing objects in the Bible, so exorcism probably wasn’t the best solution. Never mind the fact that I was not a leader in the Christian church and had neither the authority nor know-how to perform such a task.

       I then looked to other cultures and their many ways of getting rid of evil spirits, but nothing seemed to fit. The most unique part about my experience seemed to be that the fact that the persistent flower could regenerate as if my room was some kind of re-spawn anchor. It didn’t come back as a different rose, either. It was the same one, with the same number of petals and the same placement of thorns as its predecessor. I would know, I spent a whole day testing the darn thing.

       After countless long days and sleepless nights, I found myself lying in my bed, hardly any further than when I started. Granted, I knew lots of different methods of murder that didn’t work on this rose, but that information wasn’t exactly helpful.

       I closed my Chromebook with a sigh, succumbing to sleep.

       I had always dreaded going to bed. That was nothing new. Except that before all of this, going to sleep meant surrendering to the morning. It meant having to get up early the next day and face whatever awaited me there.

       Now, however, I was giving myself up to the terrors of the night.

       If I had payed close enough attention, maybe I would have realized that I couldn’t read the posters that hung on my walls. I would have stuck both my hands out to see how well I could tell one finger from the next and seen that I, in fact, could not. Lastly, as one final test, I would have willed my lungs still to see if I could breathe without breathing.

       I did none of those things.

       Instead, I woke from my deep sleep and glanced at the clock. 5:36. Too early to bother dragging myself out of bed, but too late to fall back asleep before my alarm.

       My room smelled like iron.

       I sat up in my bed, pulling the covers over my shivering arms. There was something small hanging from my ceiling, a furry mass suspended by a string. Its jaw hung open, its tongue pointed toward the ground. Drops of viscous liquid fell in a haunting rhythm.

       Drip...drip...drip...

       Over and over and over.

       Drip...drip...

       I grabbed the trash can in the corner of my room, lining it with paper under an old t-shirt to dampen the sounds. The dripping quieted to a muffled thump each time another drop of blood fell.

       Thump...thump...thump...

       I tried to ignore the sound, until-

       Thump, drip...thump, drip...thump, drip...

       -it began again, worse this time. I turned toward the sound to see another animal on my ceiling, this one hanging properly by the neck. I looked closer to see a soft brown mourning dove. It cried deep red tears, the sharp ticks becoming louder and more persistent the longer it cried.

       Thump drip, drip...thump drip, drip, thump drip, drip...

       I frantically reached for another worn shirt and put it under the dove, but the moment I did, more dripping sounded from behind me.

       Thump, thump drip, drip...thump, thump drip, drip...thump, thump drip, drip...

       I covered my ears, but the sick melody penetrated my mind, somehow sounding even louder than before.

       I’m going to need more t-shirts, I thought, turning to find the source of the new noise. I froze in horror when I saw what hung there.

       Not an animal this time. A person.

       I stared at Winter, my jaw hanging open for so long that my own drool added to the cacophony. I backed away from the girl, her hair still vibrant cotton candy coated in syrup. The syrup leaked out, utilizing every possible escape route. The skin below her eyes, nose, and mouth was stained red, a stark contrast from her graying skin. My eyes were drawn down to her hands when I realized that blood was coming from there, too, seeping out from beneath her bright green nails.

       My own blood ran cold as realization washed over me: I was standing in a graveyard of my own making. Everything the rose had ever killed on my behalf was here.

       This was my doing.

      The dripping continued to grow, my tears another instrument in the orchestra.

      Thump drip drip, thump drip, drip...thump drip drip, thump drip, drip... thump drip drip, thump drip, drip...

       My heart beat in time with the rain falling around me.

       I needed out.

       Winter’s body hung in front of the door, so I turned to the window instead. I tore past the curtains and reached open the window when I felt a sharp pinch on my hand. I had nicked my palm on the rose, resting innocently on my windowsill, just like when I had first found it.

       “Murderer,” I muttered, though I wasn’t sure that it was entirely directed at the rose. I tossed the flower aside and reached for the window again when something even more worrisome happened: my hands phased right through the pane. It was as if they had never been there at all. I watched in horror as my wrists began to disintegrate, then my arms, then my chest.

       One last victim, I thought. Me.

       Finally, the spell reached my head, and my eyes flashed open. I sat upright, frantically glancing around my room for any signs of the bodies. Nothing. The noise had finally stopped.

       I took a deep breath and let it out in a shaking sigh. A few final drops fell down my already tear-stained face, and I let myself fall back into my bed, convinced that that particular nightmare was over. I looked to rose’s wooden home.

      Now what to do about this nightmare?

      The last few moments of my dream stayed with me, replaying over and over in my head. It reminded me of when the rose cut me in real life. I hadn’t disappeared, but my blood did once it left my body. Maybe that last part wasn’t fictitious; maybe it was prophetic.

       I slid out of bed and reached for the rose. Even though I had hardly gotten a bit of sleep, I knew there was no point in trying for any more. Might as well experiment.

       Rose in hand, I pricked my finger on one of the thorns, willing something to happen. It did. Just like in the dream, my fingers slowly began to vanish without a trace. The effect moved slowly, asking for consent before going any further. I gave it, watching as the veins in my palms grew shorter before disappearing entirely.

       Whoa.

       I realized later, much later, that I could have stopped there. I could have rejected the rose, gotten my hands back and gone on with my life.

       Except, that I couldn’t. Not really.

       I thought back to what Emily had said when she first told me to get rid of the rose. “What if it was Ralph?” It wasn’t Ralph, though; it was Winter. A person.

       I thought back to every creature- every skimpy mouse, graceful dove, beloved dog or cat that the rose had killed. That I had let it kill.

       Then it was a person. A human being.

       I could not, I would not let that happen again.

       So I just watched. I watched my arms slowly disappear as each skin cell fell and disintegrated into nothing. I watched as my sleeves did the same as if the clothes I wore were as much a part of me as my skin. Then I saw as the same thing began happening to my legs, my socks turning to empty space that I could somehow still stand on. I felt my head begin to vanish, the spell quickly corroding each of my five senses. I stopped watching when my eyes left me. Then, all that was left was my chest.

       A heartbeat, still racing from the nightmarish drips.

       Bum bum, bum bum, bum...

       Bum, bum bum, bum...

       Bum bum, bum...

       Bum.

       As my heart faded away, my consciousness fell into the void that my body had already succumbed to. Finally, it was finished.

       The rose had never looked more beautiful.

Unrequited Love

By: Mariah Mendenhall

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