Paige Proper

Fourth Hour

Fiction Story

Flower

"Love is like a flower; even the most beautiful kind dies."

The night was chilly and the city was still buzzing with activity. Tomorrow was the beginning of a new year and drinking parties could be found in almost every building, except one that is. The small, obscure building down the street looked abandoned. On the other hand, was it? Deep inside, past the curving halls, adjacent the grimy and somewhat bloody sink was a door. A door leads to a ghastly scene, so horrific that the stench alone would cause a dog to whine and cry out.

A man is working on his latest specimen, a young woman in her late twenties. His eyes flicker with amusement as she tries to struggle her way out of the restraints. The saw he uses to cut them up lies in front of the trapped girl, in plain sight. Teasing her, he walks toward it and grabs the plug. Swinging it around and whistling a happy tune, he walks toward the electric socket. When she starts to try to scream out, he only laughs at her. Her efforts seem worthless when he turns it on; the screeching of the saw drowns out her struggles as he starts to cut her up alive. The last conscious sight she saw was his green and blue eyes.

In a middle-class type of neighborhood on the other side of town, a girl was trying to drown out the sounds of happiness and spirits as her parents threw a party on the lower level of their home. Heavy metal music was blasting; a bloody knife lay on a piece of cloth on the desk next to a laptop. The girl sat in the chair; her arms were dripping with crimson fluid while she quietly read the text on the computer screen—her eyes were charcoal black. She was reading the Raven, by famous author Edgar Allan Poe. The language of the stories and poems fascinated her to the point of obsession. Secretly she wished that she could die in the manner of an Edgar Allan Poe story. Suddenly, she slammed her computer shut and started to rampage around the room. Grabbing her backpack and tying her black hair up in ponytail, she hops out her bedroom window onto a branch.

Cleaning up his from his last psychotic episode, the man grabs his black coat and glove to go out for a stroll to clear his head. First, he stops in the disgusting bathroom. Quickly cleaning his face up a little more, he pauses for a moment to examine him in the mirror. A face covered with stubble and a thin layer of soap scum looks back at him. He tries to smooth his brown hair down, trying to control the disheveled mess. Satisfied with his efforts, he continues out of the building.

The breeze greats him as he walks outside. People walking past notice he is wearing only one glove; it is a bright red one, covered with grit. He ignores them and starts to sing a song in Russian. However, the chills and shivers come over him and he starts to shake. He is mumbling to himself in a gruff Russian accent that tells he is actually not Russian,

"Not again, not this early." He quickly turns into an alley and leans up against the slimly wall. Silently trying to control his breathing, he wrings his hands. A tiny gasp comes from the end of the alley; the man looks toward to darkness. Finally! He starts toward the noise and gropes around in the darkness. When he touches hair, he yanks hard and drags the noisemaker into the light. It was a girl! He grabs the small bat he keeps at all times from his coat and beats the young woman over the head.

The girl awakes in a cold room; she is lying on a metal operating table. When her eyes adjust to the shining bright light, she is face to face with a scruffy, older looking man with one green eye and a blue one. He is looking at her face and absorbing every single detail. She can feel his breathe on her cheek. He realizes that she is awake and backs away, right into the cabinet behind him. The tools and papers scatter. "Who are you?" The girl is drawn to his dark and sultry voice.

"Annabel Lee. And yours?" The man wonders why she is not screaming yet. He still tries to control his rapid breathing.

"Well, since your life is going to be short. Nikolai."

"Alright then, get on with it." She then mumbled something under her breath that sounded like, "Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream." Nikolai was taken aback.

"And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes, of the beautiful Annabel Lee." Poor Annabel Lee, all she wants is for this psychopath to kill her. When she thought that all hope was lost, Nikolai comes over and begins to stab her monstrously. "You're the most beautiful girl I have ever seen."

"And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side, of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, in the sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the sounding sea." She finished the poem and took her last breath.

Nikolai shudders and finds himself unable to breathe steady. He starts to shake and sweat, overcome with grief. Without thinking clearly, he runs to the stairs that lead to the roof. He falls and flails about. Soon again, on his feet, Nikolai continues his ascension to the roof. As soon as he got to the top, he ran to the edge. Looking below, he closed his eyes and jumped.

In the early morning hours, the sky was still black. Below, the mangled and disfigured body of Nikolai lay in pool of his own blood and brains. When the workers emerged from their homes that morning, he would be found. A little rabbit appeared near the dead body suddenly, how it got there, is a mystery. It started to nibble at the dead body; foam was around its mouth.