Onions Can Grow Flowers Too!

A Story by Devinouse

"A flowering onion crop is not ideal for a good onion harvest, but the blooms are edible, and you can still eat the onions even after they flower." Onion Mother explained, all those years ago. Her voice only wanted to give Onion Child information but, in hindsight, it did sound matrimonially condescending, much like the other things she spats out with her crinkly lips.

Onion Child frowned at the thought, his utterly sinful flower which had sprouted on top of his head overnight, crowning his white, many layered skin with a gray finish bobbed down, as if its assortment of white petals could feel what he felt.

Onions live and get cooked.

That was one of the rules of the universe in which he had accepted forthright, much like “do not take all the water” and “make sure your roots don’t rot”. It was a norm that he had acknowledged but didn’t understand. Just bob your head along. Easy.

They are born from seeds, grow roots and get their rooted roots out of the soil and into that strange building in front of their dirt huts. He didn’t know what lies behind that rectangle thing with that white bulb on its side but he did know that, like onion layers, they open, revealing a giant. The giant always has their face shadowed with a giant layer of something that kind of looks like onion skin. Honestly, he didn’t know what that giant was. But everyone says that going into that square building was the hallmark of a great onion.

And everyone wanted to be a great onion.

A great onion, however, didn’t grow flowers.

They say that flowers suck the goodness of an onion. That was what their fellow onions told him but he didn’t believe them. He wouldn’t believe them! Ever since he got his flower, it’s been whispering nothing but niceties to him.

Keep it together! It would always chirp happily.

He didn’t know what it meant. Keep it together? Did it mean his layers? Onions did have many layers but peeling them off is so painful. Who would want to peel of their skin? Crazy. Bonkers. Absolutely unfathomable!

Like that word? He learned that yesterday in class!

If only he could conjure up happier memories about class. Most of the Onion Children wouldn’t want to come near him as if he was plagued with Black Root Rot or Butterfly Seeds. All of them shied away from him. Were they onions or friggin’ sunless sunflowers?! Just because he has a flower doesn’t mean he’s not the same Onion Child! Not even his Onion Friends approached him. They didn’t want to play with him. Why? He was the same Onion underneath all these layers! It’s not fair!

Keep it together!

He is keeping it together!

Albeit, he had to admit sheepishly, it was getting harder and harder to keep his head cool. It’s been getting more difficult to sleep, lately.

Onion mother and Onion dad had been fighting a lot just because his flower had blossomed. They smiled crookedly in dinner time as they downed their fertilizer in haste. Onion father gave him a grin while Onion Mother offered him a shy smile as they tucked him into bed.

He thought everything was fine.

It wasn’t.

They screamed and shouted and fought and…and he could have sworn he heard banging! But Onions shouldn’t fight each other. They shouldn’t fight in the risk of premature rotting! Only the giant can diagnose a rotting Onion since they couldn’t see colors, whatever those are.

School the next day wasn’t any better than home. The Onion Children didn’t do anything physical but the voices he heard from them…Onions were supposed to be savory so why was their tone so heartrendingly bitter?!

“I heard that when an Onion flowers, the flower is actually a parasite, like caterpillars!”

“I heard that when an Onion flowers, they start to go crazy!”

“I heard when an Onion flowers, their core is rotten”

Was it true? Was this flower a parasite?

Is that why he was hearing voices? Because he was going crazy?

Was the flower really sucking all the nutrients out of him, making sure he’s a rotten Onion?

He didn’t want to be a rotten Onion. He was a good Onion. A good one! Well-behaved, smart, funny and didn’t ask anything from his Onion Parents! Was he rotten to the core because of this flower?!

Keep it together!

Onion Child stopped, looking down on his reflection, his beady eyes staring back at him with that strange flower bobbing up and down with every breath he took. He touched his smooth, creasy Onion skin with a frown planted firmly on his face. It looked foreign and felt foreign, his skin, his face used to that ever-present naïve smile.

He wanted to keep it together but he wanted to know…was he rotten? Was the flower rotting him to the core?

Onion child clasped the base of his scape, finding purchase and quickly ripped out a layer, the tunic flopping uselessly to the ground. He felt the layer underneath his ‘face’. The skin felt fleshy and new but, surprisingly, it didn’t hurt. So, staring back to the river, he saw his face. He couldn’t tell if he was rotten. Maybe there was some sort of trick to it.

It was either that or he wasn’t rotten at all.

But…but he had to make sure.

If he was rotten then he could infect all of his other Onion Mates or his Onion Family!

Keep it together!

No! The voices in his head! Their just voices! Illusions! They aren’t real!

Onion Child clasped his head, his fingers digging into his raw skin, his Onion juices coating his fingernails. Still, he felt no pain. Onion Child clasped the stem of his flower and tried to violently yank it off. That was the source of his problems. That ugly flower that made all of his friends and family ward him off!

With a hard tug, instead of the flower, it was Onion Child that had blacked out.

Sid the Farmer was walking along the riverbanks when he saw a peeled Onion, sprouting a lovely pure white flowers, its petals reminisce of bee bottoms which was connected to a long stem of olive green with a gradient white finish.

Curious, he powered through the onion and ripped through the layers to check if it was rotten or not. Surprisingly, his white skin tinged with pear green (which should have been encased in a bronze sheen), was as pure as the clouds above.

It’s a shame that the onion had flowered, though. Onions that flower lose their taste but it was fine. With a flower like this and a core whiter than most of the jewelry he could afford, maybe the dinner plate wouldn’t suit this onion. Maybe his wife would love this onion for her flower garden. She’d been complaining her white gardenias were getting lonely. Normally, you wouldn’t put an onion of all things in a flower garden but the raw beauty that this onion presented was just a waste.

Now, who was the troublemaker that peeled his onion?