Burning Roses

 

Burning Roses

            It was just a room. One full-sized bed with a red silky blanket and pillow, one antique six drawer wooden dresser, one small scratched up wooden night stand next to the bed and then her closets doors obviously leading into her closet. The bed was opposite corners from the dresser and the dresser was next to the closet. The walls were a beautiful pale pink and with the light from the window on the back wall it glowed a little on some days. 

            The room would be pretty plain and dull but it had one very special feature to it no other room had. All four of those pale pink walls of that bland and plain room were covered completely in dried dead roses. Now they were not there for just no reason. The girl who slept so uneasy in this tiny one bedroom apartment had been collecting them since she was three years old when her father had died.

            She didn’t really understand what had happened and why everyone else cried at the funeral, but she still wept all the same. Her mother had explained later what the tragedy was and then she understood. So her mother gave her a single rose to try and make her feel better. Though in some ways it did help her cope it also set her up for what her fate would be.

            She held that rose dear to her, never putting it down. For weeks it was in her grasp until it inevitable withered away and dried up. Though when it died it happened to preserve itself in its shape and looks as a dead husk. And since it was still so pretty in its death, she kept it. She took a tiny piece of paper and wrote something on it and then taped it to the stem right underneath the head of the rose. If you unwrapped and read it, you would see it read: Fathers death. January 3, 1986.

            From then on in her miserable life she started collecting roses. Every time a tragic event unfolded in her life she would buy another rose, dry it out, label it, and put it up somewhere to remind her. What they were to remind of her of I don’t know, all they brought were terrible memories. Though she kept her collecting, always saying to herself, “Someday they will serve a purpose…Someday…”

            Not only were the walls covered in these dead memories, her closet served no such purpose for storing clothes and random things in boxes. It too was full of these roses, and again, each was tagged with a painful event in her short life. How could someone fill so much room with so much pain with so little a life lived? But she did.

            The roses were in no order of thing as to where she stored them. A rose on the left was marked the day she was raped back ten years ago, though that wasn’t the only one marked with that, there were a few of those around there. Another was the day her kitten Mitzy died. And another was marked with her best friend’s suicide. There was another one marked with suicide in her closet. She kept that one in there since it hurt so badly. 

            There were a few marked with days she had broken bones, two legs, one arm, ribs, wrists, and almost her neck once. One on the wall above her bed was the day her brother was shipped off in time of need in a war in another country, and then the one next to it was his death a year later, killed by gun fire in the line of duty. She even ended up keeping the three roses she left on his grave when they died and dried out as well.

            She had one in the bottom of her closet that was marked with one of her family members death, her sister to be exact…she was killed in a car accident some years ago. And the one next to that was actually her mother’s death rose. She was in the same car…

            There were no other family members that wanted her, they all just abandoned her. So after the accident she was sent to a foster home. They abused her and underfed her, and made her work all day including dangerous and deadly tasks. Some days they even just left her outside all day and let her do whatever she wanted, but half starved and dehydrated, she was too drained to do anything, she just laid there in the grass and tried to grasp why this was all happening to her till she was too tired and passed out.

            One rose on the wall was from a dog attack that scarred her right leg, it was her foster parent’s dog. And then that dog being put down was the rose below that. Even though the dog attacked her once, he was still a better friend to her then they were. There were a few from being beaten there, forced to do haunting tasked. In all honesty, being put in that foster home for those 3 years had earned a wall of roses all its own. But that was over and she didn’t want to speak of it again. Who would…..

            Another huge section or roses was her nightmares. Every single nightmare that she could remember had its own rose. Though if you looked at the attached piece of paper it didn’t have an event and a date. All it had was a number and a date. And she had a very thick book filled with writing. You find the number in there and that’s where the story of the nightmare was written, and then you know the date and how horror haunted her head and made her wake screaming. No one was ever there to calm her and tell her it was ok…..

            There was a special box of these roses that had been hidden away in somewhere almost unfindable and it wasn’t meant to be found for a reason. In fact, written in permanent marker on this box was “Do not open unless adding a rose.” It was the most tragic events and nightmares and things that she never spoke of even while they happened. They were her skeletons in her closet. There could have been things of murder, or rituals, or arson or anything in there. But we’ll never know because she will never tell. Ever. Though it mattered not, they would all be gone in the end. Every single memory and event and all the pain just sent away in one final act.

            The list of her life goes on and on. It does end, because everything ends, but not without much time to tell it all. No one really knows her story but me and whoever you are reading this, though you are too late to save her.

            Thinking of all these things that suddenly hit her. She lies in bed taking every blow of every memory and every cut reopening of old forgotten wounds. It’s unbearable. I mean, sure, one or a few at a time she could handle, but today of all days they all attacked and the worst thing that could ever happen to her happened: She remembered it all.  And that was the only thing she could remember.

            She couldn’t take it, for even her tears were dry from all the crying she had ever done and she could cry no more. Why feel sorry for myself when I can fix this all?  She thought to herself. And she nearly smiled for the first time in a long time thinking about her solution.  

            She sprung off her bed and her eyes shown bright with the thoughts of thousands of bad ideas put into one unforeseeable action to come. She was done. It had been 27 years of life that should have been dead. She thought in the silence. “It is time…” Those were the last words she spoke.

She frantically gathered all her roses up, tearing them off the walls, dragging boxes out from closets and under stairways and opening them to throw all the roses in a pile. She gathered every last rose and piled them into her room. She went out to the balcony and got the can of gasoline she had.  There was no other use for it anyways since she had no car.

            She ran back inside and began to pour all the gas in the can onto her amazing pile of roses. It was a massive pile of painful memories and events.  It filled over half the floor and 3 or 4 feet high. She took out one last rose from under her bed. It was unmarked. She took the last piece of paper she had to tie to the rose and wrote something on it and the date and then tied it to the rose.

            She took out her lighter from her pocket, her eyes growing brighter, and lit the rose that she had just marked with an even on that date of that day. She held it up high, and then tossed it onto the gasoline soaked pile of black dried roses. The fire instantly roared in front of her. It took no time for it to start with so much fuel at hand.

            She watched, the room started to fill with smoke and the dampened carpet started to blacken and spark. She watched it still as the room of that small apartment started to burn slowly. She was so amazed…all these burning roses…there was only one more thing to do.

            She was done. It was over. She had had enough and now nothing more could ever hurt her again and she was ready for the time that would come. It was her time in her eyes and nothing was to stop it. No one cared, no one was there, and no one would be there till after the whole room was gone. She stared still and readied herself to cure her nightmare they called a life.

            The paper she had written on to mark the last rose she started the fire with had today’s date on it. And what was written on it were these words: My Death. She stared for a moment more, and then jumped into her pile of burning roses.