Strawberries

A Chapter by Lulu

The thing about surprises is, you never see them coming. Poppy Caraway generally tried to refrain from being surprised, her father had always told her as a child that one surprise too many was the best way he knew of to be killed. Time had taught Poppy that he had been right. Time had taught her father, too, but the probability of any lasting effect on the man had somewhat diminished with his death, which just so happened to be the event that had taught Poppy the truth in his words.

But that was a long time ago.

Even the most memorable lessons lose their sway in time, getting lost in the sea of bad ideas and amoral lessons Poppy found herself both having and learning.

She would never cease to wonder whether it was her own forgetfulness that had caused her to be surprised that day, if she could have done anything to see it coming if she hadn’t started to develop a sour taste in her mouth whenever she thought about her father and his philosophies, and so had unconsciously began to eschew any mindsets brought on because of them.

Between you and me, though, there’s not much one can do to stop a bomb from going off once you’ve passed a certain point.

All Poppy really remembered was what she had been doing immediately before the incident, sitting. Sitting on a park bench, hiding out in a small town just north of a slightly less small town, eating a crepe she had bought from a vendor a few yards down the road. The air, she would always recall when telling the story, smelled strongly of strawberries.

After the explosion, all Poppy could smell was her own charred flesh and burnt hair, the cries of the small town filled her ears as she felt the vibrations in the rocks and debris piled around her. Townspeople trying to dig others out, she realized, the edges of her vision starting to blur. The last thing she was ever able to tell anyone about the incident after that was the blinding light that flooded the small area she was crammed into, wedged between a lead pipe that was cutting deeply into her upper thigh and had broken at least two of her ribs, and the sharp fragments of rock and plaster that were all that remained of the road. The light’s reach widened as, Poppy guessed, the rubble was cleared off of her and the villagers attempted to save her.

She had chosen this place because the people had skin like hers, she blended in with their dark tones, she could replicate their strange accent, she hadn’t considered the repercussions this might have. She had, perhaps, hidden herself too well this time, dissolved into the crowd too efficiently. Was that how the game was being played now? If they couldn’t pick her out from a crowd, they destroyed everyone she could be?

If Poppy could have summed up the energy to sob, she would have.

She had always hated surprises.

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