Constantine Botimer
Flowers
You find yourself walking down a street after dusk. The sodium light of the street lamps make the world appear
as a sepia colored movie. Plain buildings line the narrow street you walk down;; seeming to close in around you the further
you go. It seems like an hour has passed when you finally reach the door that calls to you: another in the series of gray
buildings. The plain steel door creaks loudly as you open it, reverberating throughout the empty street.
Inside, there is a dark hallway looming ahead of you. A faint light comes from a room to the left of the very end
of the hall. A shadow of a hand outstretches a finger and invites you to come closer;; it almost drags you along. You cannot
resist, and you slowly, nervously move toward the end of the hall and toward the light.
You turn into the room from which the light emanates to see that it is a small kitchen. The counter lies to your
right, a table with a few chairs scattered around it are to your left. You can easily tell that the now dingy wallpaper was
once a vibrant floral pattern. You walk over to the kitchen’s sink. It is a square sink, under a window. All seems very normal to you. Normal until you see what lies upon the windowsill.
Resting on the windowsill, growing from a plain terracotta pot, is a human head attached to an undisturbed green
stem. The head, asleep until now, wakes up and stares at you. Its eyes are as black as night and as cold as steel. It looks at
you. It looks at you with the intensity of a bursting water main. Its eyes pierce into the depths of your soul, hypnotizing
you.
Your vision slowly blurs, and you are no longer able to see anything.
When your eyesight returns, you are looking at yourself. Or at least that is how it appears at first. The face is not
your own: it belongs on the flower. You look around in a panic, seeing that it is now your head attached to an undisturbed
green stem. You attempt to move your arms and nothing happens.
Looking up at yourself again, you see a mischievous smile coming across the face on the body that was once
yours. Its piercing black eyes look again at you, satisfied. The body that was once yours proceeds to leave the room.
Accepting