Tink’s Prompt: FEARFULLY
” Any day a dead woman does not show up and ask you where her flowers are is going to be a good day. In fact, it’s going to be a great day. ” Abie Walden’s Grandfather used to say.
Abie’s Grandfather had been a mortician and after he gave her that little bit of advice Abie found she couldn’t stand the smell of flowers anymore. She also found that she had to close all of the drapes in her house just before Sunset and she didn’t dare open them until sunrise.
Sometimes she would sit on her couch with her hands clenched in her lap, her chest aching from having to force Abie to let air into her lungs and after a sleepless night or two she would walk through her house and sniff for flowers.
On a good day, she couldn’t smell a thing.
One day Abie was driving through town and knowing that her Grandfather had organized a sizable memorial service she decided to take a back road informally known as Pumpkin Patch Road that wound up and around the cemetery, it was a nice drive.
The sun was shining, Abie’s favorite radio station had played not one but at least six of her favorite songs in a row and it was a Friday.
She was sailing down the old gravel road when she looked out the passenger window to her right and there, instead of the empty field that would be a Pumpkin Patch full of golden orange Pumpkins by Halloween, was a field full of flowers.
There were purple, gold, yellow and pink flowers. The field was a tangled mess and Abie was sure if it could the ground under all of those flowers would be screaming and gasping for air.
Her foot slammed down on the brake and enraged Abie looked down at it. Her lips curled over her teeth. Her bloodless knuckles cracked and popped along her steering wheel.
” Go ” she told herself. ” GO!”
She did. She put her car in park and opened her door. She took her hands off of her steering wheel one finger at a time and then she slid to her left and got out of her car.
These innocent little flowers had turned up like an angry mob and demanded Abie’s attention. They wanted her affection. They wanted her to say how beautiful they were.
They were nothing like the sunflowers that she liked to grow from time to time. Abie’s Sunflowers had wide gentle faces and unless you looked up, you would never have known those blooms were there.
She walked across the field of flowers,down the road to the cemetery and she found the the mourners gathered around the opened grave. She drifted up behind her Grandfather and she whispered in his ear.
” Where are my flowers? ”
Gareth turned around and he could see police cars, their sirens off speeding up Pumkin Patch Road- the shortcut that Abie liked to take when they were holding their more heavily attended funerals.
He had a terrible feeling that today was not going to be a good day.
