154. After a bad dream, 3

(Rose)

I feel tortured. My bones are splitting within my flesh.

My ribcage feels torn open. Monstrous plants are growing out of me, feasting on my flesh, of my dying body.

I'm dying as food for terrifying lifeforms. They'll leave nothing but dry bones from me behind.

It's a nightmare made from fears and fever, more than guilts, for a change. I still feel awful nonetheless. I see myself being devoured alive, but entirely this time.

I can't overcome monsters like that. They're eating me, body and soul. There's so much about the nature surrounding me that I don't know or understand. I'm dead scared.

I see myself reduced to a clean skeleton, and the monster born from me soon in the shape of a fully grown ogre, in the flesh again. A monster that will bring countless deaths and spread evil and pain upon the world. All because it fed on me and I feel guilty again. Maybe I should have died.

If I'm responsible for the growth of an evil like that one, maybe I should have. I cry, but I refuse it. I don't want to die. I want to overcome this delirium.

I'd rather try my best to face the consequences of what I've done instead of giving up. Even if it broke my heart and mind. Even if it brought more pain than good around me...

I'm so scared in that dreadful nightmare, where even dying doesn't wake me up.

I see ominous flowers about to cause my doom all around me. The buds are getting bigger, as if about to burst on me. I fear the flowers they contain. I'm scared of what my body may do, or become...

My mother could create wonders I still admire and love... I could never become someone as great as she was. I tried my best to be as kind, always, as calm, as intelligent and resourceful.

I always tried to become that ideal woman.

The one whom was kind enough to raise me as her very own, and magnificent enough to give birth and raise three others, more beautiful and noble than I ever were. Poor wretch of me.

I always felt like sludge compared to them all, weak, lost, envious of their blinding humanity and philanthropy.

I tried all my life to become human like them, like my mother... While remaining the beast barely cleansed on the surface I always were since birth. My biological mother must have looked like me, obviously. And I feel so bad about it. No matter how hard I tried to be human like my adoptive mother, I remained a disgusting monster wearing a mask.

But would I try to give birth to something, truth would be unveiled. I would never be able to create a being as sweet and human as my sisters were.

I would unleash another disgusting being onto the world, like my birth mother did. How could I escape of face that?

What would come from my flesh, would also come from what lies in the depths of my soul...

I'm scared of that. Of what I can let go when my mask, my ideal veil, falls.

My passion for flowers is naught but a prayer to be exorcised, purged from the truths of myself, and transformed into something closer to my ideal. Flowers represent that peaceful ideal I dreamt of all my life. I want to be a rose.

My sisters, and perhaps my parent too, always felt or knew that something was off with me. That I was only trying my best to be a good girl. That it was unnatural.

I didn't trust myself either. I don't fully recall, but I must have done some things shameful once upon a time.

And I've lost my mask. I remember only pain, suffering and disgust from and for myself. I was still so young when I had this miscarriage. I don't like going near these memories.

But I was somewhat reassured when I realised nothing alive came out of me. 

And I stopped growing or looking healthy since then I recall.

It was after these few months of horrifying melting dreams that oozed their sludge inside reality that I began to look older for my age, instead of growing older.

I remember my mother crying as she held me tight against her, sharing my sorrow.

Memories from that childhood time are still fuzzy. I was reassured, and shocked.

There's a monster within me I need to hide from. Was I even ten? I think I recall my father looking sadly upon me as my mother tried to comfort me.

My love for you made me survive.

Why do I remember the most painful memories from my childhood now? I just want to live as kindly as a flower can...

I'm crying in my sleep.

~

There's this choice I can't make again. Something about flowers or monsters, I'm not sure anymore.

I try so hard to tame the monster within me, but this world only wants me to unleash that side of me I hate. I can be happy as a kind person. And I want to look like my real mother, not my birth mother...

Something awfully scary is growing within me. I don't want to unleash another monstrosity like my true self onto the world! I'm scared. These flowers around me are nothing friendly. They're like me, like her, just pretending.

Blume and I are the same in more ways than one...

Pretending to be flowers. Trying to become kind humans... Hiding our deeper self we couldn't accept...

I miss her... Even if it was only a play, I enjoyed that time with her.

Our time together was a play for and from the both of us. There was this tacit agreement, to spend time together, pretending, playing at being friends and humans, or even lovers...

It was all lies. A play.

Why would a monster trust or love another? She was like me just trying to survive...

I'm crying so much, I can feel that I'm moving in my sleep. My head burns painfully.

I'm doubting myself in my feverish dream. I'm doubting her too.

I'm doubting that she ever loved me as she so many times claimed it.

Was it a lie? How true could such a nonsensical love be? What kind of horrifying monsters would result from such an unholy love story? I can't see anything but monstrosities and suffering.

The flowers were just and only a picture of our dreams, at best.

I'm being swallowed by bitterness and sorrow. Maybe I won't wake up from this nightmare. Maybe it will be better if the fever kills me... Am I giving up now, of all times?

I feel so bad in this nightmare I can't wake up from. It's exhausting.

B - ... Romantic... Don't be so melodramatic...

My heart stops in surprise.

B - I won't let you die on me like that... And yes, it is because I want to selfishly remain alive, but with you on my side. Because I love you Rose.

B - I've always loved you. And I will as long as you're alive.

I keep crying but there's a more painful yet sweeter feeling within my heart now. She says she will take care of me and make sure I heal properly. My heart aches so much...

~

The dream softly changed into something less depressing. I guess my fever is going down.

Now I can talk again, and have thoughts I control. This feels almost as if I was awake., though I can't see or feel my body anywhere in this blank space.

The only true thing I can say for now is rather plain.

R - I missed you... I missed you so much. Blume...

B - I missed you too, greatly.

R - Where were you? How did you return?

B - I was almost killed back then. Though, not exactly. You could say I lost all my energy and therefore receded into not much more than a few seeds or roots here and there. Over time and what you did next, you allowed me to return slowly to roughly what I was.

R - You're alive... I knew you wouldn't die on me...

B - I did die in a way, but I'll always regrow as long as my very core remains. It's like... Your soul... Or your genes... It's not much, it can be held within a single spore.

R - The only thing I care for now, is that you're back. I don't understand what you're saying beside that.

B - Oh Rose... My kind, kind and lonely Rose. We'll talk when you wake up, don't worry.

I still worry a lot. About a lot of things.

R - Blume! Am I... Are we?

B - You never were a monster to me. And I believe for you as well as for myself, that what you put efforts in, to be defining you at least as much as what you fear could be.

R - ... Simpler words?

B - Eh eh...

B - I believe we are not monsters. We are flowers. We are the kind of flowers we both longed to become...

And I love you she adds. I still have a lot of anguish to evacuate, but now that she's holding my hand again, I feel comforted and almost blissful.

I would be crying and laughing at the same time... Were I awake or human... Maybe I am...

She's holding me dear and tenderly. Even if she's not human, she's what I want and what I can love.

I'm not sure if it does something, but I try to hug her back.

I welcome her back very sincerely. And even if she cannot truly cry, I think, I feel, that she is very moved too. She now only repeats softly I love you.

~