The Flower Man[]
“Where the hell did I leave them!?” Andrew hissed to himself, turning over the other cushion on his sofa in a panic. The rest of his living room was strewn with open boxes and jars and containers that had been emptied or turned over. The only thing not in disarray was his Mac running iTunes, which was set to shuffle. He suddenly remembered his balcony, dashing to open the doors and finding the small mint tin he had so desperately needed an hour ago. He opened it and rolled his eyes up in frustration, taking a breath while biting his lip.
Having sat on the balcony all day, the tin full of 5 or 6 small gummies had now become a large rectangular, squishy block. He thought back to earlier that week.
“I give you these hoping you’ll listen, alright?” Tre said, sliding the tin to Andrew across the booth table, he continued, “These can only help you so long as you don’t misplace them, and you only take one on nights you can’t sleep.” Andrew analyzed the tin, which had paint tape featuring an indecipherable script scrawled onto it in sharpie and had numerous dents and dings from likely months of use.
He put it down and sat back on his sofa, looking around to his living room. Holding the block of gummy he thought, “This looks like a problem for tomorrow me.” Taking a bite out of it he felt its effects almost immediately. His eyes felt as though they had weights attached, his breathing slowed, even his movement became slower over the course of the following few minutes. He lied on his couch in the middle of his ransacked apartment, shutting his eyes. As his vision blurred, he could have sworn to see something in his hallway walking towards him.
A piercing alarm woke him in a jolt, and he leapt up, seeing the time. He began rushing to his room before turning back and picking up his phone. “Christ,” he muttered, “I feel like I’m underwater, that dope is strong.” His movements were slow but uncalculated, like controlling a character with input latency. As he stumbled over to his room, closer to his cabinet, he began hearing a low, rumbling static, like a heavily digitized audio of boiling water. Panicking, he turned back to the door only to find it gone. Mustering a big breath, he swung his cabinet open.
A loud scream pierced his ears as a pitch black humanoid leapt out at him.
Andrew jumped out of his skin, landing on his sofa. Glancing around his still trashed living room he sighed, “To hell with this,” and tossed the tin in the trash, making his way towards his room. He swung open the wardrobe, finding only his usual suit jackets, t shirts, and the odd pair of socks. Grateful, Andrew got dressed quickly.
Now on the road, a cold wave of doubt swept over him as he looked outside his window. Little around him seemed right, something minor yet explicit was off about the buildings he drove past. The Dunkin Donuts, usually bustling at 7am, was virtually empty. People were on the street however they seemed impossible to view properly despite how slow he drove. Brushing it off, Andrew laughed and said to himself, “I need to stop taking that stuff, I hate these fucked up dreams.”
“Dreams?” a gravelly voice beside him said. He turned and saw him once more; the creature had a wide grin with countless teeth that made Andrew’s skin crawl and possessed no eyes, but housed flowers in his sockets. A new sound greeted him, the sound of millions of forks scratching an endless piece of ceramic.
Thinking quickly, Andrew swung the door open and hopped out of the car. As he ran past the people around him, he noticed their faces were completely indecipherable or vaguely familiar but with no discernable features. He stopped to stare at a woman; she had the vague outline of a nose, eyes, and a mouth, yet none of it was defined clearly, only implied and also seeming to shift or warp as she walked, or rather morphed, away. He spun in place slowly, taking in his surroundings and realized the buildings were equally nonsensical; their windows that morphed, multiplied, or divided as he spun and their geometry changed every second, warping and bending to his view rather than being solid. He walked, a herculean task to him at this moment in time, to a distant fire hydrant which twisted first into a small maroon dog and then a red wooden restaurant sign as he grew near. Turning back, he saw that everything behind him had changed once more, the entire street consisted of the same building repeated indefinitely, the center of the road populated only by the black creature lurching directly towards him.
He buried his face in his hands, falling to the ground like a ragdoll.
“You good, pal?” said a familiar voice. He looked up.
Blinking, Andrew looked around. The white light hit him gently, the sounds of chattering and casual jazz welcoming him. Everyone seemed to be heading towards the door. “Hey! Hey, Kravitz, what’s… What’s going on?” he stammered, rummaging around his desk and opening random drawers. Kravitz chuckled, “Sorry to interrupt your uh prayer. Thought you might want some pizza, courtesy of the guys in my sector. They wanted to thank us for my big discount on the laminated sheet metal.” Andrew gave him an approving nod. “Nice! How much did you give them?” Chuckling, Kravitz replied, “I dunno, it’s… I might get in trouble for it… Buuuut, I think I did good, I mean it’s some of the stuff from that old ass warehouse on Cranston Street.” “Really?” replied Andrew, throwing his hands in the air, “I’ll be damned, I never thought I’d see the day we moved anything out of that shithole, I must be dreaming!”
The music abruptly cut off and Kravitz’s head harshly swung to face him and hissed out five words. “The Flower Man is coming.”
Andrew’s face went pale as the lights began violently flickering. In an instant, Kravitz’s friendly demeanor changed; his posture became stiff, hunched over with a much more gangly figure, while his mouth contorted grotesquely into a wide grin that escaped his face, missing teeth or eyes while showing only void behind his lips and eyelids. Around him all he heard was the sounds of electric guitars blasting as loud as possible without a tune or rhythm. Andrew backed away, tripping on something he couldn’t discern no matter how hard he tried. Soon, all but one light, the one directly above Kravitz, had gone out and it became smaller and more distant the further Andrew ran. As he ran, he saw a light further out in the distance. Behind him, the Flower Man lurched nearer with every second, coming out of nowhere. It screamed his name, repeatedly, prompting him to run even quicker despite feeling like he was in molasses.
Making it to the light, Andrew turned back and saw the exit to a road tunnel behind him. In front he saw his house, in the middle of a sunny day. Oddly, he heard vague ballroom music around him. As he approached his home it once again began to morph to his vision. He moved his head around, only for the geometry around him to move with his vision; if he looked up, the building would morph upwards slightly as it did no matter what direction he moved his view.
“Sweet suffering Christ,” he grimaced, pinching himself desperately. In the distance he saw a familiar black figure making its way towards him briskly. As soon as he could, he ran into the building and was bemused to see that the walls, which once had doors into the public bathroom or the manager’s office, now had windows and paintings on them. In the background was what to him sounded like a droning, melancholic singer not so much singing but scatting to some ballroom-like instrumental with zero rhythm or tune. He stepped towards a painting, taking it off the wall to analyze it; it was a photo of Tre but in place of his eyes were flowers. Every one of the paintings was of random people’s faces but with flowers, his mothers, his boss’s, Kravits, even himself.
Andrew turned back to the exit, which had suddenly been replaced by an ill-lit hallway, then back to the painting only to see that he was holding nothing. Shaking, Andrew shuffled down the corridor meekly, his hands balled into fists out in front of him. He meandered uncomfortably for what felt like an eternity until he tripped on a ledge, falling straight down. He fell until he landed with a splash in an ocean, struggling in the water, splashing about before making his way towards a small raft made of logs. Putting his feet in the water, he paddled aimlessly in the sea, hearing nothing but the sounds of the water splashing with a faint echo. The sky was clear but very brightly blue. Andrew sighed helplessly. He ran his fingers through his hair, wondering why he hadn’t woken up yet. Looked to his left, water, looked to his right, more water, looked left again, for a split second he saw the Flower Man in the distance, waving mockingly before disappearing. Curiously, he climbed atop the raft and stared into the water.
Deep in the water he saw the most gorgeous shapes; geometric forms sprawling before his eyes as he looked down, many colorful polygons moving fluidly against each other, multiplying and fusing together as they moved while flashing into colors he couldn’t remember once they were gone. Suddenly, there was a deranged laugh, as the water began to fold in on itself, the water around him began to curve upwards quickly, uniting and making a giant cylinder of ocean before collapsing in on itself. Obnoxious, random drums and guitars began assaulting his ears, out of sync and out of tune. “No!” Andrew paddled fervently, feeling the water rise up to his chest, then his neck, then his chin, screaming “I don’t wanna drown! Mom! Please god, no! Help me, god!” As he felt the water overtake him, he stared down, seemingly able to breathe in the water, only to see the Flower Man, now hundreds of feet in size, torpedoing lightning fast towards him with his mouth wide open miles below. Around him were hundreds if not thousands of giant eyeballs arranged neatly in spaced apart rows and above him was the surface, so very high up that despite swimming faster and faster it seemed to only grow further and further. Andrew shut his eyes fearfully.
Opening them again, he found himself on the floor of his apartment. He looked at his clock; 10am. Sighing with relief, he stood up. Outside, he peeked from his door and only saw his usual hallway with the window at the end overlooking the city. Back inside his apartment, all was as it was the night prior, mess and everything. He trudged to his Mac, which was still on and blaring “Wipeout” by the Surfaris. Andrew couldn’t help but laugh at the irony, looking at the rest of his playlist, which conveniently consisted of Al Bowlly, Metallica, and Cliff Sarde. Andrew shook his head, pausing the music and shutting down his Mac. Suddenly there was a knock at his door. Giddy to finally be awake, he ran over and pressed his ear to the door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Tre!” the guest replied back. Andrew opened the door.
He started screaming; Tre stood there limply like a puppet on strings, mouth wide open, eye sockets devoid of eyeballs and now housing a pair of flowers, screaming right back at him. His surroundings turned pitch black and the two screamed.
All they could do was scream.
Leave Feedback[]
Close the space between the four tildes in the box and hit the "Leave Feedback" button to begin your comment.