The Flower Collector

I dread my daily walk home from the bus stop. There’s a man that roams the old graveyard, picking flowers at his leisure, he’s quite the local legend. We’ve never directly crossed paths but I’ve heard the rumors about him. He’s the result of an incestuous love affair and has never known love himself. He was beaten and tortured as a child, locked in his room for days on end. He regularly soils himself and he eats spiders and mice and maybe even human flesh and he sleeps with rats inside of the tombs. His hair is thinned and filled with lice and a portion of his scalp is actively decaying and covered in scabs while worms burrow in his brains. His long otherworldly limbs with near limitless reach is actually just his own body trying to escape himself. He’s solely responsible for all the missing persons in a twenty-mile radius. That he collects bushels of bouquets to mask his terrible odor. The only thing he loves more than collecting flowers is his rotted wicker basket, he’s never seen without it. This creep’s the reason I’ve been trying so hard to get my driver’s license sooner rather than later. 

Today my friends Eric and Julie thought it would be hilarious to throw rocks at him after we spotted him behind a tombstone, despite my pleas to leave him alone. They hurled rocks like insults, missing him with most of them. A couple tagged his back, he slowly turned to face us just as one last stone left Julie’s fingertips. It struck the wicker basket from his hands, knocking it to the dirt. His cherished assortment of wild flowers scattered into the weeds. A larger, bulkier object followed suit and fell from the basket as well. At first I couldn’t quite tell what it was as it was wrapped in some sort of red cloth that only unfastened as it rolled on the ground. Julie wailed like a banshee and started backing away while pulling on Eric’s arm. “Fuck man!” exclaimed Eric, and without any more hesitation, they both rifled past me as fast as their legs would allow away from the graveyard. I was terrified, but intrigued, engulfed in thoughts that were quickly spiraling, staring at him scrambling to grab the flowers and the severed head. “Some of the rumors must have been true, did he kill that person or did he simply dig up their grave?” I thought. I could see his spinal column poking through his blazer while he was bent down, groaning like a boar as he snatched up his belongings, tearing up blades of grass as he did so. 

As he continued gathering his things inside his wicker basket, he quickly glanced in my direction, doing a double take back at me when he realized I was still there. He looked at me in what seemed like disbelief as our eyes met. Still, I couldn’t avert my gaze, this man, this thing, couldn’t possibly be human. He faced me, and stood to his feet, he had a fiercely intimidating stature, I think he was the tallest person I had ever seen. I was barely able to process what was happening when he started barreling towards me at full speed in a horrifyingly barbaric fashion. The Earth shook beneath his feet as he trampled the flowers he was just collecting so carefully. He plowed through tombstones like they were made of Styrofoam. The wicker basket swung wildly in his abnormally large hand; his teeth were gritted as foam started oozing from his mouth. I know I should have fled, but he had closed a thirty-yard gap in an instant. My eyes were fixed on him the whole way, never blinking until he finally reached me. That fraction of a second I saw black felt like a lifetime, the world around me halted in its tracks. 

I remembered when I was seven and I found a bee dying of dehydration in a flowerbed. I picked it up in the hopes that I could save it, and in its final moments, with its last ounce of strength, it stung me. I cried and ran to my mother, she consoled me with a tale of how it was confused and it must have been a complete accident. It took me years to realize my mother had lied to me. That bee was defending itself the only way it knew how from what it deemed as a threat. It didn’t matter what my intentions were that day, nature is unforgiving and beautiful and hostile and perfect in its own way and sometimes it takes getting stung to be reminded of that. I’ve found that truth to be a calming revelation when thinking of my own significance in the grand scheme of life. Upon reopening my eyes, I could see the back of my body standing, twitching, my neck had become a bloody stump. I could feel his coarse fingers palming my head like a basketball, his black nails plunged into my skull. I looked on as what was left of me fell to my knees, toppling over onto the blood-soaked flowers. I had an overwhelming feeling of content as the image was oddly serene. I guess I had forgotten the allure of nature in its purest form, what beauty it can behold. I then saw the inside of his coveted wicker basket, he placed me next to the remnants of my new decomposing neighbor, their mouth was agape and full of maggots. A few squirmed out, plummeting just below into the most stunning arrangement of flowers I had ever laid my eyes upon. I felt a tear hit the top of my head, I looked up as he lifted the basket to his grotesque face, “Fresh as a daisy” he whispered.