The Black Rose

Black roses do not exist naturally; In the language of flowers, roses have many different meanings, with black roses specifically symbolizing ideas such as hatred, despair, and death.

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She awoke to the sound of something scratching her windows. She looked into the night and saw that it was just the tree branches. Satisfied, she went back to sleep, unaware of what lay ahead.

The following evening, she went out for a walk, taking a pumpkin with her to drop off at the annual fall pumpkin contest. She came across an abandoned house. She curiously went inside, carefully stepping past the debris. On the inside, the house looked as if it had been deserted for at least a few decades, with cobwebs in every corner, and loose floorboards getting ripped apart by stray weeds. But when she stepped outside into the backyard, she was surprised to find a fresh patch of roses growing. There were seventeen roses all full-grown in a specific shape. One rose was in the middle, while the other sixteen lay around it in a circle. Stepping back, she realized the order of the roses created another flower; the chrysanthemum. From prior knowledge, she had read somewhere that the chrysanthemum was considered unlucky and represented death.

“Woah,” She thought, “Pretty garden but a lot of thought into this.”

The rose in the middle was pure black, the color you would typically find in a dead rose. But to her shock, the rose in the middle was perfectly healthy. The roses around the black rose were a ray of different bright colors, such as red, orange, bright yellow, pink, bright green, blue, purple, and white. She kept her pumpkin on the side and took her camera out to take a picture. Right as the camera flashed, she heard something rustle by. She thought it sounded eerily familiar, but not wanting to find out what it was, she sprinted out of the abandoned house and back into the busy city streets of Chicago. She went to her apartment which she shared with two of her close friends. On arriving, she realized she had left the pumpkin at the abandoned house, and decided to go back tomorrow, fearing that whatever had been there would make an appearance at dark. Thinking about the eerie noise, she felt a shiver up her spine and turned around, almost screaming when she found one of her friends, Emilia, behind her.

“Luna. Go away. We don’t want you here. You will kill us all.” Emilia whispered

“I can’t go! I live here. And what is this nonsense about me killing you???”

“Please go. You’re hurting us...”

Tears rolled down Emilia’s eyes, and her lips were quivering. All of a sudden, her eyes rolled back and she dropped down, crashing into a nearby table lamp. At the sound of the crash, her other roommate, Bella, came rushing in, bending over Emilia, who now had blood running through her blonde hair.

“What have you done!” Bella screamed

“I- I didn’t do anything she just dropped!”

“Well don’t just stand there! Call an ambulance!”

Luna ran out of the room to get her phone and dialed 911. At that moment, the lights started flickering, and her phone died. Screaming in agony, she ran out of the apartment, deciding she would go to the ambulance herself. With newfound speed and drive, she reached the hospital in under two minutes, but still feared it wouldn’t be enough. On arriving, she had caused quite the commotion and only stopped yelling when they sent an ambulance down to her apartment. She sat in despair, head in her hands, tangled with her jet black hair. She heard the sirens of the ambulance and jumped to her feet to see if Emilia was well. She saw the nurses rush the stretcher carrying Emilia to the nearest room, and followed them and Bella in. They were instantly kicked out, and left in the waiting room. The killing anticipation was enough to get Bella to start raging.

“This is all your fault.” Bella cried

“My fault?! I just came home! I don’t even know what happened. She must have been having a seizure. She was saying weird things to me-”

“What was she saying???!!!”

“Uh, something about wanting me to leave because I would harm you guys-”

“THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU LEAVE!!!!!!???? WAS SHE NOT TELLING YOU THAT YOU WERE DANGEROUS?”

“I WAS IN SHOCK, OK? I DIDN’T EVEN TOUCH HER!”

Bella stood up and charged toward Luna, tripping over one of the chairs and blacking out. The sudden silence was shocking, and Luna froze midstep toward Bella. Bella’s usual fiery red hair was dulling slowly and simply turned gray right before Luna’s eyes. She screamed and fell backward, sliding away from Bella. She called for a nurse and to her dismay, nobody came. Finding some responsibility for Bella’s crash, she got up and decided to carry Bella to the nearest room. Only then she realized that the whole hospital had gone quiet. There was nobody around. She left Bella in the waiting room and charged out, and into the room where Emilia was in. She then let out a bloodcurdling scream, realizing that Emilie’s eyes were open, but her iris’ had lost its blue color. She looked around the room and saw eight nurses lay on the floor motionless, all missing color from some part of their body. Five nurses were missing their hair color, two were missing their eye color, and one was missing her lip color. Realizing the pattern, Luna ran out and charged into different rooms, counting how many people she found colorless. She had counted sixteen when she had stopped seeing any more people with the color fade.

“Sixteen….” She thought, “Why does this seem so familiar… THE ROSES!”

Upon realizing the connection, she ran out of the hospital and towards the abandoned house, not caring if it was dark or not. She stormed in, nearly breaking the door, and stopped. In the backyard, the roses had all lost their color, except for one rose. The black one. The red rose was representing Bella’s hair; the blue represented Emilia’s eyes; and so on. It then dawned on her that the remaining black rose could only represent one last thing. Her hair. She looked at her hair and noticed it going gray. She stumbled and fell back, and tried to get away from the roses. Her legs started feeling faint, her arms going limp. Right as her life flashed before her eyes, she had the sudden intensity to find the pumpkin. There it was, right where she left it. Rotting. After sitting there for less than a day. She looked over at the black rose and saw that although her hair color was fading, the rose stayed black. She heard the eerie rustling one last time and then-

Darkness.

Thank You for Reading!

Kashika Paul