"In Bloom"

August 23, 2018; Fantasy Setting Short Story

Everyone has seen flowers. They’re beautiful, its true.  However, hunched over the side of her bed, Anthea couldn’t find a single beautiful thing about the petal sitting bloody in her palm.

She had prepared for this. Priscilla, her best friend, was oblivious to her affections. Anthea had kept it that way, despite knowing that it would eventually kill her. She didn’t want to risk hurting her and if that meant allowing her own suffering, so be it.

She kept herself from crying only because she didn’t want her thoughts of Priscilla to be tarnished by the blood staining her lips.

Hanahaki disease, during which the victim begins to sprout flowers in their lungs, is caused by unrequited love. Those who were unlucky grew roses, and lovely as they were, the thorns only accelerated the suffering. Though, she guessed everyone experiencing unrequited love was unlucky.

It seemed the rest of the planet didn’t agree. She’d heard friends and coworkers tell her, “It’s wonderful!”, that “I’m so happy for you!”. Even Priscilla congratulated her, and Anthea ignored the pain in her chest, stifling the need to cough.

The whole world ran on love. The planet itself was much like Earth, green and blue. The society, though, was far different. Here, no one cared who loved whom, just that you loved. And, there was no greater show of love than contracting the “love disease”. It was a utopia of perfect people in perfect places doing perfect, loving things. She hated it.

-

“So, you gonna tell me who it is?”. Priscilla’s voice sounded like bells when she spoke. Anthea loved hearing her babble on and on about anything and everything, even the boys she seemed so crazy for. That didn’t stop her from hating that question. There were parts of her that wanted so badly to scream some variation of, “It’s you, it’s always been you!”, at her. There were others that knew that telling Priscilla would only ruin everything.

“It’s no one you know, Pris, it’s unimportant”, the words stung leaving her throat, but not as badly as the round of coughs wracking her body. It would have been almost pretty had they not been dotted with crimson.

“You can talk to me, Anthea, I’m your best friend. I won’t care who it is,” she assured, hand coming up to stroke frizzy brown hair out of Anthea’s face. She was always so quick to take care of others.

“It’ll never work out anyway, there’s no use talking about it if I won’t be worrying about it in a few weeks.”

The casual mention of her death made Priscilla flinch, pity creeping up behind baby blue eyes. She’d congratulated her at the start, but watching her best friend slowly deteriorate was enough to change that.

Anthea hated how scratchy and dry her throat was, the hoarse sound of her voice. Since coughing up that first petal, she’d lost weight, bones now sticking out in places that were soft and curved before. The dark circles encroaching on her eyes made her look like a corpse.

A silence briefly hung in the room, Priscilla choosing to gaze at the sunlight filtering through the dust by the window rather than acknowledge her comment.

“Why does everyone think this is beautiful?”, Anthea mumbled, trying to save the exact shade of orange Priscilla’s hair turns when illuminated by the golden sun to her memory

“Love is a beautiful thing, Pris,” she was quiet, solemn, lips pulled down into a small frown.

Anthea wanted to kiss the expression off her face.

She didn't.

“There are flowers wound through my ribcage. I’m too weak to even leave my bed. I don’t even look like a person anymore. How could anyone wish for this? Why is everyone happy I’m dying?”, she wanted to scream it, to throw a fit, but her throat hurt too much to do so.

Priscilla’s eyes watered, shimmering lakes filled with unspoken “I’m sorry”’s, before moving to take Anthea in her arms.

-

Time raced by, seemingly trying to speed up her demise as much as possible. She lost more weight, bits of her hair fell out. There were more tears shed.

No amount of wishing or hoping could have stopped the inevitable, though. Priscilla was sitting in the harsh plastic chair by her hospital bed when it happened. She looked panicked, calling for doctors to “Please, do something!”.

Anthea smiled, despite the pain ripping through her chest. She felt Priscilla’s warm tears drip onto her hand.

She wanted to tell her “It’s okay”, that she loved her and didn’t want her to be sad. Anthea wanted to see her smile.

The line following the pace of her heart fell flat before she could.