Fiction: The Flowerbed Incident
Zoe J
Another offering, another gentle breeze. Another prayer, another spell. Life had just become a tiring mesh of colours and textures, with days in between. At least those colours were pretty. Florence, yet again, was tired. Between setting up offerings, working, practicing spells, tending to the garden, anything and everything in between. Everything became worn. She stepped in from the lush colours of the garden to the steampunk dream that was the kitchen, and promptly forgot why she came back in.
“Huh...this life is gonna be the death of me..” she murmured, before checking her phone. One notification. To-do list. Remember who you are.
“You are Florence Fallowing. You are twenty three and a half. You are a woman. You live in the northern side of Peatly. You’ve lived on your own since you were fifteen. You’re a practicing witch, working with both Loki and Persephone. You are happy with your life” she chanted in the bathroom mirror, eyes locked with her reflection. Somehow, that last part was always hard to get out.
The bathroom was cute, decorative and freeing. The fresh bleach smell from yesterday’s clean still hung in the air, the cat stickers on the cabinet mirror never peeled away. From the cabinet, she took an important bottle of Oestrogen.
“I really need to pick up new ones...or just a new prescription,” Florence whined, before popping a pill in and diving for the tap. One rough swallow and it was down. “I...better start using glasses” she whined again. Then she whined about whining. And then she thought that it would be best to stop, before a never ending loop of whining about whining about whining began.
Florence, padding down the stairs, dusting off both her black skirt and brown hair, kept thinking about how a whining loop could work. Going on and on, and on and on, about anything that was a bother. As she just started diving both into the ethical dilemma that was whining as a concept and onto her saggy couch, something rather worrying happened.
*Crash*
The building shook wildly, dream catchers dropped from door frames, an already cracked family photo smashed into the carpet, all in exactly one second.
What. The. Hell?
Florence first thought as she heaved up from the back breaking position she was thrown in. An Earthquake? No, this is Peatly, the worst weather we’ve had in three years was a mild rainstorm. A curse? No, I haven’t done anyone THAT wrong! An Omen? No, there’s no meaning in the house suddenly taking a hurdle!
All these thoughts ran rampant through her head as she stumbled through fallen charms and plates to where that horrid crash came from: the back garden
What she found there, wheezing in the back door frame, were two legs sticking out of her flowerbed, covered in black stitching. A pink plush rabbit had fallen a few feet away, collapsed on a bejewelled leather book, it too stitched within an inch of its life. This scene lay still for a few seconds, the running stream, the flattened flowers, the squirrels hiding in the oak tree. The scene of this incident resembled an oil painting so vividly.
Then the legs twitched
“Help me, please...” muffled pleas from the dirt barely reached Florence's ears, and the more the legs flailed the louder the screams for help got. Eventually, Florence snapped out of her dazed state and rushed over to the kicking screams of someone in...peril? She didn’t know how to describe it, but it was bad. Grabbing onto kicking legs is difficult, she was quick to learn, so she made an attempt to calm them down
“Stop kicking!! I’m-- trying to help!!” Florence wailed as she latched onto a flailing leg and hauled heavy weight. Pulling this stitch figure out sprayed dirt everywhere in a three foot radius, and the girl that erupted from the ground wasn’t too clean either.
What a sight she was though.
Her hair was divided in two, one side was cascading black, down to her hips. The other was an electric blue, chopped and frayed at the chin. Her limbs were worryingly thin, only covered by a red bra-top, a dirty denim green jacket and an equally mucky denim blue skirt. The most glaring aspect of her however, was that she was covered in stitches. Head to toe. This stitch girl spat dirt, grinned to herself, and then flicked her head side to side, looking desperately for something
“Rabbit? My rabbit and book?” A chirpy voice escaped the stitch girl as she stumbled up, scratching dirt and grime. Florence, at a loss for what to do, gently tapped the girls shoulder and pointed to where the stitch rabbit and bejewelled book lay. “Oh!” She piped upon the realisation, “Thanks! I like your clothes!” She said as she ran over to where they fell, and Florence felt a blurry of confidence fill her. “This your place?” The girl then asked, turning to Florence
“Uh...yeah...yeah it is”
“I like it! The flowers are super cool.”
“Thank you… I grew them myself”
“Really? Dude, major talent! Never seen such pretty arranging in all the cosmos!”
“...cosmos?” Florence questioned, tilting her head
“Mhm! Not a single dimension I’ve been to compares to the flowers I’m seeing here, no sire!”
“Uhh...who are you?” Florence asked
“Me? Why I’m me, indeed!” The girl chuckled “me and myself, myself and me, of course I’m me!”
“I mean your name. What is it?”
“Oh” the girls cheer dropped slightly, but it quickly picked back up “Well what’s yours? I’m sure it’s lovely!”
“Well, I’m Florence” Florence shyly responded, starting to fiddle with her fingers
“Cool...my name is-“
“LEIKO MIKI OF DIMENSION TEKETA 34-2. YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR UNAUTHORISED INTER-DIMENSIONAL TRAVEL AND COSMIC FELONIES”
A booming robotic voice had taken over the conversation, and a huge shadow fell over them. Leiko said one thing
“Ohhh...we’re really in it now…”