by David K Mitchell
In November, we posted a pop-up flash fiction contest where participants had only 48 hours to write a 500 to 1000-word horror story in the theme “Ten Years After the End of the World”.
Our guest judge, L.P. Hernandez, read through about 80 submissions and selected “Tending to Dead Flowers” by David K Mitchell.
“Tending to Dead Flowers”
by David K Mitchell
“Shhhhhhhh it’s okay, it’s okay,” Jack whispered as he crashed his mace into the side of a creeper’s skull. A pasty teenager in customised bike armour. Poor kid. He probably never knew anything but THIS.
One firm swing, and the left side of his face and brain were caved in instantly, he wouldn’t have felt a thing. Jack believed they still felt, he had to.
Jack let the mace’s handle slip from his callused palm.
“I’m sorry.”
Jack fell to the ground, the soil below was soft and moist. A chill spread from his knees and didn’t stop until it filled every pore of his skin. He shuffled to the body and laid it on its back, wiped blood and brain matter from the side of his face, and closed the one eye that remained.
Jack had never been religious, but he said a prayer. There’s importance in ritual and tradition, even if it’s not based in sense or reality.
Why did he do it? Because that’s what people do.
If we stop doing all these things, maybe we stop being people.
Poor kid, Jack wondered where he had come from, and where he was going. His skin still had colour, his blood still ran red, and there were no signs of decomposition.
It must have happened today. He was still fresh.
Jack leant down and placed a hand below the boy’s neck, cradling it gently, and another under his thigh. He carried him to the back garden, holding him in the way a parent would carry their sleeping toddler to bed.
The garden had rows and rows of vegetable patches, and parallel to those were rows and rows of empty graves.
Jack found it easier to dig them before, when there was no body to fill them.
To the side of the tomato vines, carrot tops, and graves, was a shed and a small patch of ground with a blood red rosebush. A last vestige of beauty in a world of cold harsh function.
Jack gently laid the body into a grave, and again got down to his knees. He rolled one of the boy’s trouser legs up to his thigh. Tenderly placing a hand on his hip.
“You won’t feel a thing.”
Jack slipped a large hunting knife from a sheath on his ankle.
“Not a thing.”
Through gritted teeth Jack dove the knife into flesh, the blade parted the tender skin with ease and dealt with muscle and sinew much the same. Bone and cartilage proved trickier. It always proved tricky.
After time, and considerable effort, the fib and tib were both snapped, and Jack was able to remove the limb.
He wanted to get on with his day, but the air pressure had dropped and the first sprinkles of a rainstorm had hit Jack’s cheeks. He owed the boy a proper burial, not to lie out in the mud and the rain.
Jack removed his jacket and wrapped it around the leg before gently placing it on the ground. Covering the grave didn’t take long. It was shallow and Jack was well practiced in filling them.
Rain soaked, Jack carried the leg through the house’s back entrance and placed it on the unit by the door.
“Look at the state of me,” he said as he caught a glimpse of his reflection in a window whilst wiping his muddy palms on his t-shirt. “I can’t go to breakfast looking like this.”
Dabbing himself with a coarse towel, Jack checked the sun from through a window; it was nearly the afternoon, he was running so late.
He decided to ‘dress to impress’ to make up for it. He popped on a collared shirt and formal trousers. He wanted to wear a tie too, but he couldn’t manage the knot, a double windsor was way beyond him.
Weddings, funerals, job interviews. She’d always tied them.
Jack shuffled into the kitchen and grabbed two plates. He filled one with some nuts, berries, and a couple of cherry tomatoes. The other was left empty.
The plates were placed on a large tray, along with a small spindly vase. Jack carried them to the back door and slipped his feet into a pair of formal loafers. Carefully juggling the tray in one hand, he picked up the bloodstained jacket containing the leg and popped it under his armpit.
He walked to the vivid red rose bush and sunk into his haunches. Making sure not to drop the tray or the bloodied limb, he plucked a single rose and placed it in the vase. A thorn on the stem sent a bead of blood trickling from his finger.
Jack approached the shed and knocked on the sturdy wooden door.
He waited for a response he knew he’d never get, before nudging the handle down with his elbow. He stepped into a room of shadow.
The faint light that snuck through cracks in the door’s hinges showed a table, two chairs, and a large moving shadow.
Jack placed the tray on the table, pulled out the chair on his side, and tapped on a small solar powered lamp.
“Good morning, sweetness. Sorry I’m late.”
Lank hair, black ichor, and bloated white skin flew across the room. Chains pulled taut and the shambling stopped. Metal on metal replaced with the snapping of bloodstained teeth.
Jack unfurled his jacket, removed the leg, and placed it on the far plate. It drooped ridiculously over the sides and over the edge of the table. Jack turned a crank on the wall and a chain loosened a couple of feet.
Groans and grunts, the furious gnawing of teeth on flesh, and the gentle wheeze of lungs starved of oxygen.
“Look, your garden is flowering beautifully this year! Do you remember?”
His bloodied finger nudged the vase across the table.
Milky white eyes flashed, and blackened fingers flew across the table, violently clawing at Jacks forearms.
“Not yet? That’s okay. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
***
About the Author
David K Mitchell is a fledgling author from Cornwall, England. He was inspired to pick up the pen again – for the first time since school – by Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter, and was recently published in Speculation Publication’s Grimm Retold. He enjoys the weird and wonderful, and playing with and subverting well used tropes. He is currently drafting his debut novel.
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