The sound of the fallen locker door petered out down the school halls. The flower-head didn’t turn around. Its purple petals shifted, each one swapping position from drooping to upright and vice versa. There was no reason for it to turn, it didn’t have a face to see me with. Yet I felt perceived all the same.
“You shouldn’t be here,” its voice creaked and crackled with hostile intent, like a wooden house on the verge of collapse.
I drew in a shaky breath and stepped out of the locker to face it.
“I need to see Nell.”
It toyed with the box cutter it held.
“You can’t see her. She doesn’t want to see you.”
The words struck deep enough that I flinched.
“Did… did she say that?”
“Humans communicate in many ways besides just spoken language,” the Flower intoned. “Facial expressions, gestures, posture, tone of voice all play an important part in conveying intent and inner emotions.”
“That sounds like you’re reading out of a textbook.”
The Flower spun suddenly and I took a quick step backwards. It presented its arms to me, embedded with sharp academic tools and engraved with words on every available inch of its vegetal skin. Sentences, definitions, fancy words and dry prose sprawled across its limbs like tattoos. A floral scent wafted towards me, earthy with slight hints of spice.
“She used to read them,” the Flower said as it approached.
I stayed tense, ready to move if it decided to use that box cutter.
“Within those cold white walls any book could be an escape. Textbooks were a particularly desperate measure, when she wanted to so overwhelm her mind with words that she could forget the scent of blood and so that the heavy tomes could weigh down her shaking hands. Now I hold those words within myself.”
The Flower extended its foot out and traced the fallen locker door.
“Those feelings are here too, the ones that come with blood. That’s how I know she doesn’t want to see you.”
The safety pin piercings on its petals, the self-inflicted tattoos, somewhere between self-harm and self-expression, this thing had a personality. It felt so different from even the intelligence of the spawn of the red Lacuna.
“What should I call you?” I asked.
The Flower said nothing. Its petals shook and then it bent downwards, giving me a full display of its changing colours. There was a yellow that creeped up the base of the petals before turning darker, the orange light from the windows of this place made it appear red. Sections of its brown limbs separated slightly, revealing green shoots beneath.
“You don’t even know what kind of flower I am?” its voice shook with anger. “Did you even care to learn what Nell loves?”
“I-”
“Enough!”
The word shuddered through the entire building. The Flower flung out a hand and I was suddenly yanked backwards through the air. The hallway groaned and lengthened, like I was falling in a dream.
I landed on my hands and knees. Bits of meat pulsated within the walls where it hadn’t properly filled in with brick and paint. Parts of the floor had fallen free and light shone up from below.
The Flower pointed the box cutter at me, clicking the blade out slowly, a segment at a time.
“I’ll carve a nice definition of death into your chest. One that will stick. Maybe then you’ll stay that way instead of coming back to hurt us.”
I turned and ran. It didn’t take long to reach the junction where the hole was, where the hallway went downwards. A mural had been painted on the wall above the pit, depicting a basketball player with flowers for eyes.
As I was about to turn the corner, the floor jerked out from under my feet. The entire hallway spun on an axis, rotating to put the basketball player on his side. I crashed into the wall which was my new floor and lay there, stunned.
She’s turning this place like a Rubik’s cube.
“Oops!” the Flower called out mockingly. “Nell never got to go to a school like this. Those daydreams kept spinning around in her head, I guess I can’t keep them straight.”
The pit of a hallway was now a path, although it was rotated so that a wall was the floor. I picked myself up and dashed down the hallway, leaping over an open door and landing on a set of lockers. The windows ahead were tall, leaving only a strip of solid ground to walk on, right where the floor connected to the wall.
I didn’t trust that the windows would support my weight, so I inched across the solid section. The curtains hung down from the windows above, letting in a pulsating light. I could see the shapes of something massive through the dusty panes.
Then a shadow blocked out the light and cracks shot out across the glass. I backed up as the pane shattered and glass rained down. The Flower landed a moment later, box cutter flashing amongst the falling glass.
I raised my arms defensively and felt the sting as the blade cut me. The Flower reared back for a more lethal strike and I threw myself away, out over the windows, clumsily grabbing hold of a hanging curtain. I swayed and the heel of my foot banged against one of the windows, sending a spiderweb of cracks across it.
Yeah, no way it’s holding my full weight.
The Flower watched me swing side to side as the last bits of glass plinked down and skittered across the windows. Warm blood ran down my arm as I panted.
“Why won’t you just listen and leave?” it hissed. “She doesn’t want to see you.”
I reached out and grabbed the next curtain, pulling myself along.
“I can’t!” I shouted back. “She’s hurting and I need to be there for her.”
“What? Love?” it asked contemptuously.
“Yes.”
Oxytocin is involved with feelings of love and closeness, as well as in sexual response,” the Flower recited. “It’s just a feeling. Wouldn’t it be better to just part ways? Call it a bad breakup. You might think you want resolution, but it isn’t what you need. It could destroy you. It could destroy her. Erythroblastosis fetalis. A disease where the mother’s immune system attacks the cells of the fetus.”
The Flower took a step onto the glass. It splintered but held together. I clumsily swung to the next curtain.
“What once nurtured is now a source of destruction.”
It took another step and I could hear the glass singing, about to break.
The Flower gestured again, spinning the building’s orientation.
I landed on the ceiling as the Flower fell on top of me. The box cutter gouged the ceiling tiles next to my head.
I kicked the Flower away. It fell onto its back, landing on bits of broken glass.
We both struggled to our feet. Its petals opened wide, rippling with new colours. The petals shook like the hood of a cobra snake as it let loose an alien sound.
“If Nell wants me to leave, she’s going to have to tell me herself,” I said.
“You aren’t listening to me!” the Flower screamed, wrenching a hand back.
The room spun and I fell into the splintered window, shattering it.
I fell into open air, pinwheeling my arms as the building that hung in the void of this orange-red limbo got further away.
Immense rigid geometric shapes pulsed around me, tightly bound in what looked like flesh. The school snaked all through the air, a maze with no one orientation that could make sense of it.
I spun and then flung out my arms as another portion of the school rushed towards me.
Wood splintered. The beat of the shapes in the sky echoed in my skull. Metal shrieked. I tumbled. Everything hurt. Then my head slammed down and I blacked out.
When I came to, I opened my eyes and saw that I had come to rest on a pile of chairs. The metal legs coldly cradled my bleeding body. I stared at the wooden back of a chair, reading the etchings. Then I tried to push myself up and the pain in my shoulder nearly made me vomit.
Come on. You’ve been through worse.
Tears ran down my face as I clenched my jaw and pushed on my shoulder until I heard a pop. I extricated myself from the ruins of the classroom furniture and stood.
The Flower was standing in the doorway.
“Nowhere to run,” it said.
I stood firm, wiping my eyes.
“I’m not running,” I said, raising my arms. “Come here.”
Its feet beat against the floor as it rushed me, petals brushing against my face as it leaned in and sank the box cutter into my gut.
Cold pain shot through my limbs, into my fingers and toes like I could feel each individual nerve pathway.
I wrapped the Flower in a hug, pressing it close to my chest.
It struggled, trying to pull away as I looked over its back and shoulders.
“Die!” it yelled, vibrating the word into my bones.
My eyes finally settled on a word amidst the mush of textbook definitions and paragraphs about biology. Right on the nape of its neck, a name.
“Iris.”
They went still.
“You wanted to be your own being. But you can’t seem to break free from all the stuff that Nell saddled you with. But you could at least name yourself.”
“I’m here for a reason,” Iris crackled. “It must be to stop you. You think that’s changed just cause you learned my name? You don’t know Nell. I was born from her, so I understand how little you know.”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
Iris said nothing, but they let go of the box cutter and let their arms hang down at their sides. The soft aroma of the petals helped soothe the waves of pain shooting through me.
“You’re going to go no matter what I say or do.”
“Yeah.”
“This won’t go away, you know. Nothing here can be erased.”
I shut my eyes. “That’s okay.”
The cold feeling in my gut spread upwards, making my arms go numb. Then the sensation faded out along with the feeling of Iris in my arms.
When I opened my eyes again, I was somewhere new.