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The Rose Bush Girl

"Can you imagine bleeding out from the wounds of a rose bush?"

By Bruce ArnoldPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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She sat in the chair, her head down and the rest of her body limp. Blood stained rose vines littered the floor around her. The smell of death and plant life hung heavy in the air. The girl’s hair was wild and ravaged upon her head from the vines occasionally tangling themselves in it. From just walking into the room you could tell that something had gone very wrong, that death was not the worst thing that had taken place.

I stepped in front of the chair and admired her corpse. Her skin clung tightly to her bones, which had become brittle and knobby. It was clear she had been dead a long time. The blood stains were hard and crusting. I leaned forward and tipped her chin up. Surprisingly, her eyes still remained in her skull untouched. The only difference being they were dried and almost looked unreal. I thought for sure they’d have decomposed by now or at least been eaten by some wandering animal.

“How is that your eyes still remain?” I asked her, “Surely there's nothing else here you’d like to see.”

I almost smirked at my dark humor when it happened. I stared her directly in the eyes and she blinked. Instantly her eyes were moist again. I dropped her head and stepped away. My heart skipped a beat as I stared at the corpse. For a moment nothing else happened so I tried shaking it off. Just my imagination. I rubbed my eyes and took a deep breath. Dead girls don’t blink. I shook my head and started past her toward the door. Just as I stepped beside her chair, a loud and deafening scream brought me to my knees. I dropped to the ground and clamped her hands over my ears. The sound echoed throughout the room before trailing into a deep and pained sob. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a vine move across the floor and my heart started racing.

I released my ears and started crawling toward the door, afraid to stand. I hadn’t gotten far before the sobbing stopped. As soon as it did, I stopped moving as well. The smell of death and plants started smelling really fresh, just as it did the day I killed her. My mind took me back to the days I came to this room and beat her senseless with the vines of the rosebush outside. I remembered the day her body ran out of sounds to make and blood to give.

In the midst of my memories, one of the vines was snatched from the floor, took the air and then came down across my back. I felt the thorns tear through my shirt and into my skin. I cried out and my back arched in pain. The vine struck again and I quickly rolled over to see my attacker. Fear seized my chest and wrung it dry until I couldn’t breathe. The girl was no longer in the chair tied down. She was standing over me, a black shadowed figure with spindly limbs. She also looked much taller and her eyes were full of fury behind the ravaged strands of her hair. When she moved it was in sections. Her elbow went up and then her forearm, her bones cracking from a year’s worth of stiffness. Then in one quick motion, she brought the vine down. It lashed across my face and bit into my chest. The thorns broke skin, causing blood to swell and my skin to scream. I wanted to run, to just get up and bolt but after the third blow my body became stiff. I couldn’t move. She raised the vine again and beat me once more. The beatings started coming faster and faster as I howled in pain and sat helplessly beneath her angry eyes.

At some point she started using two vines, holding one in each hand making the beatings come faster and more frequent. I then remembered the words she said on the day she died.

“One day,” she said, “One day...you’ll be begging me to stop…”

Her eyes were no longer full of fear and despair when I first brought her, they're of full-blown anger.

supernatural
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About the Creator

Bruce Arnold

I write. It's unclear to me if I am any good so I could use feedback. Let me know if I could improve on anything. My Instagram is @kalthurduran

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