Her parents always told her not to play beneath the rosebush and so she did, the dark rich scent of roses and damp soil made all the more inviting having been forbade. She would curl her tiny eight year old body into the shadows and close her eyes breathing deeply.

She did this for days, tending to the long thorn-borne stratches on skinny arms and legs without her mother's gentle help. She would pour stinging clear rubbing alcohol and fight tears. Still she returned to the comfort of the rosebush, hiding from both the summer sun and rain.

Each long scratch throbbed during the times when she was unable to return to the rosebushes embrace. With her blunt ever soil rimmed fingernails she would dig at the scabs until bright drops of blood would spill out and she'd be sent to the elementery school's nurse for beige bandages and apple juice.


She became enthralled with the rosebush, coming to know its leaves and flowers better than she knew her own scraped and inflammed skin.

She lied to her parents citing playground roughhousing as the source of the red welts. She refused to entertain the idea of a rose alergy.

Finally on the last afternoon of the month as she is making her way to the rosebush tender shoots burst from the welts, pale and twisting as she writhed at the strange pain.

Roots pale and white burrowed deep into muscles and bones as blood red surged from wounds as red and wet. From her mouth three gore covered buds unfurled, from her eyes they burst spilling clear viscous fluid. From each inch of her body they burst pushing past the confines of her flesh into the setting sunlight as she choked on deadly soft petals.

They found her bones curled around a miniture rose bush a single white bloom amidst the red emanating from her chest.