Fear Garden pt. 1

It’s a beautiful Thursday morning and Laurel is out delivering sterling white roses to her neighbors and friends. She hands off a few to Gaia Lux and Harvey who asked for 7 specific plucked roses. She obliged and handed them right over. After all her deliveries were made she usually goes by the creek in the back of The Victorian. As she approaches she gasps.

“Its all colorful!”

She leaves her cart behind and plunges into the multicolored stream. She splashes and plays and suddenly she chokes a bit of the color-swirled water.

“Ew gross,” She coughs and sputters.

She coughs up a quarter sized ball of Crayola shavings.

“Ewwwww… What the-,” She looks up to show Danny, he white dress speckled with wax shavings in every color.

“He’s gone.”

She hops up out of the water and scrambles to her feet. “WHERE COULD HE BE?!” She thinks.

She searches her cart frantically, calling his name. “Danny, Danny, DANIEL?!”

She checks under and over the entire cart, the jumps in the water to search if he had fallen in. Laurel splashes and searches the water. She lifts up heavy rocks and uses her feat to search the bottom of the creek. Anything and everything that it’s possible he could’ve been. Even places impossible.

Breathlessly, she emerges from the creek, muddy and covered in a wax film. She heaves a few times and then throws up… “More water,” she says as she spits. She calms her breathing down and then begins to cry. “No… NO!”

“Daniel, where did you go…. You know you can’t run off from me…. You’re my brother.”

She shakes off as much water as she can, and hops back on her bike that carries her cart. “Mother’s going to KILL me…” She looks across the patch of grass between the creek and the apartment complex. She sees a little boy about her age. She looks in his arms studying him up and down.

The boy looks back at her frantically, and runs off. Just before he turns the corner she sees something in his arms… “DANNY!” She hops up and chases him on her cart. She turns the corner sharply, flowers fall out of her basket and onto the cold grey pavement. Laurel rushes quickly, peddling as fast as she can, but the boy is too far. “He’s so fast….” she whimpers. She stops at a halt, breathless. Tears well up in her eyes and her face turns a shade of crimson red.

“You know what,” she breathes.. “It's all going to be fine” she says as a wicked smile spreads across her face like margarine on toast.