Tulips

Tulips

The sores began to appear late that September, as the arid summer air became shivery and horrid. The repulsive blemishes were of a pale yellow, each with a tiny blue dot in the middle. Often times at night, they would secrete thick, pink ooze from those blue dots; a syrupy substance that proved quite difficult to wash off the skin.
Royce extended his hand out towards the ancient, rusty knife in front of him. Hesitantly, he drew the knife close to the grimy skin of his arm, where the sores had first begun to appear, and began to carve. An icy bolt of pain tore through his body as blood, as well as the pink ooze, burst from the incision. Royce bellowed in agony.
Hours later, he sat with his legs crossed on the muddy floor with the knife, now painted crimson, on his right side, and a pool of vomit on his left. His right arm, now little more than a bloody mass of muscle and bone, hanged lifelessly in its socket.
The sound of approaching footsteps filled the catacombs. Two arms wrapped themselves around Royce's chest.
"Lily," Royce said faintly.
"That won't work," the woman hugging Royce replied.
"Lily, I-"
"That won't work and you know it,"
Royce pulled away from Lily's embrace.
He awoke the next morning on the soiled rag that he slept on with Lily at his side. The sores had appeared on his left arm and chest.
As another week went by, the malformations worsened. The blue dots at the center of the sores had begun to develop in to small bulbs; they were hellish flowers preparing to bloom.
"I'm going up," Royce said while examining the newly-formed bulbs lining his cheeks with a dusty shard of a mirror.
Lily didn't respond.
"Tomorrow," Royce added.
Once again, Lily said nothing. Of course she said nothing. Lily had died years ago; raped then devoured by cannibals. Royce remembered hunting each of the savages down and murdering them one by one. He remembered the taste of their flesh after he had roasted their corpses in a pyre. He remembered the glorious taste of revenge.
At times he was quite well aware that the conversations that he had had with Lily since her death were the product of his insanity. Other times, however, the line between reality and fantasy faded.
Royce shivered as pink fluid spewed from a bulb on his shoulder. All of a sudden, he was overwhelmed with an urge to vomit. No, he thought to himself, holding it back, I need to keep nourished. I need to keep my strength.
Why?
(For them)
For Lily.
Lily is dead.
And so are you. So am I and so are you.
I need to keep nourished.
(Water the flowers.)
I have them. The flowers. The Devil's Tulips.
(Feed them.)
(Pluck them.)
Stay alive. Keep healthy. You are duty-bound to your children.
My children.
My flowers.
My garden.
The passageway out of the catacombs was blocked with a decaying bown tarp. Royce tore it open and was met with blazing sunlight. It was the first time he had seen the sun in nineteen years.
He took one step out, then another. A few feet out, his eyes adjusted to the glaring white of the surface. In its place, there was blue.
In the decaying ruins of the city that was once New York, millions of brilliant cerulean flowers shone. Flowers just like
(my children)
the ones that were developing all over Royce's body. They were the parasitic flora that he and Lily had escaped from nineteen years ago by making sanctuary underground in the catacombs. The ones that Royce, somehow, had inhaled the spores of, even after nineteen years of safety below the Earth. How this had happened was beyond him. Perhaps a rat carrying the spores had found its way in to the catacombs. To Royce, all that no longer mattered. The only thing that was important was giving birth to his children, his duty as a father. Like the rat, if it truely was that which brought the Devil's Tulips to him, his flowers would soon bloom and spread their spores. All they need is strength.
Royce began to walk down the flower-littered ground that was once a
sidewalk. He intended on feeding his babies. Surely some organism besides the Tulips had to have survived in this post-apocalyptic world. From far away, he heard a faint sobbing. He followed the noise to what once may have been a small shop, though it was impossible to tell what was behind the shroud of flowers. He opened the door.
In one corner of the pitch-black, dusty room there sat a toddler rocking back and forth. The child, quite like Royce, was covered in the blue sores. The scratches on his cheeks hinted that he had been trying to claw out the parasitic seeds in his body before they could grow.
That won't work, Royce thought to himself, Just like Lily told me. That won't work. That won't work. That won't work.
Royce ran towards the boy. The child let out a yelp of terror as Royce gripped his neck and lifted him up.
"That won't work! That won't work!" Royce screamed at the choking child, shooting spittle out of his mouth. He then buried his teeth in the child's face and ripped out one of its bloodshot eyes. His children hummed with pleasure as the food worked its way through Royce's body and in to them. Royce then proceded to eat the meat on the child's neck, which, while quite satisfying, tasted nowhere near as delightful as the eye. Dissapointed, he shoved his fist in to the screaming toddler's other eye socket and tore out the remaining ocular. That irritating, high-pitched screaming coming from the boy had become quit bothersome, so he ended it by snapping the boy's neck. Now he could dine in peace.
Once his children were fed enough, Royce stepped out of the building and back in to sunny New York. He could hear them singing now. His flowers were about to blossom. He was about to become a father.
All at once, the bulbs all over his body shot open in to angelic blossoms. Millions of azure spores flew in to the air and were carried away by the wind, followed by ruby torrents of Royce's blood.
Mucus and blood leaked from every orifice on Royce's body. Screaming, Royce staggered forward and fell. His skull cracked open as it collided with concrete. With what little strength he had left, he grasped a tulip between his shaking, bloody fingers and plucked it from the ground. He raised the tulip to the front of his face and grinned.
The last word that escaped his mouth before dying was "Lily."

***

A light breeze blew against Florian's pale face as he stared up at the sky. In one hand, he held a plastic bag full of canned goods. In the other, he held a gas mask.
"Stop it," said his companion. Her voice was muffled from behind her mask. "Put it back on,"
"How long has it been?"
"I don't know. Put your mask back on,"
"It's only for a second,"
"Whatever,"
As the wind picked up, something flew in to Florian's eye.
"What was that?"
"Nothing. Something in my eye. Dirt,"
"Let's go back now,"
Florian strapped the mask back on to his face and replied, "Yeah,"
The sores began to appear a week later.