Corpse Flowers
By Penelope Pagan June Sea Witch

The forest parts with each rushed footfall. trees fell themselves, vines unwound and snapped, bushes shriveled and died. Your breath is haggard, your lungfuls are sharp and quick, your nerves in your calves screamed. You pick up your pace, the destruction around you is barely registered ads you press on. You were usually more reserved, more consciousness of balance and harmony and a need to play peace keeper. Today, there was no peace to be had. The time where things could ever be peaceful again was fast ending. You knew it, but didn't want to accept that.

You are looking for your sister. You knew she had been taken, taken because of you. Your sister was a gust of warm wind lazing over a beach. You were a bitter howl careening down from the mountain tops. Many times had men tried cut their anger into you. Many times they had failed, their blades dull compared to your thorns. But your sister, innocent and sweet, is more soft flesh than sense. And they had taken her into this forest, the place of your birthright, to rend unto her what they could not to you.

You nearly miss the crushed underbrush, the snapped branches, the splashes of brilliant scarlet. There had been a slaughter. You can smell it, that coppery, pungent perfume that clung to death. You can see it, the foliage was splattered with vitality. You can hear it, the steady dripping of that interior liquid that should never be let out. You know you were too late, know that whatever is just beyond this scene, where that unnatural shadow in the grass lingered, would cut years from you.

You move forward anyway. You needed to find your sister. You find her. You stare. And stare. And stare. Everything leaves you, only a harsh encompassing pressure of reality bores into your senses. You don't want to accept it. You scream and cry, throwing yourself, bashing your firsts to pulps against the truth. Your sister is dead.

White slender roses blossom over the decay of your sister. It's a futile gesture, an attempt to cling to the coffin. You will them to bloom anyway. They en-lace the putrid chunks, the half chewed synapses, the festering bruises. It does not improve her. The roses simply encase the rot, giving it definition against reality, fixing it as a permanent, irreparable fact. Your sister was dead.

You will the roses to nonexistence and only the body remains, splayed out, in sections and segments, mashed and mangled. You had known it would come to this but there was terrible pain in predicting the future. You will always have a part of you that naively hopes. A hope that gets pulverized, just as your sister's fingers had been systematically reduced to a thousand jagged pieces of bone. A hope that turns into a rabid dog, wanting to bite and swallow and chew the world for the horrid cruelty it inflicts. It would be easy to let it. You hear it barking inside you, breaking it's body against your self control, begging for freedom.

You keep it caged. You need to bury your sister. You beckon forth a sea of vines. Their waves gently crash against the remnants of your sister, stealing just a little bit away from her as it pulls away. Each push and pull takes another aspect of your sister away, into the unknown brush, scattered amongst the foliage. In their consumption this forest would become her. Her essence imbued into every living thing. There could be at least some peace for her.

She disappears into the forest and you feel your will leaving with her. That rabid dog was getting louder, breaking through, chewing through your higher reasoning. It wanted to find the men who did this. It wanted to thrust thorn into bone, to wrap vine around neck, to break backs against bark. You give in to its wants, there is nothing else now but this. There would be no balance, only carriage. Blood would be splattered amongst the trees, and you hoped, in that naive way you always do, that you sister would feel the impact of heated scarlet. She would know what you did for her, know that vengeance would be had. The thought makes you smile.