Blooming: Part 1

Walking into the local grocery store, Jack Jones, better known around town as J.J., was greeted by a fresh draft of cool air from inside. Outside, it was still fifty degrees, but people thought that that was warm after the below freezing temperatures they had suffered through all winter. J.J. made his way back to the floral section and approached the lady at the counter.

“Hello, how may I help you?” the clerk, named Carol, asked.

“I’m just looking for some flowers, thanks,” replied J.J..

“Okay, well we have some beautiful roses that were just delivered, if you would like to take a look?”

“No!” J.J. exclaimed, and hastily corrected himself. “Sorry, no roses. Not really a fan of those. Do you have any lilies?”

“Yes, of course. We have purple, pink, and orange. Or, if you’d like, I can make a mix of all the different colors,” Carol responded.

“Yeah, the mix would be great!”

As the clerk wrapped up some of the delicate flowers, she said, “Okay, that will be twenty dollars even.”

J.J. dug the cash out of his pocket and handed it to the her.

“Thank you sir. If you don’t mind me asking, what are these flowers for?”

“Oh, just the fifteenth anniversary of something important to me.”

“Well, these are very pretty flowers you chose.”

Carol reached over the counter to hand him the flowers, freshly cut and wrapped in paper. As he took the flowers, J.J. started getting a bit emotional. His face turned pink and his eyes burned with unshed tears. He hurriedly thanked Carol and rushed out of the store. As he was walking down the sidewalk, as he didn’t drive, his mind started racing. Before long, J.J. was reliving the darkest part of his past in the middle of the sidewalk in a small town in Virginia.

When J.J. and Isaac were children, their sisters were best friends, that’s how they came to know each other so well. Very quickly after meeting, the two did everything together, from riding bikes to passing notes to their crushes to going to football games. They were practically attached at the hip. However, as J.J. and Isaac grew closer to one another, Isaac told J.J. of some issues in the Carter family. Isaac wasn’t very open about his home life, so all that J.J. could piece together was that Isaac and Rose’s mother had left them when Isaac was born, around the time that Rose was ten, and that Rose had had to work multiple jobs to help support the Carter family. He also knew that Isaac hated talking about his family, especially sore subjects like his parents, and that Isaac would start stuttering and changing the topic whenever his dad was brought up, for reasons that were unknown to J.J.. Despite all of these issues, Isaac seemed like a pretty happy kid, and Isaac was too young to really understand what most of these things meant, so they remained close friends. However, for J.J.’s sister, Lili, that wasn’t completely true. J.J. remembered some nights when Rose would be over, she was very open about how jealous she was of Lily’s “white picket-fence” life and that she wished she had enough money for college so that she could join a sports team instead of having to go to work every night. These topics evidently led to many arguments between the two, but at the end of the day, J.J. always remembered hearing them make up and apologize to each other, remaining strong friends. At the time, J.J. was so young, he didn’t know what to think of those fights. He just thought they were relatively normal, so nothing about the situation tipped him off for the atrocious act that followed a little while down the road.

J.J. snapped back to reality and realized that he had been frozen in one spot in the middle of the sidewalk with a few bystanders giving him strange looks. After looking around, he straightened his grip on the lilies and scurried off down the sidewalk. As he was walking, he continued to rack his brain for clues that could have warned him of that fateful day, as he had done for the past fifteen years. As he passed a cop car parked next to the sidewalk, he was enveloped into his own head again, thinking back to the past.

“Catch!” yelled Isaac.

J.J. turned around and saw a ball hurtling at his face. He threw his hands up in front of his face and managed to catch the ball.

“Isaac! Come on, what was that for?” J.J. giggled.

“Here, throw it back! Let’s play catch,” Isaac shouted back.

“Okay!” J.J. replied.

Soon, a game of pickup football between the two had started. How the game really worked, no one would know. It pretty much just consisted of tackling and racing each other to the “end-zone” that was actually just a rake in the middle of the yard. This was one of the very rare times that J.J. was ever at Isaac’s house. J.J. never understood why he couldn’t come over, he just wanted to hang out with his friend.

“Wait, stop! Do you hear that?” J.J. asked.

“Hear what?” replied Isaac.

“It sounds like someone is yelling, I can’t tell from where though,” said J.J.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing. Let’s just, ummm, g- go to the park, come on!” Isaac stuttered.

Before J.J. could reply, Rose stormed out the front door the Carter house, cursing out her father and claiming she would never be a part of whatever it was the he was doing and that she was disgusted with him. J.J. just stood there, mouth hanging open, unsure of what to do.

“Uhh, maybe you should go home, J.J.. When my dad and my sister get into it, it doesn’t stop anytime soon,” Isaac whispered.

“Ok! See you tomorrow!” J.J. hurriedly replied, running off before he could hear anything else.

Later that night after J.J. got home, he thought about what had happened. He just chalked it up to teenagers being moody, after all, his parents always said the teenager years were the worst. By the time he got to school the next day, he had completely forgotten about it.

“Hey, buddy, you okay? Hello? Sir?”

After about a minute of this, the officer gave J.J. a light shove.

“Ahh!” J.J. shouted, whirling around, startled and heart racing.

“Hey, I saw you standing on the sidewalk looking a little dazed and wanted to make sure you were okay,” the officer gently said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just a little upset today.”

Seeing the flowers in J.J.’s hand the officer replied, “Ahh. Having girlfriend problems?”

“Oh, uhh yeah, that’s it,” J.J. quickly stuttered.

“Well, hopefully it gets better. Have a nice day,” the officer said and returned to the driver’s side of the cop car. As he turned, J.J. saw the glint off a gun secured in the officer’s holster. Immediately, J.J. felt his chest tighten and he continued walking, his breath picking up and a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead and spreading to his neck. About a block away, he found a bench and collapsed onto it, diving back into his memories and having yet another flashback. This time he saw only a glimpse, a snapshot of a memory, but it was the most painful yet.

J.J. saw the glint of a weapon of some sort being ripped out of the figure’s pocket and pointed. There was a sharp bang and after that, all he could smell was the metallic scent of blood. All he could see was the puddle spreading across the floor. Rich and dark. Crimson, just like a rose.