Stories for 100 Days of Writing

Roses

The rose bloomed in unusual colours that year as if it was permanently damaged. Its pink faded, almost to grey, and alongside it grew a larger rose, no longer red but now an odd purple, streaked with brown. They looked wrong, but nobody knew what was causing this strange phenomenon. Other plants were struggling too; strange shapes and colours were emerging for some unknown reason.

People all over the County were asking questions but nobody had answers or at least no one in authority was willing to speak about what was happening. Mary, who was living in a small village at the time, had begun to query what was going on when her son, Josiah, was born; as soon as he arrived, she could see something was wrong. His head was misshapen, slightly, yes, but it was odd, not just the normal skull movement caused by the birth but a definite difference. This was her third child, she was also a nurse, and aware of what a baby's skull should look like after birth and this wasn't quite right. The midwives and doctors said he was fine, it would sort itself out; however, they exchanged looks that told Mary this might not be the case.

After a few months, more flowers began emerging wrong, and other babies were being born with strange deformities, especially in their skulls, Mary became more suspicious that they were all in more danger than they realised. She made a decision to do something about it, to at least, find out what was causing this.

First, she collected a group of mothers together; they were soon joined by their husbands, partners and then anyone else who was interested. They discussed what could have possibly caused this. Radiation was foremost in most of their minds but one of the men, Karl, a scientist, had said that there was no radiation that he knew of that would cause the sort of colour changes they were seeing, especially alongside the child deformities. He did agree that he couldn't come up with any other viable idea than a form of radiation though, and he would go and do some research to see what he could find.

As the months passed, Josiah didn't thrive well, unfortunately, but the doctors couldn't figure out why. Strangely, his head did, in fact, develop to almost the correct size and it was difficult to see that he had problems. He was below average weight and wasn't hitting any of his targets on time, however, he wasn't a disabled child, he just didn't attain the milestones when he was supposed to. His eyesight was slightly damaged, he could see but not fully, his hearing was also slightly impaired. It was like Josiah was slightly off, he didn't quite have anything right, but he was almost there. Just like the roses, their colours weren't quite right, just a little off, they hadn't died, they weren't completely poisoned but they weren't the glorious roses they should have been.

Despite Karl's best efforts, he couldn't find out what could have damaged the plants this way, although, like the others, he suspected radiation of some kind. Mary nurtured and loved Josiah just as she did her two daughters and he survived well but just a little slower than the rest. Later there were an unusual number of deaths in the adult population, from an illness not unlike those who've been in contact with Asbestos, however, it was fast acting, people died within only a few weeks of becoming ill. Across just this one county, five-hundred people died of it over the space of three months, then, it seemed to disappear. After this, it all seemed to go gradually back to normal, and the Plague of Grain, as they called it left and so far hasn't returned. It is now two years since that first rose and no new unusual birth defects or odd coloured flowers have occurred, so, for now, it looks as if Grain is safe from an invisible enemy that the government insists never existed.