Murder or Benign Necrophilia?

Having slept a full eight hours, I woke this morning to the soft ticking of my internal alarm clock.  Even in that groggy state between dreams and reality, everything seemed right in the world; I found simple satisfaction in my health and thanked my body with a strong inhalation of unadulterated morning air.

Zestfully tearing open the shades, however, resulted in an unexpected visual assault so disheartening, I gasped and yelled, “No!”  Snow blanketed the grass that had been so vibrantly green mere hours before.  Even worse, my bouquet of white, pink-tipped roses had wilted in the night.  Each hung its head shamefully as though exhausted from emanating the colorful majesty only roses possess.  The blooms had closed up, revealing purplish veins on the undersides of the wrinkled outermost petals.  This morning, my little cinder block cell appeared as lifeless as the snow-smothered world waiting outside my window.

Those floral corpses greeted me when I returned to my cell this afternoon.  I settled in my desk chair and stared at the deceased bouquet.  Curiosity tugged at my hand until fingertip brushed wilted petal.  I felt life there, and taking a rose out of the vase, I began to coax the bloom open, peeling first the elderly exterior and then the middle-aged petals within until I held in my hand an explosion of deepest fuchsia and rich magenta.  My fingertips danced in a world of silken vitality, and a sudden selfishness overcame me; I wanted the color all for myself. I began plucking the life-stained petals.

The corpses did not complain as petal and stem parted company.  Only periodic breathless snaps interrupted the otherwise silent dismemberment, and after the first of the dozen had been successfully stripped of its pink mane, no uprising ensued.  Even the naked one did not dare raise its head, and its comrades likewise seemed afflicted by noose-induced rigor mortis.  My frenzy continued until all twelve lay discarded in the trash and a generous pile of pinks, whites, and purples graced my desk.  I picked up a petal, one of those infant petals close to the stamen and still soft on both sides, and massaged it between my fingers.  Raising it to my nose, I thanked my body with a strong inhalation of life.