Petals

Petals
By: George Gonzalez

I pull at the petals one by one, undressing my flower and imagining her, stripping, every petal of her lotus blossoming against the glow of my desire.

“She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not…”

One by one the petals fall to the ground, drowning in the dirt collected around my feet. Somewhere far away a loon cries into the night, beckoning to the ominous haze hiding the moon from the sight of my pain.

Clarissa, the love of my life, my Aphrodite, my goddess. But she was taken from me, by my own brother. The bastard knew nothing and cared for no one but himself.

I gave her my everything, my heart on a platter and she did nothing more than rip it to shreds and tear at my sanity. Until the day I found her, bent over the couch we bought together, my brother thrusting behind her, undulating in time with her screams.

A tear falls down my cheek and plummets downward and onto the shovel, making a wet imprint onto the mass of caked blood.

I remember her smile, shining as she grinned at me, her lips as they moved perfectly and harmoniously, making every word uttered a chime of silver and gold into the air.

Her soft skin and blond hair, her long legs and voluptuous breasts, but no, she was nothing, nothing more then common Harry Hines street trash.

I remember staring at her before they realized I was watching, before their passion was interrupted by my witness of their atrocious act. Staring at her fingernails as they dug into the arm of the couch. They were bright pink and decorated with blue intricately detailed flowers.

My memory goes hazy. I only remember the screams and the acrid smell of blood. I remember the moans of agony and the begging. I remember asking whether or not she loved me as I tore out each and every one of those petals with a pair of pliers, savoring her screams of pain and the salty tears which ran in rivers down her cheeks.

I remember introducing a knife to her boyfriend’s scrotum, tearing at his jewels, watching him foam at the mouth and swing at me as he fell to his knees, holding the tattered remains of his decapitated solider.

I look over at the makeshift headstone made from a used pizza box I found in the kitchen and read her impromptu epitaph.

“Here lies my lover, my flower, my whore. May she burn in hell.”

Her boyfriend lies in a cooler in my basement, his body cut to size. His piece where it belongs, in my lover’s mouth for the rest of eternity.

And now she lies, underneath me, below the pile of dirt next to her tulips, and I sit here asking where I went wrong.

“She loves me, she loves me not,” I continue into the darkness.

The petals and stems litter my feet, stained with the blood flowing from my cut wrists.

I take a sip from the open vodka bottle at my feet, savoring the burning as it slips down my throat and hits my gut with a comfortable sizzle. I down the rest in a single gulp, eager for the swimming calmness that can only be attained with a good dose of blood loss and Grey Goose.

The memories fade and my consciousness staggers and I see her face, telling me she loves me, I see her lips kissing my chest, I see her throat as I slit it open, I see her breasts as I rip at her nipples with those beautiful pliers and I see her cheeks, rosy from the extent of her screams, as she falls into the valley of the damned where my hands can never reach her.

Where my stem will never please her, where her petals will cease to exist.

“She loves me,” I finish as I pluck the last petal from the last flower.

I smile as I pass out, on top of my petals, on top of my once voluptuous flower, now no more than a Venus flytrap, rotting beneath me. Her petals wilted by her deceit, and my heart thirsty for her seed.