Marigold

“Excuse me, sir, I think you dropped this,” said a soft voice behind him.

As he turned, he felt the dread rise like bile in his throat, he could already taste the dirty smell of the bright yellow flower that he knew from experience that he would find in the outstretched hand that belonged to the voice’s owner. Instead of looking down to see the detested flower, he looked directly into a pair of the most gorgeous eyes he had ever seen. He winced. He had seen a great many pairs of remarkable eyes over the millennia, all belonging to incredible people who would have the misfortune to offer the cheerful-looking flower to him, never dreaming that finding that flower signaled their emanant demise.

He had tried, especially in the beginning, to leave the flower bearers alone; to sacrifice a less worthy person in one of their places. The flower bearers were never people who the world would be better without. Always, they were truly good people who would have made a positive difference in the world… if only they had been allowed to live. But the bargain he had struck with the demon so long ago was very clear, he would have to kill any person who offered him a marigold.

He reached out to take the flower from her, to accept that he would need to kill her. But then he hesitated. It had been so long since he had thought to stop, to do something other than what he had to. This time, he wasn’t sure he felt up for it, this time he questioned his “right” to live at others expense.

He let her go.

He meandered the rest of the day, debating on what he should do. Every six months to a year, he would find himself offered a flower, and every time, he would accept the price of his life. What was the difference this time? He found himself brooding deep into the night, finally sleeping as the sun began to rise.

When he awoke that afternoon, before he even opened his eyes, he could smell marigolds. It had begun. When this bargain had first been struck, the first person who had offered him a marigold had been his best friend. It had not occurred to him that it could be a person who he knew so well that he would need to kill to keep his life. And in his hesitation, the marigolds had followed him around, growing even in his footsteps as he walked about his village.

The villagers weren’t stupid, they saw the death flowers growing in his wake and knew that he was no longer one of them. He had been cast out of the village as the truth of his miraculous recovery became clear. His best friend had followed him and had finally gotten the story about the bargain from him. And as his friend listened, the truth registered on his face.

“You gave up your only camouflage of still being normal, to protect me.”

He shook his head, trying to forget the past and opened his eyes to the present, and the patch of marigolds that had started growing in his bed, encircling his body as he slept. He gritted his teeth at the soft crunchiness of petals and stems as he rolled out of bed.

She found him again that day, and in a small, bewildered voice once more asked if he had dropped something.

He smiled at her, looking deep into her eyes as she took the wilted flower from her hand. Her shoes were dirty, she was sweating. He had ignored her soft voice for more than an hour as he desperately tried to lose her in the swirling crush of people in the city. He thanked her and promptly left. She stood there, looking lost and alone until the crowd swallowed her.

The next morning, he had only to shift his weight slightly to feel the crunching of the death flowers beneath him. He groaned, accidentally inhaling a mouthful of pollen in the process.

This day, when he saw her, it was before she had spotted him. He watched as she bent down to pick something up from the ground and watched as she stiffened. Before she reached for it, he saw her look up and stare directly at him. When she looked down to the flower on the sidewalk, he fled.

On the sixth morning since he had first been offered a flower, he knew he would need to leave the apartment where he had been hiding for the past few days. Marigolds bloomed everywhere, on every surface and the stench of the flowers was inescapable. He had a pounding headache, and the taste of marigolds were so thick on his tongue that he couldn’t bear to eat or drink anything. Everything, even the air tasted like green and gold flowery death. He needed air. He needed to think, to be free of the stench that reminded him of the countless deaths he was responsible for. He cursed himself for his hesitation. He knew better.

This day, as he went out of the apartment, he almost ran directly into her. She was standing before him, a bouquet of marigolds in her hands and tears in her eyes.

“Please,” she whispered in horror, “please tell me why I am here. Why do I have the compulsion to follow you, to bring you every one of these flowers that I find? I feel possessed, like I have no agency of my own any longer. I just don’t...” she broke off on a sob.

He reached for her, and she batted his hand away from her with the flowers.

“Tell me. You know what is going on. I can feel it.”

He sighed deeply, “Are you sure you really want to know?”

“Anything is better than this,” was her unsteady reply.

“Come then,” he said, offering his hand. He took her into his marigold covered apartment, and she gasped in horror. “I know,” he said resignedly. “Believe me, I know. But now, what you are looking for is a reason, a story if you will, that will make everything that has been happening to you make sense.”

“Yes.”

“Pull up a flower,” he said resignedly, waving at where the couch had once been, where only a mound of flowers could be seen. “Once, when the world was young, the people of the world lived in contact with multidimensional beings that we called gods and demons.”

She cocked her head to the side and gave him a look of disgust. “Really? I am not here for some fairy tale of gods and ghouls. I am here for the reason I can’t seem to control myself!”

“Can you think of a better reason?”

She reluctantly shook her head.

He continued. “One day, when I was young, maybe twenty years old, I had a terrible accident, and death was close. I could feel it lurking under my skin as I burned with fever. Suddenly, I heard a voice, asking if I wanted to live. I demanded to know who was talking, and next to me appeared a figure. It was hard to say whether it was male or female. It was hard to know anything, other than it offered me life. I was desperate. I wanted to live more than anything. I had a life, and I wanted to keep it, death was an unknown that I refused to face. I said yes. And I will never forget the sense of shock I got from the figure as it asked me whether I wanted to know the price of such a gift. I told it that the price didn’t matter. I would pay anything. And so, it leaned over me, smelling of death and growing things and told me that I would have to kill anyone who offered me a flower, for the rest of my life.” He looked pensively about the room. “In all my years, no one had ever offered me a flower. I didn’t think much of this price and quickly agreed. Some days, I wonder if I should have asked the price before agreeing, if perhaps I was too eager, and so this is my punishment. Killing anyone who bears a flower to me.”

Tears were streaming down her face. “So, I’m your next sacrifice? That’s it? All there is to my life? My dreams, my desires… none of it matters. The great destiny I’ve always felt called to, it’s nothing more than simply to allow you to keep living your endless, joyless existence?” She felt bitter, betrayed. Not by him, he looked too miserable in his choices for her to hate. No, she was bitter at the irony of the world. That she alone among her friends always knew that she had a great destiny, that she would make a difference in the world; and here was her difference. Her destiny. To be cannon fodder for someone so numb to life that he didn’t even enjoy living any longer. “So why haven’t you killed me? It’s clear that you are supposed to. What’s different this time?” she demanded.

“I don’t know, I just, I’m not sure I want to pay this price any longer,” he hung his head as he once more remembered his first flower bearer, his best friend. “But it feels like a betrayal of everyone else I have ever sacrificed if I don’t continue.” He looked bleakly at the cheerful flowers about him, “Maybe I can get used to them.”

“You know it doesn’t work like that.”

“Yeah, I know.” He screwed up his courage and finally asked something that he hadn’t dreamt of asking in ages. “I know also that we just met, that I am supposed to kill you. But…” he hesitated. “Would you let me hold you? Just for a bit. I will let you go, and we will see each other tomorrow… and the day after that, and the next day and the next; until the price is paid one way or the other. But for now, I would like to not be alone while surrounded by these…” he waved his hands about him, indicating the flowers growing everywhere.

She understood. “Sure,” she said quietly, walking boldly into the outstretched arms of her destiny, fearless.

He held her. She smelled of sunshine and roses. He buried his nose in her hair and the scent of her drowned out the marigolds. Too comfortable to resist, they slept.

When she woke the next morning, she looked about her room, disoriented by the vividness of her dream, and exactly how bizarre it was. She shook her head, and finally looked to her nightstand to find out what time it was. And there, directly in front of her alarm clock, she found a marigold.