Rotflower

Deline Lowell first saw the flower on a Tuesday morning.

It jutted from a crack in the pavement outside her apartment—a black bloom, petals curled like burned velvet. She nearly stepped on it before stopping short.

It hadn’t been there yesterday.

She bent closer. The smell hit her first—not floral, not earthy. Rot. Sweet and sour, like fruit left to liquefy in the heat. Her stomach turned, yet her eyes stayed fixed on the thing.

The bloom looked alive. Breathing.

Deline forced herself upright and walked on, telling herself it was only a weed.

That night, she dreamed of it spreading.

---

In the dream, dozens of black blossoms cracked through the sidewalk, pushed through her walls, wound into her sheets. They thrummed with a pulse she felt in her chest, in her teeth. She woke gagging, certain she could still smell decay, the tang thick in her hair, clinging to her tongue.

The next morning, the flower was taller.

And now there were two.

---

At the hospital, she buried herself in charts and patients, hoping busyness could drown the memory. But exhaustion couldn’t shield her. She began seeing them everywhere. A dark curl at the edge of a waiting room. A petal glinting in glass. Always gone when she blinked, but the smell lingered, sweet, sour, and accusing.

By the third week, the flowers weren’t just in her dreams.

She woke one night with dirt under her fingernails, her sheets streaked with damp black stains. Her neighbor complained of water damage from her ceiling. Maintenance found nothing.

Deline said nothing. She stopped sleeping.

---

She confided once, to Morgan, a friend from work.

“There’s a flower,” she whispered in the corner of a café, rain streaking the window. “It keeps growing. I see it everywhere. It smells like death.”

Morgan frowned. “What kind of flower?”

“I don’t know. Black. like a rose, I think it wants something from me.”

“You’re overtired,” chuckling he said gently. “Sleep deprivation—”

She wanted to believe him. Until his sleeve slipped back.

A smear of black soil clung to his wrist.

And beneath his skin—something pulsed, like a root pushing deeper.

Deline panicked and left the hospital. " is it happening to him too? is he hiding it?"

---

She never spoke of it again.

The flowers multiplied. Not just outside, but inside. Her bathroom mirror bloomed with them, her palms bruised with black veins, her body softening as though soil were swelling beneath her skin.

She tried tearing one up from the pavement. The stem snapped wetly in her hand, reeking like something she shouldn’t have touched.

That night she vomited petals into the sink.

They writhed before sliding down the drain.

---

Work became impossible. The smell of blood was everywhere. She found herself staring at a patient’s bandaged arm, transfixed by the thin red line seeping through. Her teeth ached with hunger, a gnawing, hollow craving she could not name.

She locked herself in the restroom, heaving until black petals poured from her throat.

When she looked up, her reflection grinned back pale and hollow-eyed, a flower opening in the hollow of her throat.

---

She stopped leaving the apartment. The blooms covered the walls now, roots tunneling through tiles, pressing out of the floor. Every time she tried to tear them free, they bled.

The rot was unbearable.

And still, she couldn’t look away.

Some nights, she swore she heard them whisper her name, soft and hissing, velvet-thick: Deline… Deline…

Other nights, they laughed.

---

Her phone rang sometimes, though she never answered. When she picked it up to check, the screen would bloom with black tendrils before cracking, as if the flower had learned to reach for her even there.

what is this? Hallucination or reality? should she go to a doctor?

Morgan stopped calling. She thought of him sometimes, wrist blackened and pulsing, and shivered. She wondered if he had been swallowed too.

She ate less and less. The flowers seemed to feed on her, and the harder she resisted, the faster they spread.

By the fourth week, her apartment was unrecognizable. Black vines climbed the walls, petals smeared across furniture, carpet bubbling as roots worked beneath. Her reflection in mirrors became a stranger’s face: pale, wet, hollow, mouth flowering.

And still she couldn’t leave.

---

One evening, she sat in the middle of the living room, surrounded by the growing tide of blooms, hands in her lap. She felt the pulse beneath her skin, roots curling in her veins, pushing, pulling, claiming. Her lips had blackened, her nails cracked, and the smell of rot was inside her now, mixing with breath, blood, and skin.

She whispered apologies to herself, to the building, to the world. They were inaudible over the wet, writhing chorus of the rotflowers.

The flowers leaned toward her, heavier than gravity should allow, petals brushing her cheeks, a soft, wet caress that made her shiver and sob.

She wondered how long she had been this way. Days? Weeks? Months? The world outside had lost all meaning.

---

By the end of the month, Deline was gone.

The landlord forced her door open.

She was curled in the center of the room, skin gray and damp, lips blackened, roots coiling from her mouth and eyes. Her chest moved faintly, as though still breathing, but her flesh had the soft give of earth.

Dozens of flowers surrounded her. Fat and black, pulsing faintly in the half-light, petals quivering like lungs. They leaned inward as though listening, whispering, hungry.

The coroner told the police it was silent death followed by decomposition. Because the flowers weren't their when they came.

Nobody ever saw the flowers, was really the hallucination that killed deline? Then why does that smell exist if it was just a hallucination?

The building still smells of rot.

And on quiet nights, neighbors swear they hear it—petals unfurling in the dark, wet roots sliding across floors, and sometimes, faintly, a voice hissing her name.

Deline… Deline…

No one can explain how it spreads. Or why. But in that apartment, the black blooms pulse like a heart, breathing with the memory of her. And some nights, when the wind is right, the smell of sweet, sour rot drifts down the hall, curling into the stairwell, and the old, cracked petals glint in the darkness, wet and alive.

---

Even now, new tenants sometimes move in, drawn by rent too cheap to ignore. And if they walk down the hallway late at night, they smell it first: the thick, unbearable tang of rotflower. And if they dare glance into the apartment… well, the flowers are waiting, patient, hungry, and whispering her name.

Deline… Deline…

---

The world outside may forget. But inside that apartment, the black bloom has claimed its first victim—and it will not stop.

It never stops.

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