🌸 Spring Is Lovely This Time of Year

I used to think spring was my favorite season.

There's something about it — the slow, heavy thaw of winter, the way color creeps back into the world. Crocuses pushing through the dirt. Trees trembling with blossoms. It was always perceived as a promise. A second chance.

I no longer think that.

Not after what happened with Jason.

Not after Briarwood.

It was a warm April afternoon when Dr. Jason Benskin called me. I remember because I was standing in the park, watching kids fly kites in the sweet, restless wind. His voice crackled over the line — calm, but clipped in that way he got when something serious was happening.

"I found something," he said. "At Briarwood."

"I need you to come. You have to hear it yourself."

The tales of Briarwood Asylum — the experiments, the screams in the night, and the sudden shutdown — are familiar to everyone in our community.

The area was beloved by ghost hunters. Teens dared each other to sneak inside.

But Jason didn't like to be scared. He was a researcher. Logical. Steady. You put your faith in him when he said something was true.

So I went.

The first thing I noticed was how alive the grounds looked.

Fields of daffodils waving like yellow flames.

Vines thick and glossy against crumbling stone.

Some hidden light appeared to shine through the cracked windows as well.

I remember Jason standing there, staring at the old entrance like it was whispering to him.

When I got there, he barely glanced at me. He just handed me a battered tape recorder.

"Listen," he said.

The tape hissed to life. Then... a voice.

His own. Speaking flatly:

"Spring is lovely this time of year."

A pause. Then something else that was almost impossible to pick up:

"Always obey the last order."

I laughed, awkwardly. "What's going on? Some kind of joke?"

Jason didn’t laugh. He simply turned and pushed open the heavy door.

It groaned — long and low — like a warning.

Inside, the asylum was choked with moss and dust.

Hallways sagged. Ceilings wept water.

But the deeper we went, the warmer it got, until I was sweating through my jacket.

There were flowers growing in the dark — flowers, where no light should reach.

We found the old records room.

Jason stopped there.

Papers were scattered across the floor like dead leaves.

A single chair was positioned in the room's center.

And in that chair... was a man.

Or what used to be a man.

His skin had split, blooms sprouting from the wounds.

His mouth gaped open, and vines spilled from it like a tongue.

Jason knelt beside the corpse, reverent.

"This was the last doctor in charge here," he whispered.

"He thought he could command them."

"Command who?" I asked, my throat dry.

Jason looked up at me, and his eyes...

God, I’ll never forget the way his pupils had turned green, rimmed with gold.

Like the center of a sunflower.

"The roots," he said.

Behind me, the walls shifted.

No — not the walls — the vines.

They slithered, growing fast, fattening, reaching for me.

I ran.

I ran like hell.

Jason didn’t follow.

I don’t remember getting home.

I don't remember anything after bursting into the sunlight, the world so bright it hurt.

For weeks, I stayed inside, kept the windows closed, pulled the blinds tight against the sight of flowers nodding in the breeze.

Spring has returned.

The crocuses have returned.

The trees are trembling with blossoms.

But sometimes — when the wind is just right — I hear a voice in the garden whispering:

"Obey the last command."

And deep underground, I can feel the roots growing, waiting for someone foolish enough to listen.

They told us Briarwood was abandoned. They told us the evil there died out long ago. But nature doesn't forget.