The Red Petal

Have you ever had a moment that you completely combed over your life choices in what to you felt like time had stopped, and yet it continued onward outside of your perception. The glass shards that seemed to fan out within the air beside you catch the sun rays of the setting sun just right, you think they are so beautiful. The roses that your ex-boyfriend had sent you as an apology were turned perpendicular of each other as they fell, seemingly in slow-motion to rest on the floor much like a funeral procession throwing flowers into a loved one’s grave. Did you ever consider that you brought this moment of total anarchy upon yourself? Did you care when your mother died, and you didn’t even shed a single tear? That’s okay, you remember that when your father was murdered when you were a child, you didn’t cry either.

Your breath catches in your throat as pain exploded in your shoulder like a white-hot firework, in this case it’d be one of the fireworks that bloomed purple from the use of strontium hitting your blood stream and combining with the copper within your delicate capillaries. The hole left in your shoulder from the shotgun shell exploding looks not unlike a grave, you think to yourself. Mother…. I am so sorry I didn’t visit more often is the thought wriggling around in your brain like maggots feasting on the rarest of necrotic flesh as you hit the ground beside the exploded vase, and flowers. Flowers, like the red and white roses you had thrown into the freshly-dug grave that became the eternal resting place of your accidentally murdered mother. You gasp for air like a fish out of water, your irises like pinpricks. You can remember the very first thing that set this deplorable show into motion. Your life had been normal back then, in college. Your mother had been alive, and happy. It should be mentioned that out of spite due to her death, you had her already totaled car crushed. This is all just a bad dream. I’ll wake up soon in my bed in the dormitory... Is what you whispered to yourself with such hope.

As you dreamed, you remembered. You had met them in school, this band of boys that seemed rather dodgy to the rest of the campus but to you, and your little rebel self, they were a godsend. With your notoriously black clothes, normally black hair, and pale skin you fit right in with these people. At first you thought they were just pretending to be what they were with their spell books and occult tattoos. They had posters of the wiccan creed and pentagrams in their rooms. You knew from your research that pentagrams are a sign of protection whether inverted or not. When you pointed this out to one of them, he laughed at you and informed you that it was just art.

Your ex-boyfriend was one of these strange men you used to pal around with. And the one who assaulted you just then with the shotgun? Also, another of the men. Your ex, he had decided that he didn’t want to be told what to do and he had left the little cult without issue. But you are a woman and thus more valuable for some reason, they decided to keep you despite his protests, so you broke up as no one could ever tell you who to be friends with. And they didn’t just keep you, did they. They made your life an absolute hell. It started out small, though. There were rumors and then news stories about assaults on campus and just off it at night and during classes, so these men, who were slowly getting more and more people to their cause started escorting you and two other ladies to and from their classes. They’d take you to your dorm, to your car, the cafeteria, and back again all with cheerful expressions. They’d guide you with a hand on your arm and it was kept in a tight grip so that everyone could see you were protected, right?

Their leader, Carl had been particularly nice to you and had asked for your number so that he could check in and text you after classes. You thought it was because he cared about you, but really, he just wanted to stalk you from the looks of it. You were under the spell of those warm brown eyes, Like the warm molasses cookies your mom had often pulled out of the oven when you were a child. Gods forgive you of the sexual thoughts you had about his near-platinum blonde wavy locks. Your knees felt like jelly, but you had handed him your cell-phone number with what felt like to you a dopey, stupid grin. Weeks and weeks, he would show up where you were and take you places himself by tucking your little hand into his crooked arm like a gentleman. Carl was a college junior, so who were you to deny him your attention with your sophomore self? He got you a pentagram amulet to wear around your neck and took you to get your bellybutton pierced. He was just an all-around nice guy, you thought.

This off and on dance of yours with Carl carried on for two years while you worked on school things. You graduated with honors, you were considering coming back for your master’s degree in Spanish so that you could be a Spanish teacher. Carl already graduated and working somewhere where he made enough of a salary to support himself and his endeavors which included this cult of men and women.

You could feel the cold metallic touch of something restraining your wrists, neck and your legs. The smooth hard feeling of something on your back didn’t feel quite right. What is this...what has he done now... You opened your eyes slowly to try and flick down towards your shoulder. It was with a shock that you noticed your shoulder was completely bare but patched up with gauze over the wound that had caused you so much pain that you blacked out. You could feel the subtle weight of your pentagram resting around your neck on its slightly masculine chain and you breathed a slight sigh of relief that it had been undamaged or stolen. Carl came to you suddenly, his breath hot on your bare breast as his lips wrapped around your hardened nipple, his brown eyes flicking upwards to stare into your own. He has always had the eyes of a killer, so dead of emotion...why had I never noticed? You wondered to yourself. If you lived through this experience you would chastise yourself thoroughly for this misstep.

All you could think about was that you were naked, so much so that you missed him starting to speak. “….my little red petal. You will be part of our greatest ritual yet. I chose you specifically even though we’re no longer together. The other women of the cult just can’t bear a candle to your magic-wielding abilities. You see, don’t you?”

You wanted to snarl to him: I am not your little red petal anymore, Carl…you decided to give that up for your job and another woman... Remember? Physically though you only stared at him like a wounded doe before you spoke physically: “I left this cult for a reason, Carl…you can’t just drag me back whenever you want. You set the protocol, remember?” You decided to use his own legal knowledge against him, after all...why not banter wits with a lawyer while you think of a solution?

With this turn of events you were able to glance around, and you noticed that you were underground by the look of the dirt walls, and within a ritual circle because you could see the candles flickering behind Carl’s back. There was a grimoire that looked particularly aged on a table in the corner with two fresh black candles. You could feel your eyes widening to the point you felt like they would exit your eye sockets. This looks like a summoning circ----shit, he’s speaking again.

“….You will be the doorway in which Chaos enters this world and sets everything back to rights as it was before Man started down the path of the defiler.” he was whispering against your ear in some sort of intimate, perverse way. You guess that he must have felt that would turn you on, as summoning circles often required sex. You had to stop this from happening somehow and it couldn’t be helped, you had to call upon what you thought would save you: your magic.

The chant started slowly in your mind at first. Peace be found within the gaze of the little red petal, and all I look upon. From the Earth under my feet and the sky above my head, Goddess rain your wrath upon those undeserving of your Gift! You could feel the power dancing behind your eyelids as you chanted over and over in your brain the simple mantra, but sometimes simplicity was the best. When you opened your eyes again, the sheer ferocity within your gaze made Carl take a step back and as he fell, the flames from the candle got onto his elaborately decorated velvet robes, not that he had noticed just yet, but you had. Your face remained stern, your stare ferocious even as he started to roll on the ground, his girlish screams echoing in the small cavern. All you could do was smile and as he rolled, the other candles just kept setting him alight. The other members of the coven watched in horrified awe as the moments of unexplained chaos clicked into place.

There were about twenty or so souls within that cavern not counting you or Carl. They all seemed terrified as their self-proclaimed leader rolled about the ground but kept getting set back alight as you stared down upon him in righteous fury.

You opened your mouth: “Peace be found within the gaze of the little red petal, and all I look upon. From the Earth under my feet, and the Sky above my head, Goddess rain your wrath upon those undeserving of your Gift!”

As you shouted, you looked upon the twenty souls. To a man and a woman, they turned about and fled, their robes that had been styled in a similar manner to Carl’s not making much of a noise, but you only smiled as their panicked trampling of the earth beneath them set off a chain reaction. You merely stared on as the shoddily-made cave rumbled, stilling the people like panicked animals as they glanced above them to the painfully small wooden support beam that was cracking. A shower of earth and rock locked fifteen of the people into the room, still alive. The others were buried amidst their agonized cries for mercy to you and your Goddess. Imagine that, pound after pound of dirt first falling around their bodies and then filling their mouths with its mineral embrace. But you didn’t have a choice, did you. You believed they were going to destroy the world using their summoning circle and maybe you were right. Still, you sat there tied to that board now trapped within the earth. You read once that all man came from dirt, and to dirt they will return in an unending cycle of life versus death.

You watched Carl burn to death, his cries echoing in your ears, draining you of your seemingly endless supply of power. The fire had burned him to a blackened husk and you know what else it had taken with it besides his life? Your air supply, Little Red Petal. There was no air flow coming from the blocked entrance, and the fire had needed oxygen, and taken oxygen from the air. You breathed shallowly at first, imperceptible really to your conscious brain, but your body knew. It knew that it needed to supply you with air for as long as possible, so it changed its breathing pattern. Ten minutes later, you started to sweat and gasp for air, determined to live both in spirit and in body. Those ten precious moments wasted in a mass grave that Carl had dug for you both, unaware that he would be digging your future resting place.

That is when I found you. Called to your side as I am to every side when they are about to breathe their last breath, smell their last scent, see their last ray of refracted light. I was there, Little Red Petal, when your head lolled to the side, your body exhausting its ability to keep you alive. I had refused to make the passage into my realm easier on those that had kidnapped and intended to torture you. I took you in my arms, and your soul, your light soul, did not weigh me down with your past wrongdoings, because you had so little. Thus, I was able to take you with me out of that cave, unlike the others. You looked up at me, and said:

“Daddy...tell me the story of the Red Petal…”