The Haunting of Flower
(Random 2-word prompt- maid, resign)
“I quit!” Flower threw down his tools. “I’ve had enough; I can’t take it anymore.”
He was talking to an empty room
in the Queen’s chambers. He’d been roped
in to clean her suite, dusting mostly, but he’d been misled by just how big her
private quarters were, just how many rooms there were, and just how dusty
they’d become. He’d heard she was prone
to temper tantrums, especially since the King had gone missing last year; she
got rid of every maid who crossed her. Got
rid. Not fired or sacked.
Beheaded.
Flower wiped the sweat from his brow
and picked up the cloth and feather duster he’d abandoned.
The palace always paid well. They were desperate; he thought he’d never
work here again after the first time he’d worked for the Queen, and he’d been
lucky enough not to get beheaded the last time he was here. That fiasco with the ant had caused quite the
stir.
He adjusted the fabric he’d tied
around his mouth to protect himself from the dust, then returned to sweeping
away the grime from atop the dresser. He
danced the feathers around the perfume bottles and hairbrushes, around the
lipstick, over the wooden veneer of the table, and up the sides of the mirror.
It always smelled nice in here,
and a strong, sweet, peppermint aroma permeated everything. It reminded Flower of cosy winters, curled up
by a fire with a minty hot chocolate. It
was his favourite scent, and lessened the burden of the chore.
He wasn’t alone.
He heard his words whispered
back to him; it was quiet, almost under their breath, but he heard someone repeat,
“I can’t take it anymore.” He paused,
straining his ears. Maybe it was an
echo, somehow delayed. Maybe he’d
imagined it. He was tired and hungry, and
it’d been a long morning.
Flower shook his head, let out a
small laugh, a little embarrassed by his midday scaries, and chalked up the murmuring
to his empty belly. He continued
sweeping the furniture.
A whispering susurrus crept back
into his ears, and he tried to ignore it.
“I can’t take it anymore.”
“I’ve had enough.”
It wasn’t his voice; it was a
woman’s voice.
“I hate you.”
“Die.”
And then a man’s.
“No.”
“Stop.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“Please, no.”
He couldn’t make out everything,
the words talked over each other, overlapped and interrupted, hissed and
muttered in a quiet cacophony. A shadow
fell over Flower’s shoulder, a chill breeze on his ear. He couldn’t move, arm stuck in place with the
duster just above the counter; he couldn’t turn away from the dresser and he
couldn’t face whatever loomed. Fear
froze him. His throat dried, tightened,
and he pulled away his claustrophobic face covering so he could suck in oxygen. Goosebumps rippled up his arms and scampered
down his spine. Pressure squeezed the
air, thick with the susurrant dissonance; it closed in on him, gripped him,
gripped his lungs, his heart. He sweat
cold sweat. He gasped.
One of the voices screamed bloody
murder.
And the whispering ceased, the
shadow dissipated, the air cleared, lightened.
Flower took a breath of minted
air and sighed into the silence.
He was alone again.
He scanned the area; the foyer was
empty, apart from the dust, and the bedroom door and walk-in wardrobe door were
both shut tight. He’d been told it was
forbidden to enter either, to only dust the foyer and other rooms of the
Queen’s private quarters. Across from
where he stood, the door into the hallway was wide open. He wandered over, the peppermint perfume of
the chamber lessening, and looked out into the passage. He saw nothing but sunlight snaking over and
under the muntins of the windows, casting itself onto the garish carpet and
highlighting its tawdry patterns.
Paintings of the Queen’s tart ancestors watched the room, stoic and
taciturn; it wasn’t them that’d haunted him moments ago.
He turned back to the foyer.
Something moved in his periphery,
a slight sinister shudder in the corner near the wardrobe. Flower took a few tentative steps closer. A small table held a purple vase that wasn’t
quite as central as he’d left it when he’d dusted it earlier. He slunk closer, not taking his unblinking eyes
off the curvaceous ornament.
It moved.
The vase moved.
It rocked forward barely a
millimetre, but it moved.
The room was still, with no
breeze or draft, and Flower certainly hadn’t disturbed the air as he shuffled
forward. Was there something in the
vase? A rat? The castle was known to have a pest problem. Or was there something more ominous at play?
He peered inside and found it
empty.
Strange.
He shivered, suddenly cold near
the vase. There was a patch of frozen
atmosphere filling a meagre space, and when he stepped back the temperature was
normal, warm and comfortable. But in the
corner near the walk-in wardrobe door, it was as if the air was nervous and
tense. Sharp and jittery. He felt it too. He glared at the ornament.
Nothing.
It was still.
Then, the vase flew from its
stand. He dodged as it sailed across the
room and slammed, smashed, exploded against the wall. Pieces ricocheted, attacked. A porcelain shard drew blood, and Flower pressed
his hand to his wet cheek, his fingers staining red.
“I can’t take it anymore.” The whispers returned. “Stop.
No. Please don’t. No.
No. Stop it. I didn’t mean it. I take it back. Stop.
Stop. Stop.” And then a meagre. “Help.”
Silence.
There was something different
about the whisper this time; he heard its direction clearly. The words came from inside the walk-in
wardrobe, and he realised the minty aroma of the Queen’s chambers was stronger
here too, as if the ghostly voice and the scent both came from within.
Flower reached for the handle…
and hesitated.
He’d been told the wardrobe was
off limits; he wasn’t allowed in there or the bedroom. There would be consequences.
His curiosity got the better of
him.
It was locked.
Of course it would be. Of course it would be locked.
But the valet had given him the
skeleton key, just for him to get into the Queen’s apartments and clean, but it
should work on every… ah, yes. The lock
clunked with the turn of the key.
As the door creaked open on its
hinges, the stink hit him like a hammer to the face. His eyes watered, his nose and throat
burned. What had been a pleasant wafting
aroma of sweet peppermint was now a thick wall of sickly sharpness.
Flower pulled his face covering
back over his mouth.
It didn’t help.
He waded through the stench into
the pristine wardrobe. He was greeted by
a rainbow plethora of silks and satins, brocades and fringes, patterns and
ornamentation. Dresses, hats, shoes, all
blurred in his teary eyes. He staggered,
his head pounding from the reeking room.
“Help,” hissed the whisper
again. It came from the other side of
the room, from within a closet between two racks of dresses.
Flower wiped his eyes with the
back of his sleeve, teetered closer, moving around the green pouffe in the
centre of the room, and across the tasteless and tacky carpet to the cubbyhole. The minty stench was almost unbearable here; a
putridness crept up underneath the sickly thickness in the air.
“Help,” muttered a shadow to his
right.
There was no-one there when he looked.
His heart was pounding between
his straining lungs. He needed to know
what was inside the closet, an irresistible urge gripping him and pulling him
closer and closer, as if somehow opening the door and looking inside would
clear the air of this vile stink and resolve the unresolved… whatever that was.
His hand reached for the handle,
almost as if someone else had grabbed it and guided it. He was no longer in control of his actions. Fate, destiny, whatever had manifested around
him, conducted his movements.
The door opened.
The fetid peppermint slammed
into him like a brick to the face, and he almost fell to his knees. He retched, trying not to vomit on an empty
stomach, coughing and hacking, tears running down his face. His lungs burned.
Flower pushed through it,
blinking hard, trying to steady his breaths, calm himself, stay standing, and
as his vision lucidified, and he adjusted to the fiery menthol air, he was met
by a white leather trunk.
He knew that whatever horrors he’d
been drawn to would be hidden inside.
Flower opened the trunk.
“Oh shit.” The words left his lips almost as fast as the
realisation of what he was looking at reached his brain.
It was filled with salt.
Mostly salt.
Peeking out at him through the
white powder, body entombed, was a familiar and almost mummified face. There was no mistaking that the dried-out
husk of a body buried in the salt and hidden in the trunk, was the missing
King. The dead face stared back at Flower.
He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t take his eyes off the corpse,
couldn’t move. The putrid peppermint
drowned him, and it no longer hid the stink of decay that washed over his remaining
senses.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
There would be consequences if
he was found here, rummaging around in the Queen’s closet, looming over the
dead King.
And those consequences appeared
as a sudden shadow in the doorway of the wardrobe. A shadow flanked by two others.
It was the killer and her guards.
“Regicide!” screamed the Queen. “Off with his head!”
And Flower, despite his
protestations, was hauled away to the dungeons to await his doomed fate.
He was grateful to no longer
suffer the stench of peppermint.
It was his favourite scent no
more.
To be continued…
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