A Cross of Flowers

In the hollow in the forest lives a monster. It is a terrible monster. Deep, deep in the forest, where the light can’t go and so it’s always dark. I don’t know where the monster came from. Do we ever know where they come from? Maybe they are always there. Maybe the monster has always been there.

When I close my eyes, I see flowers of every kind. The kind of beautiful flowers that I cannot name, because I’ve never heard their’s. Red and purple. Blue and green and yellow. And orange. When I see these flowers, I know they don’t exist. But they smell sweet to me, all the same.

When I was a boy I saw my mother die. A man who wasn’t my father hit her and hit her until one day she broke. At the funeral I didn’t cry, and the suit I wore itched my neck fiercely. She was a shade of pale pink and purple, with hints of red and blue. Her skin looked like a flower petal’s, against the black of the wood and the brown and grey of the dirt. She was at my sixth birthday, and she brought me my favorite toy, and she didn’t come to my birthdays after.

When I think of my grandmother, I think of white, like her hair. Thin and faint and white. Like a cobweb. I hadn’t wanted to go and live with her, on that hill in her big house, but the people who found me said I had to. My mother gave me candy and sang songs to me to help me go to sleep. There wasn’t any candy in my grandmother’s house, and she never saw me to sleep. Her house creaked and moaned. I could hear ghosts at night, who wouldn’t let me sleep. I lost my toy, somewhere in the house, and my grandmother cursed at me and said I couldn’t have another. I think the ghosts took it, and they hid it from me, someplace I would never find it, someplace I’d be too scared to go. My grandmother was old, and she could be very mean. She didn’t eat much, and said I shouldn’t eat is she wasn’t hungry. She loved god. She talked to god. I couldn’t ever hear him talk back. All I could hear was her talking to him, telling him about all the bad things my mother and I had done. She had to tell me what he said to her, and she laughed when he spoke, and told me god was laughing to. God said I was a mistake. He said my mother never wanted me.

My grandmother had a man to tend her house and the hill. He never told me his name. I couldn’t say the one she told me, and she laughed at that. I called him Frank, after a character I had seen in a movie with my mom, though that wasn’t his name, and never when he could hear me. And when he did hear me, he pushed my head under the water of his mop bucket. The water was cold and filthy, and it burned my eyes when I opened them and the water got to them. He did that a lot. I could hear my grandmother laughing, outside the water. I thought it was strange to be able to hear underwater, and her laugh sounded far away and different, like from another room. Frank never laughed. He just grinned, and his mustache looked like a fuzzy caterpillar on his lip.

One time when I was under the water, and my lungs burned cause I hadn’t breathed much, I thought I saw something at the bottom of the bucket. The water was grey, and murky, but it seemed clear as a photograph to me. It glowed at the bottom. I saw a cross of flowers, all kinds in full bloom, there, at the bottom. I wondered for a moment if Frank could see it, but then I heard my grandmother’s laughter, and I knew that they hadn’t seen it. It was there, but only I could see it: a cross of flowers, glowing just for me.

When I would get scared at night, my grandmother wouldn’t sing me songs. She would just laugh, and tell me I should be glad I was inside, because outside, in the forest behind her house, lived a monster who liked nothing more that to eat people. But most of all, she said, he liked to eat children. And he would get me if it weren’t for her, if I went outside, and I should be glad for her. What a spoiled child I was, she said to god, and god agreed.

Each time Frank put my head in the water, I could see the cross of flowers brighter and brighter. I worried that it might get too bright, and that Frank or my grandmother might notice and pull me out of the water, away from it and never put me there again. I did things I knew would make Frank put me under, just to see it. And each time, I wanted to stay a little longer, just to be with the flowers. And one day, when Frank went to pull me up, I held my head down. I wanted to stay there forever, because the cross of flowers was more beautiful each time I saw it. I wanted to stay there forever.

After that time, Frank didn’t put me under water anymore. I had been at my grandmother’s house for a long time.

I started helping Frank outside the house. I wasn’t as spoiled as I had been, my grandmother said, and god agreed. I was older, and my body was changing. And one day, when I was helping Frank outside, I blinked from dust off the rocks we were crushing, and when I closed my eyes I saw them, for the first time. Flowers. And every time after that I closed my eyes I could see them. They were beautiful.

As I got older, my grandmother did too. And though I didn’t think it would happen at first, Frank got old, too. That furry caterpillar turned grey. Like the color of dust. Frank couldn’t do as much as he used to, so he need my help more and more. One day, he said we were going into the forest to do some work my grandmother wanted done. I didn’t mention to Frank about the monster that lived there. The one that was in the dark, and liked to eat people whole. I was older, and I knew better then. I wasn’t a boy any longer.

We walked back into the forest, so far that I couldn’t see the house as it disappeared in the trees behind us. It was farther than I had ever been. We had out picks from crushing the stones that lay around the house. Frank said we’d need them for our work. The path got thinner and thinner, until we were practically crawling through the overgrowth. Finally, deep in the forest, where the trees grew thick overhead and blotted out the sunlight, the overgrowth fell away into a clearing. My heart was pounding, I noticed then. The hair on my neck stood stiff. I wasn’t a boy anymore. I knew better than that. When I closed my eyes, I saw flowers. And when I opened them, I saw a monster. Frank was screaming at it, but it didn’t help. I watched as the monster had its way with him, the little grey caterpillar stained red and yellow.

I hurried back through the overgrowth. But I knew it would never be fast enough. When I saw the house, I thought my lungs would explode. I ran in, because my grandmother was an old lady. I heard her in her room. Talking to god. I thought I had been fast enough, but when I looked in the room I saw I hadn’t. The monster was already there. She screamed at god to help her, but he must’ve not heard her, because he didn’t reply. When I was young, I believed her, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe she never talked to him at all. Maybe he’d never been there at all. She was an old lady and she couldn’t stop the monster. I just closed my eyes, and they disappeared. Flowers.

In the hollow in the forest lives a monster. It is a terrible monster. Deep, deep in the forest, where the light can’t go and it is always dark. I don’t know where the monster came from. Maybe they are always there. Maybe the monster has always been there.