Rotten Rose

Percy Flage was her stage name. Not that she ever stepped foot on an actual stage during her brief career as a therapy clown. Strictly speaking, stages, spotlights, curtains, and everything else used in theatrical productions weren’t part of her performances. Concrete floors, fluorescent lights, beeping medical machines, and extras in the form of nurses and doctors milling about were all that she had to work with, aside from a small assortment of props. Brittany Victoria Adelaide was her given name and her breech birth widowed her father. She entered the world through a cesarean section. Something went wrong and the bleeding wouldn’t stop. This tragedy made for an early introduction to death and its long, pitiless trail of six-foot holes.

Her father struggled with alcoholism yet he managed to get sober during the last trimester of the pregnancy; a battle won in a war destined to be lost. Having to bury his wife three days after holding his newborn child in his arms nudged him permanently off the wagon. He stuck around for as long as possible, singlehandedly raising his child to the threshold of adulthood. But a few weeks after she turned seventeen (the age her mother died at), he locked himself in his bedroom and put an end to his depression. The last words spoken to his daughter before she headed off to school that morning, were odd but not ominous: A friend’s picking me up and we’re heading out to his deer blind for the week… The bills are paid and the fridge is full, he said, kissing her on the forehead. She would’ve had to have been psychic to foresee his carefully planned accident.

Year after year, people shot themselves while cleaning their guns. These fatal mishaps were common enough to raise him above suspicion, or so he figured. Unfortunately, his friend cancelled the hunting trip at the last second, forcing him, out of desperation, to adopt plan B, which was the same as plan A, save for one messy detail. Halfway through scrubbing the bore of his barrel, he withdrew the cleaning rod, lowered his chin, took a breath, and pulled the trigger while sitting on the end of his bed. Unaware of the changed plans, she returned from school and made supper for herself, did her homework, watched a movie, and fell asleep on the couch, oblivious to the hideous work of art decorating her father’s room. A few days later a dark stain formed on the kitchen ceiling, and she wondered if it was mold. On the seventh day, a gelatinous droplet the colour of a rotten rose landed on the kitchen table. There’d also been a bad smell reminiscent of mothballs and decaying cabbage emanating from an unknown corner of the house and this, in combination with the droplet, brought on a sickening feeling. The door to her father’s room was usually locked and this day was no different, but when she pressed her ear against it, she could hear a faint buzzing sound. Maybe he’d been in a hurry to leave and forgot to turn his electric razor off, she thought, until a fly crawled out from under the door and took flight, struggling under its weight to stay airborne. A feast had clearly been had by this bug and when it landed on her arm to assess the freshness of her flesh, she shuddered violently; realizing in that moment the awful truth of the matter: There’d been no hunting trip. Slowly, she backed away from the door as her gaze, like a bird flying through fire, faltered, and dropped, landing on the screen of her phone. The 911 operator answered and tried to get a word edgewise as the caller rambled on incoherently for several minutes. Miss, you’re going to have to calm yourself down so I can understand what it is you’re trying to say, came the rote voice at the other end of the line. I—I guess I always knew he’d kill himself… Please send someone to clean up the mess, she said, finally, through hitched sobs.

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