Long ago before madness rooted itself like ivy in the hollows of his mind The Man Who Rose had been nothing more than a man: mortal, unbloomed, full of green longing. His name, now scattered to wind and worm, once flowered on the lips of those who loved him. He was noble, yes chivalrous in bearing and fragrant with hope. A heart not yet bruised. A soul not yet pricked by the thorn.

He was a lover, yet not of flesh and pulse. No, his was a love of the rose unplucked, the idea of love in its unopened state, fragrant with innocence and dream. He yearned for a bloom still curled in velvet secrecy, untouched by hand or time. But fate, that cruel gardener, had long since turned its soil toward rot.

Oh, Consumption!, how could he have known it was she?

She came not as woman, but as blossom: a bloom that should not have grown where it did. Deep in the forest where sun is strangled by canopy, and old roots sleep like coiled serpent he found her. A petal fallen in decay. Her body lay like a pale rose dropped among damp leaves. Her crimson hair spilled out like spilled wine on snow. And her voice… her voice! It rustled like roses breathing in the night.

Her eyes glowed the blue of frostbitten blooms, fevered and unnatural. And when she looked at him, he felt it. a trellis forming around his ribs. His chest tightening with the first terrible twinge of affection. He did not fall in love; he was entwined.

She was not a woman. She was a garden of thorns in a gown of flesh.

He longed to hold her, but found himself held.

And still, he followed. As men do. As bees do. As moths to perfumed flame.

 

It was the year without a summer. The flowers had turned their faces from the sun, and the wind carried only the scent of soil and sorrow. Together, they wandered beneath the boughs, hand in hand like lovers, though she never held his hand, only pressed her fingers to his palm, as if planting something deep beneath the skin.

He gave her roses.

Each one, a symbol of love. Each one, a little death.

And she smiled, coy as petals. But her smile held secrets. Her smile had thorns.

 

One dusk, the rain murmured through the leaves like whispered warnings. The air thick with wet earth and the sweetness of overripe things. And there, blooming where no sunlight fell, she pointed.

A single rose.

Its petals were crimson, wet with dew that glimmered like blood. Its stem curled like a question. It breathed. It hungered.

“Pluck it for me,” she said, and her voice fell soft as pollen on skin.

He obeyed.

When his fingers closed around the stem, the thorn found him. The skin split. Blood welled. But the pain was... sacred. As though the flower had marked him.

She took it gently. Her skeletal fingers a bouquet of bone. She brought it to her lips and then, with a violence that shattered silence, she devoured it. Petals between her teeth. Sap, no, not sap, blood ran down her chin.

His blood.

The rose had fed her. Through him.

And he understood then.

She was no maiden. She was the bloom that blossoms in graves. The rose that eats the hand that picks it.

He should have fled. God in heaven, he should have run.

But he stayed.

He returned. Again and again. Each visit, a pruning of himself. His body thinned like the stem of a dying flower. His eyes lost their shine. His breath grew shallow, perfumed with rot.

Still, he brought her roses.

Still, she consumed.

Then, one morning, she was gone.

No sound. No scent. Only absence.

And roses. So many roses, blooming where none had grown before. They burst from tree roots. From cracks in stone. From the hollow where her body once lay.

And among them, one that stood alone.

A rose.

Larger. Redder. Breathing.

He approached. The petals called to him in the language of the damned.

He reached.

The thorns tore him open.

And oh, the pain! The pleasure! The knowing.

He was not plucking the rose.

The rose was plucking him.

His vision swam in crimson. His skin bloomed. Thorns pushed through his spine. His breath came not in gasps, but in sighs of perfume. His thoughts became tangled vines.

He was in bloom.

He was the rose.

And the forest smiled.

She waits still, somewhere beneath the bramble.

She will bloom again.

And so will he.

And if, one day, you find yourself walking in the woods, and smell roses where there are none

Run.

Or don’t.

The rose is very patient.

It has time to bloom again.

And again.

And again.