Roses are Red
Aug 11, '08
A short to keep in mind as you do your summer chores outside...
Kate Murphy was a good woman. She had a nice house on the corner of Elm and Prescott streets. She had worked hard to keep up after her husband Leo up and disappeared some fifteen years ago after a drunken fight which he had actually struck her. No one knew what ever happened to Leo Murphy, but he was not really missed by many.
Mrs. Murphy had rose bushes in her front yard, large, award-winning rose bushes that she tended to on a daily basis. Folks in the neighborhood would use them as a landmark.
“Turn left at the house with the roses out front,” they would say.
On a summer’s night, the aroma of the bushes would fill the air in the area and always put people in a good mood when they walked by.
Well, not everyone.
Jake Sally was a bully. Seventeen years old and a recent dropout, he was on a fast track to nowhere. He lived just 4 doors down from the kind little Kate Murphy. He had few interests, and the ones he had were not good.
His current hobby was making the life of Jimmy Gutz a living hell. The young Mr. Gutz had offended Jake one day by not having any money to buy Jake a cold Coke at the corner store. For that offense, Jake had began tormenting Jimmy at every opportunity.
Last Thursday was no exception.
He had chased Jimmy from the corner of Elm and Hancock all the to the corner of Elm and Prescott. Jimmy was fast. With speed born of desperation and fear, he managed to stay just ahead of Jake.
When the pursuit reached the front yard of the Murphy house, Jimmy cut the corner. Jake, larger and full of anger, ran very close to the rose bushes that sat in mute witness to the human drama. Jake's arm brushed the roses and he ran past, the thorns on the bushes ripping his arm open, blood welling up fast.
He growled and stopped, his hand over the open wounds, blood seeping between his fingers.
“Goddamn plants bit me!” He forgot about the rapidly diminishing Johnny Gutz and returned to his house to nurse his wounds.
Friday night came around, as it always does, and it found Jake hanging out at “Dog” Turner's garage, as he did every Friday. Dog was as much a loser as Jake was, and the two just would sit in the garage and drink and smoke and talk trash about the world in general.
As he sat there, Jake saw the rusty clippers hanging on the wall of the garage. Being drunk, and just as angry as he normally was, he decided that the rose bushes of the kind Mrs. Murphy needed to be taught a lesson. He told Dog that he was “gonna borrow them things” and would back in a while.
He set out into the darkness with the clippers and mayhem on his mind.
The moon was full that night and the residential streets were quiet, as they normally were. Jake walked the few blocks to the corner, and stood there and looked at the rose bushes. He figured it would take only a few minutes to reduce the once proud roses to a heap of green kindling.
He stalked across the street and bent low to get at his first victim. He reached in with the clippers, spread them apart, and was ready to cut , a evil grin on his face.
The clippers never came together.
The plant he crouched next too lashed out. A thick thorn-filled vine wrapped itself around his throat, choking off any attempt to cry out.
He dropped the clippers and grabbed at the vine that seemed to pull him in. Blood ran like water from his tortured neck and grasping fingers.
A second vine snaked out, wrapping around his wrist. A third joined in, twining around his other wrist with a speed unlike any plant could muster.
His eyes wide with terror and pain, Jake knew on a primal level that he was in real danger. He fought back, his youth and strength seeming to gain ground on his attacker.
But the rose bush was not alone. The one next to it joined in the attack, grabbing his legs and slamming him to the ground. He twisted and turned, but the thorns and vines held. Blood stained the grass as he was slowly pulled into the leafy mass.
The roses moved slightly, as he fought a bit more. Then, as the moonlight poured down on the scene, they were still.
A few minutes later, a single vine reached outward and grabbed a hold of the clippers, and they, too, were slipped into the bush.
The next morning dawned as the roses blossomed full and rich, bright red and beautiful.
Mrs. Kate Murphy walked out onto her porch, bent down and picked up the shiny set of clippers that were lying there. She calmly walked out to her shed and hung them up on the wall next to the other new cutting tools that hung there, the first one being the large machete her husband had been wielding the night he disappeared so long ago.
“All you have to do is feed them,” she said as she walked out to admire her roses.
