swollen daisies.

[Riel]

"I'm sorry."

A bouquet of daisies fell to the ground, striking the slightly wet dirt. Some petals here and there were scattered around the bouquet, outlining the remaining, and intact, flowers. He fell to his knees directly to the left of the flowers, and he punched the ground with force.

"I'm sorry."

-

It was the first of October, and the leaves were all beginning to change into their fall hues; orange, red, gold, yellow, brown. He could smell the crispness in the air, and feel the way that the entire earth had seemed to dry up, as if in an attempt to stockpile for winter. Still, there was the barest hint of the rain that had coated the entire county periodically for the past three hours or so.

He was walking down the road, smiling and waving at any car that happened to pass. He couldn't feel the air well through his jacket, but he could almost taste that it was beginning to turn cold. The ground was slightly wet, a tiny bit slippery between the rain and the leaves. Some cars that passed would slip and slide around, but it didn't seem to be anything too dangerous.

Work had been easy that day. No annoying customers that would call out his name as if they knew him personally, no boss that would lay into him with abandon, as if every single thing that happened in the store were his fault. He had been able to simply stand behind the counter and help the few customers that walked in, reading his book or sweeping up the mud that was left behind by their feet when they came and went.

Typically, he parked as close as possible to his work. That morning, how ever, he had looked at the leaves and smelled the rain, and decided that he would park a little farther away. The walk would do him some good, and he could absorb all of the sights and sounds; all in all, a plan that would either make a bad day a little more bearable or a good day just that tad bit more wonderful. Looking a bit down the road, he could see his car; a dinky little blue thing that wasn't fun to look at, but was a decent enough means of transportation.

Shockingly, though, he also saw someone laying down next to the car. From the distance he thought that it looked like a woman, but he couldn't tell. Ignoring the trees for a moment, he sped up and tried to discern who it was. When he got closer, he saw the red smears along is car, along her face, her hands, her body.

Shit.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket quickly, flipping it open and dialing 9-1-1 with force. When the operator came on the line, he moved forward and grasped the girl's hand. She felt cold, but she had a heartbeat that he could feel from even that position.

"9-1-1. What is your emergency?" a voice asked, dull and with a lack of emotion that he wished he could possess.

"There's a girl here, and she is bleeding out of..." he stopped talking for a moment and examined her. "She's bleeding out of her nose, mouth, and what look like a ton of tiny little cuts on her body," he finished, looking for anything else that had happened.

"Does she appear to be in critical condition?"

"Yes, she's in critical condition! I just told you that she was bleeding all over the place!"

"Sir, please calm down. What is your current location?"

He gave the location and closed the phone. Sitting there next to her, he tried to see if he knew who the girl was- she looked unfamiliar. When he rubbed her hair in an attempt to make her feel better, she suddenly became very alive; smacking him, clawing him, attempting to bite his hand away.

Shocked, he retreated a small distance and looked her in the eyes; limpid blue things that at once appeared resigned, spiteful, hopeless, and fervent. Her hair was matted against her head with thick mud and blood, sticking out in odd places and stuck down in others. Looking at her, he recognized that she was beautiful, enough to be seen through all of her injuries and grime.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he told her. He kept his voice steady and calm, holding his hands in the air to assure her of his intentions of peace. "I just called 9-1-1, they're sending an ambulance right now. What happened to you?" he asked, hoping that she would be able to talk about it.

"He did this to me. It was him!" she yelled, spitting the words out as if they were acid.

"Who did this? And what did they do?"

"It was him. It was him it was him itwashimitwashimitwashim"

He knew that he wouldn't get an answer out of her. Leaning back, he sat with his head in his hands while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Five minutes passed; nothing. Ten; nothing. She sat there on the ground, rocking back and forth and biting her lip, tearing her nails into her arms. Feeling daring, he risked grabbing her hands and looked her directly in the eye.

"It's going to be okay. He can't do it again, I promise. What is your name?" he asked her, putting all of his conviction into that statement and all of his hopes into that question.

She relaxed a little bit, even leaned into his shoulder. When she spoke again, she was tired, defeated.

"My name was Elizabeth."

"What do you mean, was?" he asked her, mystified by that choice in words. When she didn't answer, he glanced down at her face, hoping that the eye contact...

She was gone. Her eyes were open, staring at the ground without recognition. He became aware that she wasn't breathing any more; she was perfectly, and absolutely still.

-

It was weeks later when he finally had the courage to travel to her house, to meet her parents. He knocked on the cherry-red door once before it was flung open, and he was practically attacked by her parents. Not an angry attack; more, it was an attack where her mother threw her arms around him and hugged him close, immediately bursting into tears. The father was much more reserved, holding back in the doorframe and looking on with tears in his eyes.

In the house, they exchanged niceties. He explained how he had found her, what the EMT had said to him when they arrived, how he had ridden with her in the ambulance even though she was already gone. They listened patiently, never interrupting with any questions or punching into his many silences with sobs or tears. When he finished, they both stood up and thanked him, before the father grabbed a small book from the end table.

It was worn, clearly used often. The cover was a soft, creamy off-white and the pages were all slightly marked and yellowed by careless flipping through pages. On the front, it had one single thing written in loop heavy, elegant cursive:

Elizabeth.

Understanding without being told, he took the book and went home, spending the entire night reading it with a flashlight. From it, he traveled through the last year of her life; in that script he found out who she was, as revealed by personal journals and poems, by drawings and graphs. Among the ink and the paper, he found out who she really was. The last page that she had written in was the one that he cared about the most:

There is a better earth, and I'm going to find it.
Then, I will actually live, and love. I know that there are some people who will miss me, but to them, I say:
Come and meet me.

-

He didn't meet her, not in the sense that she may have wanted. Instead, he visited her grave, bringing daisies-her favorite flower- with him. He set his hands against the cold marble of her headstone, ran his fingers along the engraving in the faceplate. He set her diary in front of the grave in a plastic bag, so that others may learn what had happened in her life to make her do such a thing.

He walked away, looking back once more at the girl that he was in love with. A girl that he had met five minutes before the end of her life, and a girl that he would remember for the rest of his. And when he died, he would meet her.

------------------------------------

I do not even know. Probably needs a re-write, but it just kinda popped into my head at the same time as a good other three ideas. So, yeah.

[Annoyance]

I need to stop glancing your stuff and just read it but from what I did read (the very beginning and the middle part with when he finds her), it's missing some key action like her hitting the guy in fear, anger, etc.

It just seems necessary to me. Oh, and him trying to keep her back from clawing at his face and whatnot.

I think it needs some tweaking. Probably a rewrite.

Bug me to read the whole thing.