Words Burned to Flame

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  I realize, after so many years have slipped through my fingers, that the strange, beautiful flowers that so suddenly bloomed the morning following the shop’s vandalism were the second occasion I witnessed Mr. Turner’s magic. I smell the flowers even now, though each blossom has been so long dead; I smell that powerful stench of decay, so pungent that the scent changes into perfume.

  Another town crowd assembled before my mother’s shop to stare at the green vines that overnight stretched out of the window boxes to snake across the red brick of the building’s front façade. Strange, white flowers bloomed from those vines. Not even the most experienced gardener among Addieville’s populace recognized that species of plant, for the blooms were like nothing ever seen – bone white, small bulbs that when viewed from certain angles looked like small skulls for the shadows that collected in their pedals, a pair of dark eye sockets, a grin of shaded teeth. No one seemed capable of turning away from those skull-blossoms held upon those vines.

  My father plucked one of those blossoms before once again driving us away from that shop. Back home, mother smiled at the ghoulish bloom, commenting upon its sweet smell before setting the flower into one of her favorite glass vases.

  That flower failed to survive the following night, and the next morning we found a black, shriveled blossom wilting in the sunlight. I pedaled my bicycle to my mom’s empty storefront, where I discovered all those white blossoms dropped upon the sidewalk, smelling yet more powerful than they had the day before. Such blossoms failed to survive very long, but for a short time they lifted our family’s hearts.

  The people of town, however, would show us that they were far less impressed by those bone-white flowers that grinned like skulls in the proper shadow and light. For Addieville, those flowers smelled too tainted with decay. No doubt the grins on those blossoms filled them with dread.

  Addieville wasn’t finished showing its displeasure with our family. The town’s natives wouldn’t rest within their homes until we left their village and abandoned our efforts to expose their minds and souls to the sinister words Mr. Turner penned.

  Fortunately, those flowers wouldn’t be the final time I witnessed Mr. Turner’s magic.

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