Flowers from Mildred

Mildred stood selling flowers at one of the main intersections in the city of Baneville. She cradled three large bouquets of red and yellow roses in her thin arms, with more bouquets piled at her feet. Cars stopped at the intersection and most of the drivers and passengers inside glared at her with eyes full of contempt. Some even shouted insults before speeding off. But none of it bothered Mildred.

The majority of Baneville citizens recognized the strange woman on the corner. They knew her name, but very few used it. Most called her "The Vampire Lady," while some preferred nastier appellations. The citizens had gathered many rumors about Mildred over the years, the most popular of which didn't have much to do with traditional vampire lore.

Once, a few years ago, Mildred had actually walked into Cecil's Restaurant and ordered a meal - the first time she'd ever been in one of the city's restaurants, as far as anyone knew. She sat down and the patrons next to her gasped at her ripped black clothes and long unwashed hair. A waitress went over and Mildred ordered the largest steak in the house -- except she wanted it served completely raw. Cecil had been running various restaurants for over twenty years and never in all that time did he receive a request for uncooked meat. The waitress informed Cecil of Mildred's order and he walked over to her table smiling and told her any meat he served must at least touch the grill. Mildred stood up, smiled back, and walked out without a word.

Another of Mildred's qualities that sent chills through the good folks of Baneville was the fact that she had a deep scar around her neck, not far below her jaw; it was a wide and thick scar that completely encircled her neck and continued up the side of her haggard yet attractive face, which resembled the imprint of a noose - but a noose that had been burning while someone had tried to hang her. Yet at the same time, the scar seemed to have been cause by a deep laceration, and not merely heat. If a person ventured close enough to the scar, they could see the raised and discolored tissue over the majority of Mildred's neck. But not many people got that close.

Other rumors circulated about Mildred's frequent fits in public places; and these outbursts inevitably ended with her speaking in one or more foreign languages. Extremely foreign languages. Some patrons of the establishments who witnessed the tantrums recognized that she was speaking German, but other times it would be French or Italian. One person claimed they identified Slavic and a little Croatian. But there was also another language Mildred spoke when she was at the peak of her frenzies - a language that sent pure terror up and down the spinal columns of the customers who heard it. The language could not be one used on Earth, because the sounds she made were not of human origin - no normal person could make the noises involved. Yet it was not merely gibberish. There was a structure to the language, but it sounded alien - like something spoken at the outer reaches of the solar system. Whenever Mildred let loose a torrent of these obscure and disturbing sounds, the patrons would scream and flee, thinking she was a demon trying to put a spell on them.

Lastly, only two years ago, someone had actually ventured inside Mildred's home. (Note: This last rumor is the most doubtful, for no one in Baneville seemed brave enough to actually go inside her house.) Although no one is sure why this particular person paid Mildred a visit, they said that once they were inside they saw a large shrine set up in her living room, with a thick book propped up in the center of it. Mildred explained that the book was an ancient collection of spells, which had been found in Vlad Tepes's castle. She said it was a book that Vlad the Impaler himself had once owned - a powerful book of black magic. Mildred said it had been given to Tepes by a traveling sorcerer who stayed in Vlad's castle for a short time. Mildred also said the book could reveal "The Absolute Truth" and "The Genuine Meaning of Life" to anyone who progressed to the right "Circle of Execution." She said she'd been searching for this particular book her entire life and that she had felt a desire for it when she was a small child, even before she had come to Earth. Her visitor did not know what she had meant by that. But then Mildred pointed out the title on the cover: 'Nihila Magice Potentialis,' and Mildred lifted the book up carefully with her thin wrinkled hands. She opened it and began reading something in Latin and the visitor rushed out of the house before seeing any of the ominous effects.

Those are the main rumors concerning Mildred, which almost all the citizens of Baneville were familiar with. Now, mysteriously, Mildred had taken up selling flowers at a four way stop in the center of Baneville for no apparent reason. She had not sold many bouquets so far.

#

Duane and Kim drove through the dense noonday traffic, on their way to lunch at their favorite Chinese restaurant. They came to the intersection where Mildred was selling flowers.

"Who is that?" Kim asked.

Duane looked over at Mildred. "Ahh, she's a unique one. Not your average city-crazy. Her name is Mildred. But most people around here call her The Vampire Lady." He checked his watch, then accelerated around the corner.

Kim stared at Mildred who leaned against one of the four-way stop signs at the intersection. She now held two bouquets of yellow and red flowers wrapped in green and silver foil. Mildred peered into the windows of each passing car, her long black dress with green stripes somehow matched her stringy black hair with the long streaks of gray. The numerous wrinkles centered mainly around her eyes contributed to her sinister appearance.

Duane drove past Mildred without a second glance. But Kim gawked at the unusual looking woman, her eyes filling with curiosity. Kim strained to see the noose-like scar around her neck, and as she did she could almost feel Mildred's powerful aura reach out to her.

"Why do people call her The Vampire Lady?" Kim said.

Duane squeezed the steering wheel while the numerous rumors about Mildred ran through his mind. "Well, there are lots of reasons. I'll fill you in at the restaurant. This traffic is a little thick now. I'd better concentrate now."

"Turn the car around," said Kim. "I want to buy some flowers from her."

Duane glanced at her in shock. "What? Why would you want to do that?"

She gave him a penetrating look.

"You'll regret this." Duane said, shaking his head and checking his watch again.

Duane turned down a side street and circled around into the parking lot of the gas station on the corner closest to where Mildred stood. He braked and motioned for Mildred to come to them. She acknowledged him and walked toward their car carrying the flowers.

Kim was transfixed by Mildred's eerie appearance, her voice was filled with astonishment as she said, "Jesus. Just look at her."

Mildred went to Kim's side of the car. She carried the bouquets with an awkward nonchalance as she walked. Kim studied Mildred's heavy mascara, applied so thick it looked like thin mud running down her face. The large rings on Mildred's fingers flashed in the sunlight as she approached; Kim looked at their esoteric shapes while rolling down her window. Mildred's pinky ring caught her attention: A two-headed neanderthal-like man with the wings of a bat and red rubies for eyes curled around her little finger.

"Would you like some flowers today?" Mildred said, speaking with a strange accent.

Kim smiled, doing her best to seem personable while hiding her intense curiosity. "Yes, Mildred. We'd like one yellow and one red bouquet. Your name is Mildred, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is." She ruffled through the foil selecting the flowers.

"I'm Kim. It's very nice to meet you."

Mildred strained to speak above the noise of the traffic. "It's lovely to meet you." She wrapped the flowers in a separate piece of foil. "That will be eight dollars."

Kim plucked a ten from her pocketbook. "Here you go. Keep the change." She held the money out and Mildred took it and their hands touched briefly - a small electric shock traveled up Kim's arm.

"That is very kind of you," Mildred said, smiling.

Kim smiled back. "It's sort of a chilly day today-"

Duane tapped Kim's arm and released a loud sigh.

"Well, thank you for the flowers," Kim said. "Goodbye now."

Mildred nodded, stepped back and stood very still, staring at Kim. Mildred could not remember the last time someone had been nice to her. She could not recall the last time someone had treated her with the slightest bit of respect. Today was indeed a special day. As Mildred stared at her and Duane was starting the car, Kim leaned forward and rubbed her temple, squinting. She had the uncanny feeling that someone was reading her mind.

Duane shot out of the parking lot. Mildred turned and walked back to the intersection and Kim, still bent forward with her eyes closed, saw a golden flash of light bursting deep in her mind's eye. Duane pushed on the accelerator, desperate to get to the restaurant.

"She seemed nice," Duane said. "That was the first time I ever heard her speak."

Kim blinked her eyes, shaking off the strange feelings and the bright vision. "Yeah, she seemed normal enough. But when she touched me, I felt sort of a shock. Like an electrical shock." Kim didn't mention the other things she felt.

#

Over lunch, Duane told Kim all the stories he knew about Mildred, all the reasons the citizens had for calling her The Vampire Lady. He told her about the raw steak incident and the noose-like scar around her neck and he mentioned the foreign and alien-like languages people had heard Mildred speaking in her frenzies and he pontificated about the unknown person who had ventured inside her house to observe the ancient magickal book that Mildred loved so much. But Kim only scoffed at the stories because she hated gossips and busybodies.

Before returning to work, they stopped at their house to drop off the flowers. Kim put them on the dining room table and they lay there throughout the idle afternoon.

But at some point, the flowers began to make a low droning noise.

And inside the foil, at the very bottom of one of the flower's stems, some slight movement occured. A tiny piece of matter separated itself from the other fibers of the stem and started crawling upward. It slithered its way toward the leaves of the flowers, its body sticking to the hairs of the stem briefly, then pulling off and moving forward again. It would jump to the foil and back to the stem again, the tiny creature sucking in little bits of stem and foil into many of its microscopic orifices, adding them to its strange internal workings. The same reaction occurred at the base of the other flowers. Small pieces of slimy stem broke loose and proceeded upward, jumping to the foil and back, collecting matter and growing. Finally, all of the pieces of slimy matter drew themselves together and joined into one grotesque pulsing mass.

Next the surface of the table where the flowers lay began to melt. The microscopic atoms of shellac and wood oscillated and heated up to form a thick pool of liquid. The creature grew and expanded and began to take in chemicals from the melted tabletop. An unearthly aroma rose and filled the room. The slimy thing continued growing and forming and coalescing and mutating and nothing in the world could stop it. Mildred had added some kind of concoction to the flowers and it was growing into the one of the most dangerous creatures that had ever stalked the earth.

#

Duane went in the house and closed the door. He wrinkled his nose. "Whew, it smells strange in here."

Kim waved her hand through the air and walked toward the dining room. "Jesus Christ. What's that horrible stench?"

Duane went into his study and set his briefcase down on his desk and came back out to find Kim lying on the floor unconscious.

"Kim! What's wrong? What happened to you?" He ran over and knelt beside her, he shook her body and kept repeating her name, but she wouldn't wake up.

A green glob of slime larger than two fists rolled over the wilted petals of flowers that lay in a pool of black liquid on the table. The glob was a viscous mass of gelatinous folds with numerous black hairs protruding from it. The blob somehow propelled itself forward and thumped into a glass decanter. Duane jerked and looked at the ghastly organism. The thing emitted a tube of yellow gas and it shot directly into Duane's face. Four circles of poisonous vapor floated out of the top of the glob, forming large smoke rings. Duane inhaled them and gasped and choked, the harsh chemical smell filling his lungs. The muscles in his body spasmed and he tried to fight off the urge to pass out. He tried getting to his feet but his knee gave out. He gasped one last time and fell forward, his upper body draping over Kim's below.

Then the green glob on the table began growing at a prodigious rate. It started morphing chronologically into all sections of the animal kingdom, changing at an incredible pace. After ten minutes of constant metamorphosis, it settled into a creature with the arms and legs of a Neanderthal man, the head and ears of a vampire bat, with large yellow fangs, and a monstrous set of wings six feet wide centered at the top of its muscular back. The creature also developed two heads, the largest one bald with large eyes and a powerful jaw. Then slightly to the right of the first and behind it, on the upper part of the back, a long thin neck jutted out, ending with a small dragon-like head. And a three-fingered hand with long claws protruded from the thick muscles of the beast's right thigh. The creature looked identical to the figure on Mildred's pinky ring, which Kim had noticed earlier.

Duane's legs shuddered and he awoke from the chemically induced sleep. He felt breath on his face. The stench made him gasp. He heard something panting. He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling, then the table. He saw the horrific face of the creature squatting only a few feet away, a malicious grin on the monster's face. He screamed. Then the thing's main mouth opened up to roar as its second dragon head shimmied above its round shoulders, mute at first, then joining the main head with a higher-pitched scream of its own. The beast seemed to be directly out of Van Gogh's nightmares. The roaring continued and Duane thought it would never end, until finally the creature ran out of breath; its main mouth closed and the smaller dragon head flicked out a lithe orange tongue, then closed its mouth with fangs protruding.

There was only one thought in Duane's mind: "I've got to get Kim out of here."

He tried to stand, but his head whirled when he got to his knees and he collapsed to the floor.

The creature leaped upward, its second dragon head bobbling in the air, and it struck the ceiling. Duane could not move from his prostrate position. The vapors he had inhaled were still working on him. The monster landed, squatted down and ripped off Duane's ear with one quick swipe. The thing brought the ear up to its mouth and bit into it, letting half of the meat dangle from its fangs.

Kim groaned, her arms and one leg flailing a little, then she sat up and blinked her eyes.

The creature growled and stomped toward her, its large feet and powerful legs thundering on the carpeted floor. Kim screamed, trying to protect herself with her arms. The two-headed creature didn't even bend to crush her shoulder, it simply used the three-fingered hand located on its thigh to squeeze her muscle tissue till it almost popped, and the sharp claws on the hand sunk into her flesh like needles. Kim thrashed with her free arm, pummeling the powerful monster's lower body, but it felt nothing.

Duane sat completely stunned, mesmerized, intimidated by the demon's incredible strength. He watched the monster squeeze Kim's shoulder to a bloody pulp and didn't try to fight it off. He knew they wouldn't survive for long against such a hellish creature.

#

Mildred stood in her living room before her shrine. Her face was solemn as she read passages aloud from the book, 'Nihila Magice Potentialis.' Her black matted hair ballooned out wildly. She was in a pensive state of worship, whispering lines from the ancient tome of spells. She wore a black cape with medieval symbols and it flared over the dusty floor.

A sudden feeling of inexplicable dread came over her. She turned to the first page of the archaic 'Nihila Magice Potentialis.' A mystical window was located there on the first page. Near the bottom, in a half inch space, she watched short clipped sentences float across the yellowed paper, like subtitles on a television screen. There she read a report of the conflict taking place between Kim and Duane and the monster she had created.

"Krazuri will rip them apart," Mildred said. "I didn't realize the flowers I sold them were doused."

She turned to the middle of the book of spells and chanted a few lines, then she put the book back on her shrine gently and made a few quick gestures of respect. She strode to her front door, swung back the heavy oak and flew up over Baneville.

She flew over the houses and the skyscrapers. Her body cast a slight shadow over the streets which blended with the gloom of the city. She flew against the backdrop of a black night and a white moon with spattered spots of gray. She flew with her arms to her sides, aloof from the mundane passions of the citizens below.

When she sensed she was approaching Kim and Duane's home, she started to descend. She could feel that her demon, Krazuri, was there unleashing havoc on innocent people. The history of Krazuri flashed through her mind briefly as she descended. It had taken Mildred seven full years of studying the 'Nihila Magice Potentialis' to develop him. She'd had to reach a new circle of execution to be able to conjure a demon with his level of superhuman strength; and even more effort was required to develop the second head that was more bloodthirsty than the first.

Mildred landed in the street not far from Kim and Duane's home. She ran a few steps across the lawn and burst through a large plate glass window into their living room. The shattered glass deflected off Mildred's skin without a single cut.

She found Kim lying unconscious, passed out from loss of blood, a thick red pool under her shoulder. Duane was cowering behind a recliner, blood streaming down the side of his face, while Krazuri the demon was busy wrecking everything in the house, and seemingly searching for something.

Mildred gestured a few magickal movements and chanted some Latin phrases. Krazuri heard its master, he roared loudly and ground its fangs. Then Krazuri clamped his inhuman hands to his pointed ears and struggled against the incantations. He wanted to live to continue his destruction.

"I did not intend to unleash this monstrosity upon you," Mildred announced to Duane and Kim. "I didn't realize the flowers I'd sold you were tainted." She continued her complex gestures and increased the volume and speed of the Latin phrases.

And Krazuri began to shrink. Melting and withering. Down and down, gradually reducing to a fist-sized lump of slime.

Kim regained consciousness. She rubbed her face and blinked her eyes and sat up.

Mildred took a pouch from a pocket on her dress, moved with confidence toward the slimy lump that used to be Krazuri and she scooped him up.

Duane struggled to stand. He got to his feet, teetered a little and walked to the middle of the room.

"I'll take you both to the emergency room," Mildred said. "We'll get you some medical attention. But be aware, if either of you mention this incident to anybody, anyone at all, I will recreate Krazuri and send him back here to finish what he started."

"What did you call that thing?" Kim said. "What was it that attacked us?"

"You do not want to know." Mildred turned and stepped to the window that she had broken through. Pieces of sharp glass protruded at odd angles away from the frame.

"Wait a second, Mildred," Duane called out. "Don't go yet. I have a question."

"I don't care about any questions you have."

"Just one," Duane said. "How much power do you have?"

Mildred had been crouched, just preparing to ascend into the darkness, when Duane's question halted her. She stood up and turned to them. "Enough. I have enough power to fulfill my needs."

"Then I want to go with you, Mildred," said Duane. He could barely believe what he was saying. But Karuzari had been so terrifying. He wanted to learn more about Mildred's magick.

Mildred stared at him. "I have no time for jokes."

"No," Kim said. "It's no joke. I want to go, too. Teach us. Initiate us. Let us be your pupils."

A strange mixture of satisfaction and curiosity gleamed in Mildred's eyes. "I haven't had a students in over three hundred years."

Mildred stepped toward them.

Duane and Kim came together and clasped hands. They walked toward her and Mildred lowered her head. She brought a hand up and brushed back a strand of black hair as she pondered their request. "All right. I will teach you. You may be my students."

Kim and Duane turned and looked into each other's eyes. Blood was still dripping from their wounds.

"Come to me," Mildred said. "Let us go now. We have much work to do."

The three embraced and Kim and Duane could feel a powerful surge of energy from Mildred fill their bodies, giving them strength. They all walked to the window and Mildred reached under Kim and Duane's arms to lift them up. She flew with them out over the buildings and skyscrapers of the city, casting slight shadows that blended with the menacing gloom below; and they floated against the backdrop of a pitch-black night and a white moon with spattered gray spots toward Mildred's home and to the book, 'Nihila Magice Potentialis.'

-end-

Jason Earls is the author of the books Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover's books, Neometropolis, Wretched & Violent, Mathworld, Chiaroscuro, Switchblade, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG's Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Werewolf, Recreational and Educational Computing, Thirteen, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Prime Curios, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, Swallow's Tail, and other publications. He currently resides in Texas with his wife, Christine.