The September 2009 Featured Story
Please feel free to contact Debra Young at dayyamae@gmail.com
Ghost of Roses
by Debra Young
In the hollow of the night, Kyle awakened to the honeyed pungency of roses. Beside him, Laura slept, oblivious. The pitch black of the bedroom was unrelieved by even a haunting of light through the window blinds. Not wanting to wake Laura, he didn’t turn on the lamp. He got up and carefully guided himself out of the bedroom, fumbling about in the dark; his foot bumped the edge of the door, shy of crunching his toes.
Edging out into the hall, Kyle closed the bedroom door softly. In the shadowed darkness of the living room, he took a moment to orient himself, made out the standing lamp near the couch, went and turned it on. As if carried on the spread of light, the perfume of roses came back to him. It was an aromatic pool of fragrance—vanilla, something harsh and gingery, and a hint of wine.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kyle caught a wriggle in the air—a thin, spidery black line hung at the edge of his vision. When he turned his head, he couldn’t see it, but it was there in his peripheral vision, an inky crack in the air, bleeding darkness.
He stood stone-still near the couch in the lamplight, breathing the odor of roses, with no desire to move or sit down or even figure out why he’d gotten out of bed in the first place.
Christ, what’s the matter with me? he wondered.
The scent of roses, as palpable as mist, held him. The odor plucked at his mind, fingering his thoughts like a guitarist fingering chords. He remembered Jessie: recalled the blunt shape of her chin, the width of her cheekbones; the delicate arch of her brows over sea-gray eyes. He remembered that she'd been fun, and exciting in a way he'd not allowed himself to dwell on. He remembered that she'd been his best friend.
“Kyle! Kyle!” Laura stood in front of him, her voice sharp and loud. “What’re you doing up? What’s the matter?”
Kyle moved away from her, and sat down on the couch. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Laura sat close, her knee touching his. Sleep had turned her short cut hair into a cap of snow-blonde cowlicks. She took his hand, her hazel eyes probing his face. “Is something bothering you? Do you want to talk about it?”
Kyle pulled his hand away. “Not really.” The night seemed hushed. He sensed the darkness outside pressing close, mantling the building. He shrugged. “I woke up.”
Laura shook her head. “Come on, Kyle. You’ve got me up at…” she looked at her watch-less wrist and continued, “some god-awful hour.” Her casual tone was a thin cover for the annoyance in her eyes. “So talk. You’ll feel better.”
She wanted him to bare his heart, as usual, but he really couldn't talk to Laura, not about Jessie.
Instead, he asked, “Did you smell roses? When you woke up?”
Laura sat back, folded her arms across her chest. “No. Why?”
Kyle got up. “I was dreaming.” He headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to get a drink. Go back to bed, Laura.”
In the morning, when Laura joined him in the kitchen, Kyle could tell she was miffed at him. Fresh from her shower, dressed in her bathrobe, she didn't say a word to him as she looked in the fridge for her customary yogurt and orange juice. She sat at the kitchen table, her glance touching him and sliding away behind her shuttered gaze. She peeled the foil top off the yogurt. Kyle caught a whiff of peaches and banana.
Astringent morning light seeped through the kitchen window, polishing the silence. She wanted him to explain, but there was nothing he could say. Kyle sipped his coffee, feeling as if he were sitting at the bottom of a well.
“Want to tell me what last night was about?” she asked as she spooned up a mouthful of yogurt, not looking at him.
“Last night wasn't about anything.”
“Uh huh.” She spooned up more yogurt, scrapping the sides of the squat container. “You were out of it, Kyle. Your eyes were open, but nobody was home. What's going on with you? Don’t you think I have a right to know?”
Kyle got up to refill his coffee. When Laura latched on to something, she locked jaws and worried it into surrender.
“It's us, isn't?” she continued.
“It isn't about you,” he said, coming back to the table.
“Really? Then how come I feel like I'm in this relationship all by myself?”
Not really, thought Kyle. There're three of us. "What're you talking about?"
“I’m talking about us! You're not even listening, Kyle!”
Kyle sighed into his coffee. Good thing they didn't live together. Laura wanted to, but Kyle wouldn't let her move in. Not that she wasn't trying piece by piece already (a six-pack of yogurt always in the fridge, and Kyle didn't eat yogurt); a pair of her jeans in the closet, her toothbrush, some of her hair stuff, and a plastic make-up purse had made a home in the bathroom.
He got up from the table. “I've got to go.”
Laura tilted the orange juice in her glass, studying it, her mouth drawn tight. Kyle paused by her chair, rubbed a consoling hand across her shoulders, and went to put on his suit jacket and get his briefcase.
At work, things weren’t going any better. At 11:30 a.m., when his trial balance was off by fifty thousand or so for the third time, Kyle went to lunch, glad to get away from the general ledger spread like an astronomical chart across the screen of his computer and making about as much sense. His mind wasn't on invoices and dollar figures.
Walking across the street to the Golden Deli, Kyle ordered roast beef and Swiss on a French roll and an iced tea. He’d rather have a beer, something to relax the tension riding him, but he had to go back to the office and face that ledger.
He carried his meal to a table caged in a slab of sunlight. The scent of roses slipped around Kyle, and he sat for a tick of seconds, breathing in the sweet gingery perfume. It hung in the air, overpowering the redolence of meats and breads and macaroni salad.
Kyle bit into his sandwich, gazed out the corner window at the sun-flushed street. A woman walked by, chestnut hair bouncing gently at her shoulders. Jessie's hair had been that color, only it had been curly. Bits of memory of Jessie swirled in the back of his mind, translucent images thin as whispers—the lively gleam of laughter in her eyes, the way she’d touch his shoulder when she had something to tell him, the way she’d tug at her curls when something was bothering her.
Once, her hair had brushed his face. Kyle could feel it still, slipping soft and silken against his skin. He inhaled the perfume of roses as an opium addict inhaled the smoke of poppies.
A sensation of wet cold stunned his thigh. Kyle’s vision cleared, his heart beating fast and hard. He’d knocked over his iced tea. Embarrassed, Kyle mopped up the drink pooling on the table with a handful of thin napkins and dabbed at the dark stain on his pants.
He’d been in the hospital when her family had buried her. Even when he visited her grave, he had not cried. His grief sat in him, a weighted shadow, furled and clawed.
And when he went home and tried to sleep that night, sleep spiraled him into a dream of Jessie….the two of them hiking in the hills above their neighborhood, hearing her call to him, trying to keep up with her. Ahead of him, sunlight culling glints of amber from her chestnut curls, Jessie made her way in an energetic stride over a leaf-strewn trail. Kyle followed, kicking up withered leaves, attempting to catch up with her, but not getting any closer no matter how swift his steps. Shadows enveloped them; the green scent of moss mingling with silvery shafts of sunlight. Jessie stopped and turned toward him, her hand extended to grasp his and draw him deeper into the silvered shadows, her gray eyes holding secrets. Their fingers touched; a feather-light brush. Eagerly, he clutched at her hand, and as quickly lost her touch as he came awake, night-blind, his heart beating fast and hard. He rubbed his hands fitfully through his hair, over his eyes, squeezed his temples.
“Go away,” he whispered.
He would give anything to go back to that moment, anything to have the chance to realize that he had been looking at the wrong traffic light. He would give anything for one minute more of hesitation, to keep Jessie from dying. But that moment three years ago, at that traffic light, at that intersection of Oleander and Katella, was gone forever.
The air conditioning in his mother's car had gone out, and he and Jessie had sat, with the windows down, in a cradle of heat. The radio had been on, the deejay jabbering like a schizophrenic parrot. Jessie was talking to him, but he couldn’t hear her over the radio. He had glanced at her, catching the laughter in her gray eyes, and realizing he’d missed her joke. He had looked back at the light; emerald vivid at the corner of his eye. His foot had moved decisively on the accelerator.
He had heard a surprised cry from Jessie, making him realize that his was the only car accelerating into the intersection. Jessie’s scream, the lightning crack of fragmenting glass, the thunder of metal punched by metal—all pierced Kyle's memory, shredding his soul into pieces, a fierce wind stripping a tree of its leaves.
Remorse welled inside him, fracturing him as he lay unable to think beyond his memory, his guilt and his grief—the grief that time had not softened, and the guilt, an iceberg in his soul, vast, slow, and deeply buried.
The smell of roses fell upon him, like death.
Dawn came: a grainy filtering of spectral light through the blinds. Kyle blinked and realized he'd lain all night with his eyes open. He came out of the void of dreamlessness, darkness pooling in his mind, still as pond water. He called in sick to the office, dressed without showering, pulling on jeans and a wrinkled tee shirt plucked from a pile of unlaundered clothing. Coffee crossed his mind, but he walked straight through the house and out the door, shutting it firmly on the ringing telephone.
Outside, sun-bright morning air breathed against his face. Hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his jeans, Kyle strode toward the beach.
Grit pasted itself to his bare soles. He’d forgotten his shoes. No matter. He walked until he came to the rolling surf and sat in the sand, legs drawn up, elbows resting on knees. Tincture of roses tainted the salt air. A bitter wind blew through him, hollowing him, sucking at his bones, leaving him ash-filled.
One night, out with Jessie, he had been unable to concentrate on the movie, distracted by Jessie's rose perfume. She'd whispered something to him, but he'd only half-heard her words. The tone of her voice, her breath warm against his ear, had swept over him like a fall of silk, leaving him acutely aware of the silvered darkness and Jessie sitting next to him, as close as a touch.
“Did you like the movie?” she had asked him afterward.
“Yeah,” he'd replied.
“Really? How come you were so fidgety?”
He'd shrugged, embarrassed, and surprised that she'd noticed. He should have told her then how he felt about her and maybe they would have been doing something different on that afternoon. Maybe they might have been at some other intersection and maybe he would not have mistaken red for green.
Nausea heaved in his empty stomach. He got to his feet, stood watching the water. He thrust his hands into his jeans' pockets, stiffened his arms to hold himself still, against the shivers running through him. The sea edged forward, retreated, edged forward, distant white-capped rollers curled and lapsed, curled and lapsed into the glassine depths. The perfect blue sea offered haven, but...Kyle turned his back on the perfect blue sea and walked home.
Laura was waiting for him and he wished he hadn’t given her a key.
“I called your office, and they told me you were sick,” she said, meeting him as he came in the door. She frowned at him with concern, a taint of anger hanging about her. “You look terrible,” she said. “Is it the flu? You shouldn't be out, you know.”
“I'm...” he stopped, made a gesture at her, denying. He'd started to say he was fine, but he wasn't. “Don't worry about me.” he said instead.
He stepped past her, heading for the kitchen. Maybe some orange juice would soothe his stomach, quiet his headache, but nothing would lessen the scent of roses clouding his every inhalation.
Laura followed. “Go lie down. You look like you're about to fall over.”
Kyle buried his head in the fridge, cooling the film of feverishness that lay upon him. He snatched the carton of orange juice, and smacked the fridge door closed.
“Go home, Laura.” He opened the carton and gulped orange juice. When he brought the carton down, she was still there, watching him. “Go home!” he repeated. “Leave me the hell alone!”
She flinched a little, staring at him, pale and razor-edged. Her presence pressed against him, and Kyle wished he could tear her loose from the air around her, crumple her up like paper and throw her away.
“Get out,” he said, each word a pitched stone.
And after she left, Kyle remembered little of the following hours, barely aware of the passing of the day. His soul lay curled and shivering in that dark and vacant chamber inside him. He did everything with the slow and somewhat clumsy movements of a zombie.
When morning came, he called in sick to work again. He managed to make his coffee by telling himself each step: spoon coffee in filter, slide onto coffeemaker, place pot beneath, pour water in top, turn on. Sit down and wait.
The brown redolence of the coffee roused him. He filled his mug and, leaning against the counter, sipped it, black and sugarless, staring through the kitchen window at an oblong of tarnished sky.
The smell of roses was not so strong this morning, but the ginger-wine musk lingered still, staining the air, reminding him. Kyle refilled his mug and wandered out of the kitchen. He paused in the living room, his gaze restless and seeking, as if an answer was lurking somewhere.
His wandering stare fell upon the pillow propped on the couch. It was quilted with a red and green diamond pattern. Laura had made it. Seen from one angle, a vertical pattern of red diamonds emerged, seen from another, a horizontal pattern of green dominated, and looked at again, a diagonal pattern of both colors could be seen. Traffic light colors, only the yellow was missing. He recalled the intersection of Oleander and Katella, a double unit set up; an arrow for the left-turning lane and a triple-light unit for traffic traveling through.
The odor of roses, stronger now; a dizzying blend of vanilla and ginger, wafted around him, almost tangible. With every breath, Kyle swallowed scent. Sunlight coming through the living room window brightened and broadened. Warmth touched him and he was back again at the intersection of Oleander and Katella, staring at the traffic light, waiting. What had he seen? What had made him think the light had changed?
Coffee mug in hand, Kyle wandered out of the living room, and into the bathroom, stood staring at himself in the mirror. He peered closely at his face. His lips looked like two rubber bands pressed together. He passed a hand through his hair, fanning it back from his forehead, watching it fall forward. Setting down his coffee, he rummaged about in a drawer until he found a pair of scissors. Leaning close to the mirror, his stomach pressed against the cold porcelain of the sink, he captured a clump of hair in one hand and sliced it away to less than a finger snap long. He kept cutting, the metallic snick of the scissors blended with his breathing.
Hair feathered the sink, clumps, wisps, and bits of flaxen brown. He cut until his scalp showed through a thin carpeting of hair. He dropped the scissors in the sink, stared into his eyes, clear brown and vacant.
“Kyle?” Laura called from the living room, walked through to the bathroom and peeked at him. “My goodness—what’d you do to your hair?”
She was back. He could feel her eyes resting on his scalp. “It was bothering me,” he said. With every breath, the scent of roses slipped up his nose and into his throat. He walked passed her, going into the living room.
Laura followed, as she always seemed to do. “Are you okay? I thought we could maybe talk?”
With his back to her, he rolled his eyes at the hitch in her voice.
“We could go have lunch in Crystal Beach. At the Pink Banana. You want to do that?”
Kyle shrugged. She had that hopeful look in her eyes again. “Okay,” he said, watching a wriggle in the air about her, thin, black, spidery lines bleeding darkness. His head smothered in the aroma of roses, Kyle looked away, blinking.
He'd seen something at that intersection. Something green he’d thought was the traffic light changing, but wasn't. If he could see it again, know what it was, that it had not been entirely his own stupidity that killed Jessie, maybe he could let it go; maybe the roses would let him go.
“Take the freeway,” said Laura. “It’s quicker.”
Kyle ignored her and stayed on Euclid Avenue, heading toward Crystal Beach. In the rearview mirror, a slice of Laura, pink-cheeked, lips tight. She hated when he ignored her instructions. He turned right onto Oleander Avenue. He’d avoided driving this route for three years, but today he was determined. Sunshine flooded the avenue, glancing off the back windows of cars, raising the odors of hydrocarbons to do battle with the occasional breath of sea breeze.
As each change of light brought him closer, Kyle pictured the intersection. On the left was a Blockbuster video store anchoring a strip mall and on the right side of Oleander were a Shell gas station and a 7-11 store. On the opposite corners of Katella and Oleander stood First National Bank, he recalled, and a handful of various stores.
He changed to the left lane, his palms moist on the wheel. He glanced at Laura, mentally picturing Jessie, holding her silhouette in his mind’s eye. The light at Benson was quick and Kyle cruised forward. Katella was next. He slowed the car, keeping an eye on the change of light from green to yellow. He wanted to catch the red.
The car in front of him sped through the yellow and Kyle stopped as the light slipped to red. Perfect. He'd been the first car before.
He glanced around, quickly taking in the landmarks. There was the Shell gas station, the 7-11 store, The Blockbuster Video. First National, a concrete and copper glass cube, dominated the intersection.
Kyle tapped his fingers on the wheel, breathed in the smothering perfume of roses. On the First National Bank building an electronic banner dragged through a line of bank advertisements. Kyle watched the trailing red letters meld to blue, meld to white. It flashed the time and began another trail of letters. Red, blue, white. A row of emerald diamonds.
Kyle blinked. His mind slipped back. Just having Jessie with him on a sunny afternoon, knowing he was the only guy she hung out with, knowing she must feel about him the way he felt about her—only neither of them had said anything—knowing it was time he told her. These thoughts came to him all in a moment, and Jessie's gray eyes, twinkling; the frantic radio cacophony; his head turning; the flash of green—green diamonds trailing.
He had glanced away from Jessie, his mind full of the realization that he loved her, anticipating the coming moment when he’d tell her, and green appeared at the corner of his eye as he’d turned his head. Like a hamster, he’d pressed the pedal.
And then a howling horn, too-late brakes heeled into ear-shattering cries, the body-whopping jolt slammed through him as solid as thunder. Jessie’s glass-edged scream, the collision punching into her, jolting her into the windshield, her head ramming forward with enough force to shatter the bones in her neck. There was no turning back.
At the intersection, Kyle waited, first in line, watching the traffic lights.
“So, what'd you do to your hair? Why?” asked Laura, not willing to leave the subject alone.
Kyle heard her, but her words didn't quite penetrate. He really had to watch the lights. They were going to change any second now.
“Kyle?”
The arrow slipped to green and the left-turning cars moved forward. Kyle watched them, waiting.
The last left-turning car cleared the intersection, the arrow going yellow, the main light glaring red. The eastbound cars were next. Silently, Kyle counted, one thousand one, one thousand two.
One thousand…the first eastbound car rolled forward, picking up speed as it approached the middle of the intersection. Kyle slammed the accelerator pedal to the floor. His Nissan zipped forward.
He heard an exclamation of surprise from Laura.
Across his windshield, roses bloomed.
The September 2009 Featured Writer
DEBRA YOUNG
When Debra Young is not writing, she's a leasing administrator for a real estate company in Los Angeles, California. Debra has a BA in English, has published an article, ghostwritten a novel, done freelance editing, and this story is her second published fiction. Debra's favorite genre to read and write is fantasy. She is an avid vampirophile; she loves history, mythology, fairy tales, and literature. Debra lives in Long Beach, California with her cat Levi and an ever-growing book collection. Currently Debra is working on a vampire-themed fantasy novel.