Lit eZine Vol 3 | p-14 | FICTION | A Flower by Any Other Name

SHORT STORY

A FLOWER BY ANY OTHER NAME
by Mick Shawyer

‘But I saw him bury you.’ 

Petunia stared at her gravel-faced brother in disbelief. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you Gary but whoever you saw, it wasn’t me.’

‘It was! Your hair, your clothes. On my life!’

‘Well please explain dear brother how I am standing here when I should be six feet under?’

Gary shook his head but the cobwebs in his drug-addled brain spun themselves tighter. Her brother was off his head and wouldn’t remember a thing tomorrow. Another voice, whiny and spoilt, came from the kitchen.

 ‘So did I.’

Gary’s two-faced drug-addict girlfriend. She had more lies on the tip of her tongue than a prime minister and Petunia sighed. She had places to go and people to see but this talk of burial was puzzling. Perhaps the pair of them were sharing a similar hallucination? Whatever the reason, there would be no quick way out of this if Julie the Junky was involved. It was time. These two were overdue for sorting.

‘I am surprised to see you, Julie. At 9.00pm? You are usually on your back in the park with a queue stretching to the gates. What do you think you saw?’

Everyfin.’

‘Everything?’

‘Yeah. You are a vampire. Pay us to keep quiet or we’ll tell the cops.’

The junky’s chameleon eyes flitting around the room while her acid-charged mind buzzed. Petunia thrust her face an inch from Julie’s and the junky backed up, colliding with the television.

‘Ouch! That’s assault, that is.’

‘Here, take my phone, call the police. I hear they want to talk to you, something about mugging one of your punters.’

The bony addict looked down at her mud-caked trainers. How the f**k does she know about that? Gary! Of course, it was. Her fellow mugger opened his mouth more frequently than Julie opened her legs and she backtracked.

‘Sokay. My mistake, didn’t see nuffin’ don’t know nuffin. God’s my witness.’

Petunia grabbed her throat, forefinger and thumb encircling Julie’s windpipe. Squeezing. Her painted nails puncturing the skin. Julie struggling and squawking while her breathing slowed.

Gary scrunched himself in a ball, his hands fumbling at a woollen hat and pulling it over ears and eyes. A tinnitus of humming squealed from between gritted teeth.

 ‘Die, you bitch!’

Petunia’s patience had run out. She could taste Julie’s panic and red veins spider-webbed across the addict’s eyeballs. This was overdue and she enjoyed the final moments, a tremor passing through her groin when Julie’s lights went out.

‘Gary, Gary!’ Petunia kicking her brother. ‘Get up.’

‘Leave me alone. Nothing to do with me, didn’t see anything.’

‘Gary, get the f**k up. I need you. Now.’

She pulled her brother’s arm and he rose, pushing his hat upwards.

‘What?’

‘Pick up Julie and follow me.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Sleeping.’

‘Ugh, she stinks. She’s shit herself!’

‘Of course, she has. She’s a junky.’

Petunia closed her ears to his complaints and opened the front door. A shooting star trailed from the east and she grunted. The pavements and road were clear.

‘Follow me.’

‘Stuck.’

Gary was jammed in the doorway, Julie awkwardly on his shoulder.

‘For God’s sake,’ Petunia dragging her brother by his collar. ‘Now follow me and keep up.’

It was less than a hundred yards to the shopping mall, where her secrets were stored under the guise of a costume hire shop. Halfway across the goods yard Gary stumbled, the corpse flopping on the tarmac. He was bent double when Petunia started punching him.

‘You clumsy dope. Pick her up.’

She took both legs, between them managing to drag the body in the stockroom. The room was packed wall to wall with fancy dress outfits, the plastic clown masks teasing Gary’s already fractured nerves.

‘Get hold of her, up on the table.’

‘Julie, Jules. Wake up babe. She don’t look too good.’

‘You’re right Gary, she’s dead.’

‘Dead?’

Gary’s knees gave way, hitting the concrete floor with a clunk.

‘Yes dead, and the police will think you did it.’

‘Huh! Why?’

‘Because I’ll tell them it was you.’

‘But I didn’t.’

‘Well, my dear brother, who are they going to believe? Her junky boyfriend or the local businesswoman who gives them special discounts for their Christmas fancy dress party?’

‘Tooney, Tooney don’t tell them. Please. I’ll do anything.’

Gary reverting to her childhood nickname.

‘Anything?’

His answer was lost in a burst of sobbing.

‘What? Stop crying. What did you say?’

‘Yes. Yes. I said yes.’

‘Wipe your nose.’

Petunia was all business, raising the lid of an industrial freezer tucked in the corner. ‘Put her in here.’

‘Whaaat? She’ll freeze to death.’

‘She’s already dead Gary, that’s what they do with dead people.’

The confusion and drugs were too much and Gary shut down, Do as you are told, he thought, staggering across the floor with Julie in his arms and dropping her in the freezer. A knock at the door had brother and sister jumping.

‘Cops! Quick Gary, hide in the freezer.’

The door rattled again.

‘Hurry up Gary,’ and in a louder voice. ‘Hang on a minute.’

She pushed his backside down and closed the lid.

‘Just coming,’ and she opened the door.

‘Evening Ma’am,’ the security guard touching his cap. ‘Saw your light on, just wanted to make sure all is OK.’

‘Thanks Charlie, just me. Burning the midnight oil as usual.’

‘No worries Ma’am.’ The guard touching his nose and winking, ‘No peace for the wicked.’

Petunia spun from the door. There was no time to waste and she pulled her desk to one side, revealing a trapdoor. Pulling off her clothes as she ran along the underground passage to her secret apartment. Within two minutes the transformation was complete. Her heartbeat calmed and she grinned when the private elevator whirred and the twin doors opened.

Daisy the Dominatrix as Petunia was known on TikTok cracked a whip against her thigh. ‘Good evening Chief Constable. Who’s been a naughty boy then?’

Mick Shawyer was born in 1950, one of six siblings. His father’s work for the Civil Service took them to a new home every three years. Despite early signs of penmanship Mick’s journey through life showed little sign of story-telling and it wasn’t until 2018, whilst in South Africa, that he started punching the keys on his laptop. He hit some mid-table success with competitions and his work was published in Lit eZine, Ariel Chart, Secret Attic, Neurological Magazine, Apricot Press, Shorts Magazine, Revolutionary Press, A Thousand Lives & More Magazine. He is a regular contributor to Shorts Magazine.
In December 2021 he moved from Durban to a Township in Kwa Zulu Natal, the only white person in a self-governing Zulu community. There is more to come from this author.

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