FLOWER FLESH a Shifting Memory Novella

Flesh and Flower

It knew not where it was going, nor where it had come from, all it knew was that it needed to reproduce. It had many names, because it had no name, no identity beyond that of multiplication. And multiply it would. Flowers grew over its bark and vines, a distinguishing quality that none before it could boast to carry. Its fragrance was infallible. Its effect on the brains of those it came by was psychedelic. It wasn’t aware of its uniqueness, but its witnesses were, for it was an undocumented species, a creature that only could’ve been conjured within the deepest recesses of one’s imagination. But here it was, hungry, scared, lost, pursued, and needing only one thing: to fulfil its one primal directive.

Bianca and Macklyn Harvester

An over-the-hill couple, B and Mack wouldn’t have lived this long had they not found one another—though neither would’ve admitted such a thing. Both their lives had been miles of tribulation, pain, and heartbreak, a new level of which was just about to begin…

Mack was schizophrenic and B was bipolar, and both were undiagnosed. Living in Voghill, they had worked their entire lives to live in a home like the one they did currently, and they were immensely proud of everything they had accomplished. Their youths had been never-ending cycles of neglect, jail cells, denial, abuse, confusion, desperation, and violence. And while it was arguable whether or not they had finally escaped said cycles now, they were doing better than they ever had before. Drugs and alcohol were still being abused, and still they had never sought to find the true causes behind their actions and mindsets, but they had jobs, and the ability to function day-to-day—with the occasional day, days, or weeks where they couldn’t. But the other was usually there to pick up the slack, and to comfort the one who was feeling worse.

Their love was something neither of them had experienced before, nor was it something they had expected to find in their lifetimes, and still sometimes they second-guessed it. However, they were well aware that alone they would spiral down what they called ‘fits’, and no one in their lives had ever really understood the way that they felt—partially because they had never been able to tell anyone, or hadn’t wanted to.

Voghill, Quadrant One

A northern neighbor to Morrowtown(the setting of THE LIGHTLESS), Voghill too was about to find itself dealing with an unknown, wrathful presence. Much larger of a city than the quaintness of Morrowtown, Voghill was a fast-paced, smoggy landscape of tall buildings and busy people. A massive forest sat on its northern border, and the downtown portion of the city sat behind a tall, sturdy wall. Unable or unwilling to shell out the money to protect the entire city in such a way, some of the outermost neighborhoods had been trashed so many times by Leviathans that they had been abandoned altogether.

Would those outside of the wall again face more death and doom? Would Flower and Flesh be deterred by this wall? Would it make it so far to begin with? Or would something alter its directives to hunt and to procreate? And at what point would it encounter Mack and Bianca? What would they think of such a creature? What would it think of them?