Following Flowers

Content Warning: Murder

I finally learnt your name in the news report following your death. I’d been following you for months before then, but I could never muster up the courage to approach you, let alone speak to you.

I first saw you on a rainy Thursday afternoon in February. I had been rushing to the restaurant — not because I was in danger of being late, but because I did not like to dawdle. I liked to be in the habit of moving quickly — you cannot take your time in a kitchen.

There are usually no distractions on my route to work, and even if there are, they never disturb me: I’ve been told I have a one-track mind. Apparently, I focus all of my attention on the task at hand, so any botherances bounce off of me. I am repeatedly told this, appreciatively, by my head chef, who values efficiency above all else. The other cooks like to joke that it wouldn’t matter if you were a murderer, or a thief — as long as you were fast, that is all that would matter.

And because the day hadn’t started out differently to any other day, I had been walking with the sole intention of getting to work. 

It was the smell of lavender, in the end, that stopped me. I had a good nose — another asset that made me valuable — and a fondness for flowers, so once that first scent hit me, my body immediately halted.

I had scanned the flowers, noting the intricate tulip arrangements and bouquets of roses. It had not been long before my eyes had moved onto the finest sight of them all. You had been standing in the midst of all your success, hands on hips, head bobbing up and down. I could not see your face, but I knew it was beautiful, and happy.

Your face is not happy now. Nor is it beautiful. The news reports wailed with the indignity of it all. When they found you, your eyes were missing, two rose buds there instead. They had withered by the time you were discovered, though I imagine they had been blooming when the killer had placed them there, carefully, gently. Your death was clearly the work of painstakingly slow precision. Your body had been wrapped in cellophane, your waist tied with a ribbon, as though you were a parcel, a gift.

I had planned to speak to you the day you were murdered.

It had been wholly unlike me, all that hesitation and deliberation. You and your shop had a certain hold on me, and I always found myself stationary and still and silent in your presence. I hated the way I’d tense and freeze, and would walk all the more quickly to the restaurant, relishing the hustle and bustle, taking comfort in the perpetual state of motion I was in when working.

But I found myself longing to be by your side, because though I could not move when near you, my skin would tingle, electrified, and I would feel like happiness was just in reach.

You started closing the shop later and later (perhaps business was not going well) and finally, the ends of our days coincided. I would stand, transfixed, watching you pack up, and wouldn’t notice I had begun to move until I was outside your apartment. The first time it happened, I had been shocked to find myself in an unfamiliar neighbourhood, and scared. Scared of what I was becoming.

What had happened to my one-track mind? Gone was the quick-footed, quick-thinking worker, replaced with a sleepy individual who, with dreamy anticipation, gravitated towards a fleeting joy.

I still visit you. It’s like a compass blossomed inside me. It always points to you.

Every Thursday, I lay lavender beside your grave, and sit, and sigh. Your spell has not worn off. I stay for hours, tranquil and restless.

I still haven’t said a word to you.

At least I know your name now.