Inflorescence

Short Fiction by Kristen Dorsey

1. A floral axis with its appendages

2. Budding or unfolding: flowering

                          —Merriam-Webster Dictionary

            “I cry a lot,” I stuttered, sobbing, during Robin and Marcie’s recent visit. “I don’t know who I am anymore.” They cheered me with hugs and affirmations, assuring me I had “escaped.”

             In December, I’d quit my high-powered DoD job (which I loathed), ended my already-dead marriage, and left my Stepford Wife life (the robot aspect, that is. I’m not the subservient type) for this rural Virginia house and its tangled yard.

            What is wrong with me? Returning to my old life was unimaginable—but I still had doubts. I was approaching 50 (!), I was unemployed, and I was alone.  I occupied myself with gardening. I took classes; I learned to grow flowers and food; I hiked with some doom-and-gloom-prepper-types and identified wild edible plants.

           I labored to transform my jungle-like yard, spending a year’s wages on plants. Recently, a gnat kamikaze-dived into my eye, and I ran, cursing, to the rear-view mirror of my Jeep to pluck it out. Peering at my face under the unforgiving spotlight of the midday sun, I saw the deep lines, brown spots, and gray grown-out roots of an older woman.

            I’d been crying regularly ever since.

“Meditation” and “self-examination” were Robin’s and Marci’s suggestions to reach the part of me that felt so broken and small. The next morning, I packed lunch, my journal, and a camping hammock, and drove to a small, unfrequented wildlife preserve. The day was crystalline; the sky was an astonishing turquoise. I strolled the perimeter of the lake and found a shady spot beside a stream.

Along the way, I searched for wild plants to add to my lunch. The narrow path opened into a field, and I picked lemony-sour wood sorrel, juicy chickweed, and pretty periwinkle-blue chicory flowers. I noticed a plant atop a dirt pile—its upward-turned, bell-shaped flowers glowing a breathtaking, iridescent white. What was the apocalypse-peoples’ name for it? “Thorn apple,” I recalled, snipping several flowers for my salad.

After lunch, I climbed into my hammock with my journal. My mood darkened as I pondered my life. I tried to write, but I felt detached and muzzy-headed. My full tummy, the dappled sunlight, and the gentle sway of my cradle lulled me to sleep.

        A loud, rhythmic stomping startled me awake. The ground shook, and the trees vibrated—something enormous was coming through the woods! I tried to stand, but my legs refused. The world was spinning sickeningly, and a sharp cramp gripped my belly. I lay helpless in the hammock, arms tight around my stomach. A monster was in the woods, and I was panting in fear like a dog, my mouth open and parched. A scream gathered inside me, bubbling up from my depths, as the thudding neared the clearing of my little camp, and then: utter silence—no bird or insect made a sound.

A small, slender woman stepped from between the trees.

            I wept with relief as the tiny old woman approached. A long, spotless, flared skirt swirled around her twig-like legs, so bright white it hurt my eyes. Her deep, gray-green blouse looked soft—maybe velvet, maybe terrycloth—and blended with the shadowy trees behind her. The sounds of the woods resumed in an explosive cacophony; I winced, then reached out both arms.

            “Help me,” I moaned. “I—I’m sick.”

             She leaned over me, the twists of her long, silvery, black-and-grey hair brushing my chest, her bright eyes standing out from the sharp angles of her thin, lined face.

          “I’m alone, and I am scared,” I wailed. “I am too weak to stand, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I blubbered, and I heard how pathetic I sounded. “Can you help me?” My tongue was thick with thirst, and I mewled like a child. “Please,” I sniveled, “do you have water?”

            The waif-woman stood up and roared with laughter, threw her head back, and raised her lean arms to the sky. As she laughed, she grew tall, then taller, until she towered over the treetops. The day turned black; the wind snapped her ropy hair around her face. Thunder exploded, and lightning tore a hole in the sky as she loomed over me, vast and resplendent. Sharp, icy rain stung my skin like darts and filled my open mouth. I tipped from the hammock onto my knees, gagging and retching, and vomited a thick, black substance.

               The storm passed, and I unfolded from my protective huddle on the muddy earth, trembling. The woman sat nearby, smiling and serene, her sharp knee bones outlined under her luminous skirt. The air crackled and swirled around her with shimmering geometric shapes: teal and cobalt, red and gold.

             The crone’s long-fingered, knobby hand extended as if in offering. A coil of hair twisted against her shoulder and circled down her arm. I could not move; I could not scream. I could only watch in numb horror as the serpent’s slithering continued toward me—and it sank its fangs into my palm. I passed out as the freezing-hot venom reached my heart.

             Orange blades of setting sunlight sliced through the trees, waking me from the cozy fog of deep sleep. I scrambled from my hammock with a gasp. Everything was as I left it at lunch: clean, dry, and orderly. I had slept—or something—for eight hours. I dug my cell from my rucksack and googled “thorn apple.”

            “Damn,” I said to a wood thrush, who was kicking up brown leaves under a bush. “Datura. My identification skills need improvement.”

           Curiously—despite my terrifying dream—the oppressive depression and uncertainty I’d been feeling had lifted.  Maybe all I needed, I mused, was some deep, drug-induced sleep. I gathered my belongings, smiling and singing.

         “Ow!” I yelped and turned up my palm to look for the source of pain. There, ringed in a small circle of reddened skin, were two tiny holes.

Kristen Dorsey is a published writer, USMC veteran, and award-winning visual artist. Her writing has appeared in the Chautauqua Journal, Collateral Journal, Press Pause Press, and the UNCW literary magazine Atlantis. Kristen’s nonfiction essay, “Semper Fi,” was a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee. Kristen is on social and the web.