Happily Never After

by Kirsten Duvall (ed)

  She reached her bike and caressed it, a tiny smile all she could manage now. Morphine. I could really use morphine right about now. Too bad there wasn't morphine anymore. It had specific storage requirements. No way something like that could last a Southern summer without A/C.

  She mounted the bike, wincing at how the seat felt between her legs, and pedaled home in a daze, her head lolling on her neck. She shook her head every few minutes to keep herself awake. Adrenaline crash.

  As she neared the town, she saw smoke in the distance. A lot of smoke. Her mind was too foggy to fabricate a meaning. She pedaled on, the dark forms of the town coming closer, becoming more defined. She blinked, a part of her psyche screaming that something was wrong but everything else too dense to catch on.

  Oh no. Her jaw dropped a little, and adrenaline surged through her system once more. She pedaled harder, not even feeling the abuse on her feet, or anywhere else. Something must be on fire. Fire could be devastating nowadays. Not as bad as it once was, but much worse than the End Times.

  At that speed, she reached the town in minutes, leaping off the bike before she'd even registered what she saw. No, something wasn't on fire. Everything was on fire. The bike slipped from her hands, clattering to the ground as shock set in.

  Some of the buildings had already burnt to the ground, their blackened skeletons reaching to the sky, leaning on each other for support. Others were still in flames. Where is everyone? Nobody's trying to put it out.

  Then she saw them. Almost indistinguishable from the burned-out buildings in the dim morning light. A blackened body, large enough to be a man. She walked forward, not even realizing it. Another man in another burned building. A boy in an alley — shot, blood staining his shirt in a crimson circle. A little girl in front of the grocer — she couldn't tell the injury, but the girl had bled out onto the sidewalk. The blood had pooled around her, absorbing into her thin, cotton t-shirt. As she walked, more bodies. Everywhere. Men. Children. No women, though. And no survivors.

  Finally seeing, really seeing, she collapsed to her knees and screamed.

  oo00oo

  "Mother? Hope? It's getting dark. Lights out," Mom whispered from over my shoulder. It was too late in the day to risk speaking above a whisper.

  I nodded, and looked outside. The sun was low over the horizon, deep colors kissing the sky. It was already dark enough that a bright light might be seen. I shivered, the red color of the sky reminding me of the blood from Grandma's story. The shadows that started to stretch across the land had my active imagination dreaming up skulking monsters sneaking closer. Would they find me?

  I grabbed the old oil lantern, and turned it down to its lowest setting, heading off to my bedroom. I laid it on the rough, wooden table by the bed — something my father had made — and slipped between the sheets, serenaded by creaking springs and the pounding of my own heart.

  Finally ready for bed, I blew out the lantern to a blood curdling cry.

  About Danielle Forrest

  Danielle Forrest is an author based out of Raleigh, NC. She has been writing since elementary school after her aunt gave her a little flowered journal. Back then, she wrote short Goosebumps-like stories that were appropriate considering her age. She's been perfecting her novel-writing skills since middle school, when she started her first novel, They're Here, which is likely a pitiful excuse for literary content and one of the only books she ever wrote involving aliens. She finished her first novel, Forever After, sometime around 2005 and has been editing it on and off (mostly off) since then. Like most authors, life gets in the way, but she's determined to finish, and an end is finally in sight.

  Her favorite writing topics include paranormal, fantasy, and science fiction. She has books about vampires, werewolves, faeries, mermaids, people with special powers, people that come back from the dead (and, no, they are not zombies), zombies (but, of course...), and nanotechnology, amongst other things. She loves books that incorporate the real world so the events of the novel could be happening right under your very nose and you'd never know.

  You can read more about her here: theeternalscribe.com

  The Pollen Camp

  by Jan Stinchcomb

  While it is still dark, my sister steals into the Pollen Camp to bring me a corset. “Our parents wanted you to have this. In case you are chosen.”

  I want to keep sleeping. My eyes are so heavy with pollen dust that at first I can barely appreciate Sera's offering. I focus instead on her eyes, which are dark and beautiful, flecked with gold. I don't know why I am considered the pretty one. It should have been Sera who was sent to live and work in the Pollen Camp, Sera, who lives to catch a nobleman's eye.

  “They say the count is very handsome,” Sera whispers before rushing away. Soon we are all awake, slipping into our clothes and gathering our baskets, getting ready to head out to the fields. The other girls begin their daily ritual of gossiping about life in the palace. They tell tales of women they have never seen: the imperious Sévérine, the favored Marianne, and especially Aimée, who came from our own little village.

  Aimée's success makes each of us think we have a chance. But all we do from sunrise to sunset is harvest the yellow flowers whose pollen is our sustenance and our livelihood. We make everything from pollen: soothing teas, sweet delicacies, beauty treatments, sleeping draughts. We pick flower after flower. We bend at the waist and pull. We gather and wait.

  I was born for the harvest. This golden dust is my life.

  When I slip on the corset, one of the other girls challenges me: “Who is that for? Do you really think you will be chosen?”

  Still, she helps me, lacing me up so tight that I can barely breathe.

  oo00oo

  Sometimes Sera and I would speak too freely about the people of the palace. The jaundiced aristocracy, we called them. The count and his ladies. A countess who could never have a child. All of them insane, crazy with their addiction--

  “Fondness,” my mother always corrected me. “They have a fondness for pollen. A craving. An appreciation. These are people of very refined tastes. If you work hard, you may someday have your chance in the palace. It can happen for a farm girl. Besides, you're the prettiest girl for miles, and that's all that really matters in a world ruled by one man's pleasure.”

  “Try to make the most of your time at the camp,” Sera advised me as I prepared to leave home. I noticed how much pollen came away on her moist lips when she kissed me farewell.

  We were covered in pollen. It stuck to our skin and hair, our clothing, our furniture. It coated all the buildings in yellow dust. It rose in golden clouds when my mother tried to sweep the floors. It made a lacy pattern over my best white dress.

  It was in our beds and in all that we ate. In fact, I had long stopped enjoying food because of it. It made me reluctant to take anything into my body.

  “Oh, you'll change your mind about that,” Sera would say, giggling next to me in bed. She had a gift for finding other things to do with her time but I was driven by pollen alone.

  “They say the ladies of the court wear dresses of spun gold. They say that you will make us rich if you succeed,” my mother told me.

  I was too frightened to inquire into the nature of this success.

  “You will see a different world,” said my father, somewhat wearily, as he gave me his blessing.

  But the world of the camp was exactly the same as my old one, only harder.

  oo00oo

  The most difficult time is the evening. And it is not that my bones ache or that I am homesick, although both these things are true. It is that this break from our work brings out the worst in the other girls.

  There are arguments about beauty, about worthiness, about desire, until words escalate into violence that is in turn quieted by the sentries, who appear without warning to menace us with their whips. They are the only contact we have with the world outside the camp.

  Our parents have forgotten us.

  The palace seems obli
vious.

  We eat a weak pollen soup that one of the girls has thrown together. It is tasteless but calming.

  I am too weak to cry. When I close my eyes, my dreams are filled with scenes of life in the palace. The faces of the noble ladies shine with a glittering powder; they wear amber and gold. Yellow roses are embroidered over endless rolls of fine fabric. Paintings of marigolds, sunflowers and daffodils hang on the walls. Canaries fly freely from room to room, finally escaping into the frigid night air.

  One of the canaries comes crashing into my ribcage. I wake to find a sentry kicking me. I barely have time to grab my basket before he sets me on his horse and spirits me away to my destiny.

  oo00oo

  When I show the palace ladies the little jar of golden jelly I have brought with me, they leap at my offering as if they are starving.

  Aimée is not the girl I remember. She never leaves her tea table, where she sits with her head bowed over her preferred substance, the drink we call dirty yellow tea. She has fallen in love with the tea. When she raises her head to smile at me, I can tell that she does not remember who I am.

  She was not able to produce an heir.

  Neither was Marianne, but she is the favorite.

  Sévérine tells me that the count does not like pollen on his women and so begins my cleansing. Under the countess's supervision the other ladies advance and remove my clothing. They boil my dress in a vat of hot water, then save the water in jars, to be consumed later. They hold me under the scalding water of the bathtub as they scrub my skin and scalp and dig the pollen out from under all my nails.

  (I see Aimée leave her table, strip and sink into my bath water. What's left of her body is yellow parchment stretched over tiny, birdlike bones.)

  They dye my hair, all of it, the same unwholesome blond as theirs.

  I am dressed in a gown embroidered by the countess herself. It is covered in yellow roses--my sister says these are a symbol of infidelity. I do not know whether this is a dare or a blessing.

  I am ready for the count.

  oo00oo

  There are no doors in the ladies' wing, not even in the chamber of the countess herself, because all the bodies here belong to the count. Someone comes in the dark of night and carries me to the countess's bed.

  I wait.

  As the hours pass, I begin to grow hungry. I miss my mother's dust-covered meals. I long for a cup of dirty yellow tea. I want to sleep alongside my sister and breathe in the smell of our pollen-filled house.

  My head aches. It is very cold in the palace at night.

  The next morning I am treated like a queen. The countess rubs my feet and forehead with a honey-colored oil. I am fed butter and marmalade, lemon tea, almond pastries dripping in honey, egg yolks. Caramel. All the ladies ask after my health. They try to anticipate my cravings. They insist that I stay in bed.

  It is important to note that I never see the count.

  The days pass, becoming ice cold, despite the sun, a distant yellow knot among the clouds, a stranger to us. I knew that the cold is essential for the flowers we harvest: without a winter freeze, they would never bloom. I know that last season's beauties are now bent over, heavy on their stalks, dried by the wind, waiting to be turned into meal. I know because I have gathered them in all kinds of weather.

  At the camp the other girls will be working by day and weeping by night. Their hands will be covered in sores. Their hearts will break.

  Down at the farm, inside my parents' house, the dust is settling, finally. The air is in its purest state, before the assault of spring.

  oo00oo

  One morning I open my eyes to find a yellow canopy above me. I sit up. It is true: a prison of yellow roses has grown around me.

  A lady's hand pierces through the rose tangle and offers me a plate. It is my breakfast. I see that the hand, which belongs to Sévérine, is bloody from the thorns--an audacity of red which I know she will do her utmost to erase. I look down to see what she has brought me: sweet rolls, made of pollen flour, coated in sticky pollen glaze. My favorite, if that is possible in a world where there is only one flavor.

  And so I eat. I try to stand up, but it is impossible. The smell of roses is overwhelming. My world has become a cave infused with a dull yellow light. When I think of escape, the memory of Sévérine's bloody hand comes back to me.

  Later I am roused by a sword that comes piercing through the rose thicket. At first I think that this must be the count, and I am willing to accept his violence in exchange for some measure of liberty. Perhaps he will allow me to emerge from my realm of thorns, a tiny palace with its own impossible etiquette.

  But it is the countess who stands before me, a sword in one hand, and something else in the other, something so small I have to lean forward to see it. But in my heart I know right away what it is. How could I not? I grew up on a little golden farm. I understood all my life that we were working in the name of reproduction. The pollen is not the actual seed, my father explained to me, it is the conveyance. The protector.

  The people of the palace possess something even more valuable: the source.

  What the countess holds in her hand is a lovely specimen, the stamen of some brave flower, covered in the sticky grains that are everything.

  Ambitious, desperate, I reach for it.

  oo00oo

  I clutch the stamen after the countess withdraws. Immediately the roses grow back over the space she cleared; it is impossible to tell that a sword has ever pierced my little realm. I am left alone again, despondent.

  When I sleep, my dreams are filled with the girls from the camp, all of them clutching their baskets. Sera is there, too, in the untruthful way of dreams. They are all crying and wringing their hands. I feel guilty for being chosen, but when I draw near, I see that they are crying for me. They are sorry.

  My corset begins to tighten until I cannot breathe. I hold out my arms, gasping for breath, begging the others to save me. But even my sister will not advance to help me.

  When I wake, I realize that I am still wearing the dress embroidered with yellow roses. I remember that my corset was taken from me when I arrived. I can breathe.

  And I am still holding the stamen.

  oo00oo

  My rose chamber turns into a glowing yellow lair, which means it is the next day.

  The countess again slices her way in and appears before me with a question: "Do you know why you are here?"

  I know there is only one right answer. I say merely, “Yes.”

  It would be unbecoming to say more. Harvesters' daughters know better than to open their mouths from the moment they step across the chilly stones of the palace floor. The countess seems pleased and even gives me a slight bow when I put the stamen to my lips. As she retreats, the roses begin filling in the space she made.

  I do not know what to do with the castrated portion of flower I have taken, perhaps stolen, from the countess. I lied to her. The truth is, I do not have any answers. The truth is, I never asked my sister enough questions about the outside world. But I do know that Aimée, when it was her turn, must have swallowed the stamen. That was the beginning of her addiction: she consumed the source itself, all at once. And it did not give her a child.

  The temptation to swallow the stamen is enormous. It is worshipped by the harvesters; I have never been allowed to handle one. I twirl it in my fingers. I sniff it. I consider it.

  And then I make it disappear inside of me.

  oo00oo

  The pastries begin appearing three times a day, each confection more ingenious than the one that preceded it. But each sweet meal makes me sick. I have a craving for something else, something I cannot name because I have never tasted it before.

  My strength disappears. I turn soft. I discover, as I lick my fingertips, that I am growing sweeter. Glittering, golden powder begins to rub off on my pillow. The rose womb encroaches upon me, ever nearer, threatening me with its thorns.

  Some small part of my old self remains.
I want to leave the cold air of the palace and go back to the dust of my childhood. I want to work, but I am so weak that I can barely sit up.

  When the next plate of pastry appears in the rose tangle, I grab onto the hand that delivers it. It is Sévérine's. I do not let go. With the last of my strength I pull her inside the rose chamber with me.

  “What will happen to me? Am I to be sacrificed? Forgotten?” I ask as we sit, bloodied, staring at each other.

  Sévérine does not blink. “That is all any woman can expect.”

  “You must help me!”

  “There is no help for you. If you reject the count's seed, you will become like Aimée. There is no room for another Aimée here.”

  Sévérine tries to withdraw, but I stop her. “But where is the count? Why have I had no audience with him?”

  Sévérine smiles the stone-wall smile of the aristocracy.

  “What is your secret?” I ask her. “How are you still alive? How did you escape Aimée's fate?”

  She lowers her eyes. “Perhaps I have not escaped it. Perhaps I have merely managed to maintain a balance.” And then she takes my entire breakfast in her mouth and swallows it whole. I see how her skin glows afterward. She gives me a different kind of smile. It makes us equals.

  I have to find the count.

  I push Sévérine aside and crawl out of my fragrant prison. The thorns catch on my dress, shredding the roses that the countess embroidered. It hurts to step across the icy palace floors, but with each step, I grow a bit stronger, save for a lingering pain at my core. Something is stirring inside of me, but I know that it is not a baby.