All Stories

The morning exactly sixty days later, I opened my front door, freshly painted marigold-orange, a change from classic oak.

There lay on the welcome mat a bouquet of roses. Five crimson roses, twelve spiky leaves.

I sat there, on the floor, just staring. Gingerly, I loosened a branch from its silk-ribbon grasp. A waft of rich fragrance washed over. Small tears slipped out from my eyes.

Behind me, the orange door creaked; Holly, my roommate, peeked out with coffee-stained pants. “Breakfast?” she asked, then took in the roses.

“Five years ago today, right?” she whispered.

I sniffed. “The florist should stop.”

She threw caution to the wind.

Put off until tomorrow everything that should have been done today.

Then suddenly, from out of nowhere, the winds of change began to blow.
They howled for days.

She hunkered down, as best she could, but to no avail.

When the ordeal finally ended, she was nowhere to be found.

True to form, the fickle fingers of fate had scooped her off the floor and transformed her.

She emerged, a different person, on the other side.

Some missed the old essence. Others didn’t even recognize the change.

Perhaps it was because they too had changed.

“You’d have hated the reunion,” said Derek across the table to Maria, his wife. “Morgan, who wrote those fantasy stories the teachers raved about. He pens greenwash for corporations. And Isabella, who won the charity fundraising prize. Remember her? Investment banker.”

The day Derek fell for Maria they were thirteen. She’d tied herself to a tree by the football field to save it from being felled. She alone from her class had reached her potential.

Maria extended her arm toward Derek.

“Mam,” uttered a guard. “Refrain from physical contact.”

She’d be out next year. Free for another crack at the dam.

White N95 mask in place. Push the aluminum strip down. Tape across bridge of nose. Goggles on, see if any fogging. If fogging noted, reapply tape. First set of gloves, then yellow gown. Boot covers over shoes. Tie gown at neck and waist. Second set of gloves. Hair cover on. Second surgical mask over N95.

“Am I good?” I ask.

My companion gives me a thumbs-up.

“Let’s go,” I say.

The front door opens and a tiny blur erupts into the sunlight.

“Hi, Daddy! Were there any virus patients today at the hospital? I missed you!”

“I missed you, too, kiddo.”

“Are we poor?” My son looked up to me from the cold kitchen floor.

An impossible question, coming from a toddler. Had David been a few years older, I could’ve explained the difference between having money and being rich; explained that things weren’t so simple. But David was at that age where life’s gray areas hadn’t entered his reality yet—David still lived in black and white.

So I should have given him a reassuring, “Of course not, David,” and explained it to him later, but instead I angrily blurted out, “Who told you that?”

Thus I colored his world forever.

Her eyes are dragon-like, green slits with an uncanny gaze. “Hi,” I whisper.

“Why are you whispering?” she asks. I’m staring at her lips, terrified that at any moment they’ll release a flame.

“You scare me sometimes.” I shake my head. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

“Don’t apologize.” She laughs. “Well what about me scares you?” Her skin seems to be glinting, like a scale would.

I swallow again. “It’s your face.”

“My face?”

“Yeah. It’s really stupid, but sometimes I think you look like a dragon.” I glance down, just in time to watch her hand unfurl into a talon.