why roses are red

Deep in the forest there was a wild rose patch.

They wound through the brambles and branches in beautiful disarray, like the sweet script of words on the pages of a fairy-tale book. The petals were fresh and soft, with the magic of the long-gone Folk, untouched, hiding the thorns that lay underneath. 

Of course, the traveler didn’t know this as he walked through the forest. There was hardly a chirp, or the soft scattering paws of a frightened animal. Instead he saw spindly trees, the roots slightly blackened, the branches balding. The wind was an underlying presence, like a shrill whisper in the dead silence.

It was almost a little too silent. No life in the dead of the woods.

Funny, how he thought he was only a wee bit lost. He didn’t know he was wandering towards that rose patch. The trees grew taller, wider. He found himself in the thick of the forest, waiting for a place to rest for the night.

And then he saw it.

It was a grove, a clearing, a field shielded by the forest wall. There were the roses, blooming from the edges, evanescent, perfectly shaped.

Except…

He stopped. Stood still.

There was no perfume, no fragrance of the flowers. The smell was odd, rotten; it clung to the air like rusty patches.

The moment his hair began to crawl, on his arms, the forest came alive.

A trunk struck him, enough to knock him off his feet. Branches shot out, trapping him in place. The rose branches crawled sinuously, the long, sharp thorns flashing in the light.

The traveler opened his mouth to scream, but the thorns reached in and sliced his tongue apart. The branches were taking him, binding him, constricting him. The rose thorns gouged into his cheeks and tore his clothes to shreds, then feasted on his skin.  He thrashed; terror seized him, rendered him immobile as he realized why there was no life in the forest.

Slowly, slowly, like in the jaws of a carnivorous animal, the man was eaten apart by the trees and branches and thorns.

Three days later, the rose petals turned a fresh, brilliant red, and blood that oozed out dripped onto the fertile ground.

-Christina