CHALLENGE!
Element 1: Include an instance of flower language in your story. (Extra links for shortcuts: here and here. You do not have to follow any prescribed language or culture.)
Element 2: Include ten different colour words. The more specific the better.
Optional element: one of your sentences must be at least 55 words long.
Cyclamen: Diffidence
Thistle: Warning
Asmodel: Death
I couldn’t cope with the heat, so one day, despite my girlfriend’s protests, instead of leaving her at the top of the hill, where the golden wheat hid me every time, I strolled down and knocked on her mother’s door.
I was smug and confident, but most of all hot, with sweat running along my spine and Dalila’s smell still on my fingers, but it was about time I met her parents.
Dalila begged me to just stay away, but I had blonde eyebrows and eyes like popsicles. I was sure I was going to win her mum over. I might not have looked like it, but I loved the girl.
The Navarro’s house was an emerald thorn in the shifting sea of wheat, with cerulean ivies choking their liver-coloured Ford pick-up, four flat tyres, bodywork eaten like a leaf by parasites, while fake gemstones glued to the plum door shined yellow and red and blue in the dusty sunshine, a chime glistering with music as Mrs Navarro opened the door in her long, tan dress with intricate patterns of tropical carnivorous plants. She smelled like a vineyard, like a well-spent summer, and you could taste the perfume of lilacs, lavender, and roses in her living room.
She looked at Dalila, she looked at me, and when I smiled, she hissed, like a snake or a cat, but the purple of her eyes was more beautiful than the first time I made love to her daughter.
‘Can I get a glass of water?’ I asked, and she grinned, welcoming me inside. I knew I had already won her over.
Dalila kept her eyes low. She didn’t look at me, she didn’t look at her, and didn’t speak. I spoke. A lot, as I was so charming, and I wanted to impress Mrs Navarro so bad, so I licked my lips and pumped my biceps, while she kept her very welcoming gaze on me.
She glanced, though, too often at the flowers.
Thistles. Thistles everywhere. I had never seen anyone keeping thistles as house plants. They were so spiky and bright pink, and you had to dodge them as you walked through.
I thanked her for the water and asked for the toilet, gently placing my hand on her hip, just to see if she’d welcome my touch.
Mrs Navarro was clearly a classy woman, with her feet rooted in the ground and her gaze beautifully to the future. She was too experienced to give me a signal, any signal, positive or negative, to my troglodyte yet daring approach. She just raised a finger, pointing at the bottom of the corridor, where a squeaky door was hidden behind a wall of cyclamens and a massive Asmodel.
I walked, clinching my butt, displaying it like a peacock’s tail, and I think I heard Dalila saying something; something that sounded like ‘Addio’.
I turned, as smug as ever, smouldering them both with what I knew was going to be my best pose, but as I tried to say ‘Pardon?’ I realised I had no voice.
I had no voice, because I had no mouth, no nose, no eyes, no hair, no body, no groins and no feet.
All that was left of me was a stem, pink petals, and a throat of spikes.
See you tomorrow