The Rose of Thorns

I woke up one morning to find you killing me. Luckily for me, you missed the heart with your first stab.

Immediately, I knew it was because of the roses. It was because of those roses I gave you the other day, even though I knew I shouldn't have.

I never trusted the roses!

In the back of my mind, I knew they were always about the blood right from the start. From the very beginning of their existence, they fooled us by acting innocent, by being beautiful, and by emitting what I now clearly see as pulsating waves of saccharine and fake love, dirtying our minds forever with their foul scent. They were always alien interlopers anxiously waiting to savor our blood. They plainly told us so with their treacherous thorns and crimson petals. Yes, secretly, they were always emissaries from another world, beacons calling forth their dreadful sisters from the depths of space.

I now know that for eons, the blood ships have been streaming through the vast emptiness of space, claiming rare and precious worlds like ours through their Rose of Thorns. When they first came to us, all our young men and women went to war, fighting the terror of the blood ships in their fragile starships and brittle little starfighters. It was useless, and the blood of their martyrdom only joined the great swarm, compounding the problem. Now it's finished. The blood ships are darkening our skies at last, and it was almost a relief when they finally plunged in their terrible thorns like diseased claws and unholy electrodes desecrating our little blue Earth. We can do nothing more to resist them as they drain our lifeblood.

In the space of just a few days, most have died, but you're still here, and even though you're killing me, I cry for you because of how you've changed. I knew you from cover to cover, like a favorite story. You were complete and beautiful, but now you're not you anymore. You’re everyone else. Your eyes still see the sun, but you'll never think another free thought. I shudder as even in my own mind, the Rose of Thorns starts to glow its mystic and ineffable glow like an impossible dream, a crown of blood, a portal into the minds of others. Even now, as its unholy radiation is killing you, you still crave it, and you crawl towards it and melt.

It wants me too.

Slowly, leisurely, for it knows it has the time, it bends my unwilling eyes to gaze at its obscene glow. It promises pleasure. Does it ever promise pleasure! It promises the sensual joys of being joined to every other soul, the ecstasy of oneness. Slowly it gnaws at my spirit, pulsating with the crimson trauma of unsatisfied desire. A longing engulfs us all, and it grows out of control like the toothy hunger of a world-eating god. Mountains are mere appetizers in its jaw. Savagely I fight against the closing maw. If I but break off a single glistening tooth-like thorn, then an innocent soul somewhere may live another precious moment of freedom.

I try not to look at your grimacing face as I struggle desperately, and my strength wanes. I can hear your heartbeat in my ears. You spit in my face, and my fingers claw at your throat in an attempt to get free. Then as I fight, I can hear the voice of the trees calling to me, like a gentle rain bringing me unexpected hope. I never knew until now how sweet their song was. I never knew that when the trees met in a sunlit arched corridor in the forest, they could sometimes form a mirror-like portal to another reality. And you can pass through it without sending a single ripple; many have done it before without noticing. Yes, without even realizing it, you can become another you in another world similar to ours. Perhaps even in a world away from the curse of the Rose of Thorns. And somehow I know that you can even go to a place where the tree portals multiply and thrive, free exchanges flow between all, and there is freedom for all creatures to go where they please. Thinking of this amid our desperate struggle, I fervently imagine the smoke of the chimney of our little house rising in the peaceful sky of another world, and I implore you to come with me and live together there.

You’re almost convinced, and I smile as I see the thirst for blood melt from your eyes. But then the Rose of Thorns appears before us like a burning effigy, and it sears our fragile minds, and it fills us with desire, and it silences my entreaties. It hurts so much, and I cower and am ground into the dirt before it. You resume killing me, and there's nothing I can do except obey it and make more food for its ravenous maw. Sobs are wrenched out of me from under a shower of blood because I slit your throat to save myself.

Now that you're gone, my only reason for being is to reach the portals in the forest and warn the other worlds. It’s evening as I leave our little stone house and run until I’m lost in the woods, my strength fading fast. Soon night will fall, and I won’t make it till morning unless I find one of those arched portals before it gets dark.

Then I meet the Rose of Thorns. She comes to me as a woman in a storm of blades. She looks like you, and it’s only to torture me. She mocks me, and she's blocking my way. Desperately, I throw a stone at her, and she dissolves into a pool of blood that splatters all over me. Then there are ten more like her, all red-eyed and made up of blood, all laughing at me in terrifying unison.

“You'll never reach any portal! You'll join us first!” they say.

“You'll give in like all the others. Your soul will enter the crimson gate of the Rose of Thorns like all the others.”

I force my way past them, their laughter following me, and I desperately run through the darkening forest. I start to feel weak, and the dwindling light is my life ebbing away. But the trees are guiding me with their song; the trees are! Soon I see the blessed arch in all its beauty, lit up in shades of rust and gold by the dying rays of the sun, the light turning green as it shines through the leaves. It’s a tunnel leading me to the hope of another you. Walking through it, I first feel no change, and then suddenly, I no longer fear the Rose of Thorns. There are no longer any blood ships in the sky with their fearful thorns digging into our world. Relieved, I turn and head back to our house, hoping to find a meal cooked with love and your smile waiting for me there.