The Greenhouse

Felicia paused at the door. She wondered if the invitation was real. The Fellowship of the Black Hellebore was something she dreamed about. Most people dismissed it as a myth, Felicia knew it was real. She reached for the knob of the diner, not sure what to expect. The invitation she found on her bed had nothing but a picture of a black Hellebore, (one of the rarest, and deadliest black flowers) 12:27, and the name of this 24-hour diner: Gran’s. She wasn’t sure if the 12:27 meant am or pm and decided to come at am on a whim. She hesitated; 1227, 1227, it stood out to her the more she thought about the card. That number had significance other than the time. She pulled out her phone and looked up angel number 1227. “Have personal trust, personal intuition, and inner-consciousness.” That was all the confirmation she needed. Felicia took a deep breath and placed her hand on the knob. Suddenly, her fingers grew hot. She pulled back with a shriek and watched as the knob began to glow a bright white.

Is anyone seeing this??

 She looked around when she noticed a figure standing off to the side. The person remained there watching her, wearing all black except a silver mask covering their face. The mask had a single black flower on the cheek, a hellebore. She began to call out to them when they turned and disappeared into the side of the diner. Felicia hopped down the stairs and ran after them. Once she got to the spot, she saw nothing but the outer wall of the diner. No door, a window over to the right, but the figure walked straight ahead. And right now the only thing in front of her was a wall.

She felt along the side of the wall, trying to find a hidden lever or latch. Her hand explored the bumpy wall and jagged windowsill. Years of being in the harsh desert elements had this old diner beat up. How could this old thing hold customers forget house an entire secret society? Felicia was about to give up, thinking she imagined the entire thing when the spirit number 1227 popped up in her head again. Trust your intuition. She began adding the numbers.

1+2=3 3+2=5 5+2=7 7+7=14  14? 14 no no 14 is still too big. 14/2=7

7 was the number she needed. She dug her finger in some nearby clay, a gift from the recent rains and desert sands, and began drawing a spiral with 7 rotations on the diner wall. Once she finished the last rotation, the spiral began to glow a bright red.

“Well I guess this is supposed to happen?” she said to no one. She went on to complete 7 total spirals with 7 rotations in them, each glowing a unique color. Red for the first spiral, then orange, yellow followed by green, blue, violet, and finally pink. Then one-by-one they began to rotate;7 full rotations before the spirals clicked into place and all began to glow black. Felicia looked around but unless someone was facing the wall, all they would be able to see is her staring like a crazy person. She put her hand up, feeling the vibrations coming off, mesmerized by the steady black glow. Suddenly the world grew quiet, the once busy sounds coming from the diner were drowned out by a deafening silence. Felicia glanced around, unsure of what was going on. She could still see people inside the diner, laughing, eating, but she could no longer hear them. The people going to their cars began to move slower...or was she moving faster? The world started spinning, she reached out to the wall to brace herself, but it never came. She was falling fast with lights blurring alongside her. Felicia struggled to keep her eyes open, the air rushing past her face as she fell. “WAKE UP!” A voice boomed and her eyes flew open. Felicia had a few moments to understand what was going on before she quickly noticed the ground getting closer. She braced herself, ready to meet the tile when suddenly, she stopped. She peeked out of one eye, the white tile, feet from her nose. She waved her arm out, wondering what was she laying on, and felt nothing. She reached above her arms looking for the invisible string when suddenly---

Clap! Clap! Clap!

 The slow claps startled her...the tile got closer.

“Congratulations! You passed the first test! Getting in the door.” a voice said from behind her.

“Uh, that’s great and all” she began, “but how do I get on the ground??”

“You tell me” the voice replied. “It’s your spell”

“I’m sorry my what-?” she turned her head toward the voice when suddenly she dropped. “Ow! A little warning would be nice!”

“Lesson number 1! Do not break your concentration! At least not yet. You’re still a seedling and have to stay focused or your spells will lose power or worse, not work at all.”

“Excuse me Sir, you keep saying ‘spells’, what ‘spells’? I don’t know any “spells’. And who are you?!” she asked while pulling herself off the ground.

“Don’t know any spells? Really? So how did you get in here? And were my eyes deceiving me or were you just hovering off the ground?”

“Oh, you mean the swirls?” She asked puzzled “that’s just something I draw when I’m bored. Always have, but I’ve never had them glow like that before. I honestly don’t know why I drew them. Don’t ask how I was floating.”

“Those “swirls” as you call them are now sigils. You created them to be a key to unlock any door it seems. That’s how you got inside. Now, the spell was you stopping yourself from falling. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything, I felt myself about to pass out then I heard you tell me to wake up, opened my eyes and boom! floating.”

“Me? I didn’t tell you to do anything.” He looked more confused than Felicia.

“Well a voice told me to wake up, I was falling, then I was floating.”

“Hmm, interesting. That means you preformed that spell instinctively. We have a nat-u-ral on our hands ghouls, gals and theybies!" The man was beaming. Felicia's wheels were turning, did that mean she was able to do this the whole time?

“So, where exactly am I?”

 “Gran’s of course,” he said with a chuckle. “Oh, you mean all thiiss” He had his arms outstretched taking in the whole chamber. “This is The Greenhouse.”

The Greenhouse? “And you are?”

"Oh, right, I’m Percival but my friends call me Perce, yes like a woman’s handbag. Not Percy, just Perce. I hate the name Percy. And this is the Fellowship of the Black Hellebore.” He flashed his pearly whites at her, she swore she saw a fang.

“I have the pleasure of being your mentor or ‘Gardener’ as we call it in the Fellowship while you go through the weeding process. You my little chickadee are a bulb. I know, but unfortunately terrible plant puns grow with the membership!” Perce's face cracked open with a huge smile, she could tell he loved making bad plant puns. And she definitely saw fangs.

The Fellowship was real, and now she was a part of it. Or at least soon would be. She searched for that feeling to come. She began to look around the chamber taking everything in. Perce stood out like a sore thumb against the staggered rows of shrouded figures. His 6’1, rail thin frame was dwarfed by them.  as shiny as the marble peeking from under a dark, sheer veil. Even my cocoa skin looked out of place against the other figures, almost flesh like, completely covered with solid cloth. All of them hidden in the shadows.

“Perce?” Felicia began, “What are these statues?”

“Oh those aren’t statues. Those are The Iris.”

“The Iris? What’s ‘The Iris’?"

“The Iris are the sacred guardians of truth, light, justice, and all that fun stuff,” he said with a wave of his hand.

“But why are they all covered? Shouldn’t we be using them?”

“You would think so right? But The Iris are judge, jury, and executioner. All they have to do is lay eyes on you and it’s over. Once they have you in their sights, they peer deep into your soul and find every blemish, sin, or bad mark on it. Then they find you guilty and sentence you to a cleansing. They ‘cleanse’ you by burning a strip of flesh for every mark they counted on your soul. Your soul’s imperfections being manifested physically. Poetic in a Silence of the Lambs kinda way. Most people don’t survive it.” She watched as Perce popped a grape in his mouth. Where did grapes come from?

 “That’s still a good thing though, right? Because not everyone has to worry about that? Just those terrible people who do horrible things?” She watched as Perce walked around the room playfully tugging at each cover.

“Wrong! With The Iris, there is no impartial judgment. Meaning, to them every sin is equal so you stealing a candy bar from the store is equal to murder. They don’t discriminate.”

A chill ran down her spine at the thought. She would be in agonizing pain if they ever set eyes on her. She followed Percival out of the antechamber and into the main hall of the Greenhouse. The oval Shaped room was lined with wall-to-wall shelving. Books, random papers, and artifacts cluttered the shelves.

“For a secret society, you guys sure leave everything out in the open,” she said while eyeing a rather menacing looking toad in a glass.

“Oh, this is the tame stuff. All the good stuff you have to be a high-level mage to get to. And if you’re dumb enough to mess with The Iris...well that’s on you.” he said with a devilish grin. “Now, come along. Your first tribunal is waiting.”