Daisy's Garden ✓

2

I was jolted out of an intensely restless sleep, heart beating wildly, sweat coating me like a second skin. Disgusted, I threw the covers away and sat up. The chilly air in the room did nothing to cool the heated state I was in. The remnants of the dream that had woken me up clung to me, a kaleidoscope of blurred images I had neither hope nor desire to decipher. I dropped my head in my hands, willing myself to calm down. When it did nothing in the way of helping me, I got up and headed towards the bathroom with the intention of an early start to yet another wretched day.

The water seemed to hit me with the intensity of continuously falling battering rams and the feeling of dread that had been clouding me ever since I woke up would not go away. Sinking to the floor, I wrapped my arms around my knees, my cheek resting against them. I felt agitated and nothing was helping me soothe the storm roiling inside me. The sinking feeling would not go away. I sat there for how long, I do not know. Eventually, I got up and dressed for the day.

When I left the confines of my silent home, it was to discover that something in the air had changed while I had been sleeping, unaware of it. Standing on the pewter tiles I had insisted upon during renovations after Uncle Edgar's death, I had a minuscule epiphany. This something-in-the-air feeling was simply an upgraded version of the dread I had felt right after waking up. Giving my head a firm shake to dispel all black clouds, I started on my way to the office.

AVENUE eleven was decorated with the same sky high buildings as the rest of the city but this was the sleepy side to the overactive, corporate monster. With red-brick apartment buildings, small flower shops and even smaller patisseries, the location took you to a dream world far from the fume laden reality. Avenue eleven also happened to be my alternate route to work from this day forth due to the blockage I had encountered yesterday.

Usually I wouldn't mind the minuscule inconvenience but today I was desperate for coffee which would not be coming from Mandy's this morning. I scanned for a coffee shop in my immediate surroundings only to be met with more flower shops. It was like I had stepped inside a romance advert with flowers thrown at your feet as bribes. Bribes meant to make you embrace the loudly championed concept of love, in reality leading you to uncertain doom with best intentions of course.

The idea of surrendering to a notion as fickle as love was ludicrous to me. One could say I was a cynic yet I believed I was a realist, had been since the day I had seen my mother breaking my dear old man's heart. It did not take much to see they had never been it for each other. In fact, it had been my long held belief that the universe had been punishing him for some transgression I had not been made privy to by throwing her in his path. She was blizzard and he was sleet. She destroyed on impact, not always consciously but disastrous all the same. He was gentler, could never hurt anyone despite the loud threats he issued.

I was jerked unceremoniously out of my musings by a loud crash. My head whipped around, eyes taking in a girl - a couple years younger than me - standing in front of several spilled bottles of soda on the opposite side of the road, frowning at the mess she had been a part of. However, it was what she stood in front of that caught my eye. I looked both ways on the empty road and jogged over to her. She had just begun collecting the bottles when I bent down next to her, offering to carry them for her.

"I am truly grateful but I can do it," she gently refused, a small, distracted smile directed towards me.

"Your little moment of weakness does not mean you can't but it does give me a perfect moment to display fast fading chivalry." I had no idea where that had come from. I was not prone to easy charm. In fact I was cursed with the worst case of speechlessness in front of strangers, especially of the female variety.