Gunpowder & flower stalls

My little flower shop haven

Life's a little odd, it always is. 

That's just a fact, a statement and an occupational hazard and so everybody just accepts it and moves on. What can be done about it? Nothing, the answer is nothing and so with most things people chose not to change what they believe to be undeniably true.

And that is why our story starts in a back allyway flower shop that only opened at the oddest times and didn't have anything but neon lights, freshly brewed hot chocolate and neon lights to challenge a nineties club to an aesthetic fight and win. Because odd stories that explore beyond the norm of 'That's strange.... Okay let's move on.' always take place in the oddest of locations.

They also always have the oddest of characters, which is where C came in. C wasn't her real name of course, but by this point it sometimes felt like she'd forgotten her real name herself. She introduced herself as C, she responded to C and she signed everything with C so really what was the difference; besides one being on her birth certificate and the other not of course.

She had ginger hair that was often pulled back into a pony tail that some would call punk and some would call ratty. Her style was also on that line between fashionably punk and fettishist with the amount of leather and chains she wore but she always managed to make it look presentable.

Currently, she was leaning on the shop window, scuffed, worn combat boots tapping out the tune of the latest pop song to buzz through the night air and hum of neon lights. She didn't even like the music the shop played but often times she would find herself half mumbling along to the words either way. But not tonight, her mouth was preoccupied with the cigarette pressed between her lips.

She took a long drag before exhaling.

It'd taken her a time to learn how to do it properly without choking on the vapours but she'd perfected it a while ago. Somewhere past her hazy dream of sickly petunias, foxgloves and Banks music there was a shout and a clang of metal on concrete but another drag of her cigarette dragged her back into her bubble.

The world around her could burn and all that would matter was this little shop that never had any customers besides the strangest people the world had to offer and the sickly scent of flowers and crappy music.

It was her little slice of heaven and nothing could take it from her.

"When you're done with your cancer stick feel free to loiter inside the building." Sliding back into reality she looked over to the door where Queenie or 'Qween' as she insisted on being called was stood. Her brown locks were forcefully shoved into a workers bun and her tired eyes never seemed to stay one colour besides that of disappointment when she glared at the offending 'cancer stick' hanging from C's fingers.

Her hands were shoved casually in the pockets of her apron, the horrid pink thing was covered in dirt and a few stray leaves but remained pristine unlike her co-workers. Qween was one of C's favourite workers at the florists. She may of had a thing against her smoking habit but she didn't ask questions.

Well, non of them did, but Qween kept her nose out the most. Unlike the others she didn't try to pry in that totally-not-prying-but-tell-me-your-life-story-prying kind of way.

"Maybe I will~" The older girls voice drawled out and she watched as the workers nose wrinkled as a puff of smoke left her lips. "What?"

"I wish you didn't smoke that-" Qween looked contemplative for a few seconds, "You're throwing your life away by the years by having those things."

"We're all throwing our lives away by the years, mine just happens to have the most proven side effects."

"Still I-" she stopped before shaking her head, more to herself than to C, "Whatever. Just come in when you're done."

They shared a nod and then it was done, the brunette was slipping back into the shop and the quiet buzz returned and C was somewhere between light and dark, between right and wrong, between reality and fantasy and between here and her mind.

'If I close my eyes, I can almost see the way the ice cracked...'

It was a morbid thought, one that was usually driven away by these tranquil subdued states. Sometimes however the intrusive thoughts would dig their way into the sub space ruining it for her.

Closing her eyes she indulged this once in her minds attempted trauma induced healing.

The cold bit at her nose, and somewhere just outside of her vision there was a childish laugh and a scream of delight as everybody descended onto the lake, the annual ice skating/ice hockey competition was about to take place and she couldn't wait.

"C-*-+#  watch out!"

Looking over her shoulder she screamed as the puck came flying at her, dropping down quickly to avoid it and another scream was ripped from her as the ice broke almost too suddenly under her ice water plunging her into the depths of the windegos below.

They tore at her, grasping for her and-

Shaking her head she sighed. There was no such thing as a windego. They were simply myths and she was a child who'd suffered a mishap and wanted to explain the bruises and the feeling of icy webbed fingers that had dug into her.

But it had just been rocks and sticky pond weeds. Nothing loved at the bottom of that lake, nothing bigger than a fish anyway. 

Sighing, she dropped and stomped out her cigarette before brushing herself down and entering the flower shop. If the outside was a suffocating perfume the inside strangled her senses.

"How's your night been so far?"

She looked up from a paticularly pretty tulip that had caught her eye and over at the location the thick German accent had come from. 'Fanta' (No real name given, she could understand that) was just out of sight but their dirt covered uniform was something C could picture vividly.

"Alright, nothing of interest, you've any news on those twins?"

There was a small bang and she found herself moving around the counter and catching a large box of fertiliser before it dropped onto Fanta's foot. "Nothing."

She sighed, "Maybe next time."