This twoshot is inspired by, but not not really connected to, Blakemore's Night's Ghost of a Rose: (on youtube) /watch?v=qqjWv3cxmtw

Ghost of a Rose

April 27, 2013

It was raining. The water fell steadily onto the roof above his head, making a soft but incessant pattering noise. Danny sat on the bed as he stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows that took up most of his bedroom wall.

It seemed so close, like he could reach out his hand and feel the raindrops cascading over the glass. He wanted to be out there, face up to the sky so that the rain poured over him, washed through him. But he couldn't even find it in himself to stand up and walk out the door.

If he somehow summoned up the energy to move, when he hit the shield flush with the walls, he would quickly remember why he couldn't leave, why he couldn't go outside.

Not that he was trapped inside the room or house, per se. He was confined inside the ghostly boundaries, but he had been the one to put up the shield. He could alter it at will. He could turn it off without any trouble. But the trouble would come if he did.

So it stayed up nearly all the time now, although he had modified it so that it was no longer visible. For the first few weeks, when he flipped the switch, the entire house would be coating in a sickly, glowing neon green. He hated it. Hated what it meant. So even though the shield had to stay, he changed it enough that he could hardly tell it was there now. Not unless he looked for the faintest glow or tried to put his hand through the partition. Then he would remember… all too well.

There was a flash of lightning. Danny's eyes were closed so he didn't see anything beyond a faint illumination of his eyelids. He didn't react to it. The thunder rumbled in the distance so softly that he might have missed it.

He shivered. The temperature had dropped.

Without opening his eyes, he knew that the scene around him had completely changed.

Everything had darkened.

It was no longer the dark of a night where the stars were covered with stormy clouds. Now even the lightning and street-lamps were shielded from view. It was as if they had been blocked out. He had been cut off.

The soft sound of the rain was drowned out in an eerie muffled silence. It was oppressive; the nothingness pressing into his ears until he could no longer hear the beating of his heart.

The smells changed too. It wasn't the familiar and safe smell of his house anymore, but something else, something cloyingly sweet and irrationally comforting… just a hint of lavender.

He knew what he would see if he opened his eyes. Dark green vines with delicate purple flowers trailing and curling and blooming until they had blocked out any view from the windows. And in the midst of them…

standing there…

hovering right there…

she would be watching. Waiting. Staring at him with the deepest amethyst eyes, the ones that haunted his every waking moment and invaded every crevice of his dreams.

He knew exactly how she would be standing there, how she would wait for him, silently beckoning with a single outstretched hand.

He squeezed his eyes firmly shut. He didn't want to see. He didn't want it to be real. He didn't want her to be here.

Not tonight.

(I'd like to apologize if I'm annoying anyone with my recent spate of stories, but I tend to churn things out faster and desire more feedback when I'm stressed, and since finals and graduation are looming, I've been posting a lot. So... yeah.)