The man had wandered into the village two days before. None knew how he had survived the wilds to make it so far, or how he had found it at all, what with the profusion of flowers growing from where his eyes should have been.
From his mouth, from his ears and everywhere hair should have been. Bunching up out of the neck of his shirt; he breathed in muffled little sucking moans, and no one had dared touch him, much less try to cut the flowers away to see if he could breathe better.
They had just left him or stand or wander in the square as he would. He didn’t seem interested in going, or able to go, anywhere else, standing there as the sun fed what grew out of him and the rain watered it. Did he look a little more lush than he had when he had arrived?
It seemed so to her. The flowers looked more beautiful, full and red and white and purple. She had never seen blossoms so large and bright, though the bees that tended the crops and local flowers seemed less impressed and wouldn’t deign to buzz anywhere near the man at all.
Maybe they were startled by how he moved, suddenly sometimes, in jerks and groans. He hadn’t shown any sign of being able to hear anyone who spoke to him.
He hadn’t asked for food or water. Of course, he couldn’t speak, and how would he eat it? Most likely, he would die. Would the flowers grow over the rest of him then?
She had crept closer to him than ever before. No one else was there to scold her and snatch her hand and drag her away, and he seemed not to notice her standing those three steps behind him. He faced the sun, maybe trying to make sure his flowers got as much of it as possible.
She shuffled another step closer. Her fingers itched with want.
Just one. It would be so easy – they were starting to poke out through his shirt’s weave and his sleeves around the wrists, too. Where they couldn’t find an escape, his shirt was puffy and soft-looking.
As if stems were pushing it up from the inside. She reached out, breathing through dry, parted lips, and pinched her fingers around the stem of a gorgeous white flower just above where his hip would be.
It came out more easily than she had thought it might. As if it had been buried only in loose soil, though there wasn’t anything on its stem. No dirt, no blood, and only a twitch in his body as she pulled it free, as if she had poked him in the side. A grunt from deep in his billowed chest.
She turned to run. Just as fast as she could, and as quiet – he wouldn’t be able to hear to follow her. She stopped only at the corner that would take her out of sight of the square, and looked back to see him still standing where he had been, still facing the sun.
She clutched both hands around the stem of the flower that might have smelled a little like blood, if she breathed deep, and ran on, not quite as fast as she could, towards home.
