Blood Flower by Tim Eagle (Part 2)

Welcome to FREE FICTION FRIDAY!

I give you the very old, circa 2016, version of Blood Flower, a macabre tale that I rushed through back in my young impatient years. Please enjoy, and please don't be too harsh, it's fiction from my beginnings, while raising a family, working full time, and grinding daily...the genesis of an ambitious writer. If you want the properly formatted version of this in print and don't want to wait until Friday to continue reading for free, please buy a copy in print here: Blood, Dreams & Tears or purchase the eBook here: Blood, Dreams & Tears

Jake’s chill grew deeper. It was a bit ironic that the people who had no faith in God would show up with more sympathy than the Christians. It was also a blatant hypocrisy of the way the world was. Jake tried to smile at the early arrivals and they quickly turned from him. He could see their sad eyes turned sympathetic and could sense the awkward movements as they autonomously set up their seats along the trail. These people weren’t there to be entertained; they were there only to bear witness to the atrocity against their fellow man. One by one they each pulled journals out of satchels recording the climate, the time, the date and the detail. They took their roles in death and retribution seriously.

Growing over the distant sky line and shadowing the hanging tree, Jake could see the Church’s steeple stretched above a cupola in town. It rose upward and the polished copper glistened in the morning sunlight. Jake squinted at the sun. The ringing Church bell taunted him in melodious requiem as the music, in a harsh tintinnabulation, called the parishioners to worship. The bells mocked Jake’s life, they were alive and within the next four hours he would be gasping for air, clinging for his life as he was hanged. It was a bizarre celebration of the end of Jake’s life. It was written in Stevats’ law that he would have to wait from eight in the morning until noon before taking the walk down Sunflower Row.

Jake wanted to shout his innocence. 

There was no remorse. There wasn’t the least bit of sympathy for the widow. The only emotion surging through Jake was the terror of death. The hanging tree creaking from a northerly breeze taunting his every nerve. It was fear and death that woke the macabre dark memory of that day which unfolded the path of his demise.

*

The recollections were gray and drab. Jake never visited his parents’ graves before, but on the day of the incident with the widow he wanted to pay his respects and enjoy the sunshine. His parents had been dead for years and Jake disconnected from them both emotionally and on a level he had never believed himself capable. 

Black clouds covered the sunshine, dark and unmoving, casting forlorn shadows through the cemetery. It was safe for Jake to assume there would be nobody at the graveyard to spot him. Jake was a wanderer, a person who had no one, people despised him because he didn’t go to church and didn’t get involved, he was awkward around them and they had always judged him for that. The only positive thing that lined the cold grave stones was flowers placed in front of them by others that had visited. People respected the dead more than they did the living. Jake found his parents’ burial and knelt in front of the small tribute. He wasn’t a prayerful person but thought to himself about the past and how his parents had struggled in a foreign land to raise him. Tears formed in his eyes like pools of still water.

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Tim Eagle

Tim Eagle is an author of the novellas Stolen Seed, Life Ship, and the Vasectomus Collection. He lives full time, on the road, with his wife, Maria and their dog, Cocoa. He grew up in Michigan and is inspired by the dysfunction of America. His books are available on Amazon, godless and this site timeaglefiction.com 

Tim Eagle's Blood Flower