I Burned the Tulips

Flash Fiction | 3 Minute Read

Apr 08, 2022

This story was inspired by one of my favorite writing prompt tools, The Writer’s Toolbox from Jamie Cat Callan. I shared the prompt on the NV RIvera YouTube channel. If you would like to see the video that discusses this specific prompt, scroll down the bottom of this post.

This is a 3 minute read.

I BURNED THE TULIPS

I put tulips under all the pillows, and then I set fire to the house. It’s what she wanted, and I’m pretty sure it saved the world. I wanted to stand there and watch it burn. I wanted to send my grief away in billows of smoke that the wind would eventually blow away and make nonexistent. But I knew I couldn’t. Arson was a crime even if no one got hurt -- even if the destruction was an act of heroism.
I ran until I realized no one would ever know what I did.But if I hadn’t?I mean, this is why I am telling you all of this. If the house were allowed to remain standing. If the souls within were truly free of my mother’s hold?Let me just say this: You’re welcome. That’s as concise as I can be. In whatever way you currently find yourself peacefully sitting back with the time to read a story: you’re welcome.It all could have been very different.
“Burn me when I die,” mother had said. I knew she meant cremation, but in recent years the weight of the house and its curse on our family lead me to more drastic actions.
My family has been keeping the souls at bay for generations. My mother found a way to trap them in the house. I discovered the secret to ending them forever.
It was all in the tulips.Yes, that tulip, the Springtime bloom shared and proliferated for its spectral variety. It is more powerful than most can imagine. My mother knew enough about it to encircle the house with the bulbs, but I suspected there might be more.
Mom died on the night after the first bloom of the year. I wasn’t home because Tom lost 25 bucks at the races. Tom was a luck dragon, losing wasn’t in his repertoire. Devastated is kind of an understatement in regard to how I found him. He called me to help him find his way home in his broken state.
We both should have known there was a shift in the forces. I wasn’t paying attention. I should’ve known that the fender bender and the incessant traffic on the way home were all signs that the balance was tipping. The great mother – my mother, Tom’s guardian – was heading to another realm. Protections here were waning. My ignorance to it all was proof Mom was right, she always said I was weakest with sign reading.
It was the tulips that woke me up. When we pulled up to the house, the same tulips that stood tall in the morning had all drooped. There was no cold front or storm to explain this, so when I stepped closer to investigate and watched each bloom regain its posture in my presence, I finally recognized something was amiss.
“Tom! Get inside!” Our blood was needed inside the home -- even if Tom’s luck was draining. He looked at me and ran inside, as if he too, understood the true magnitude of the lost 25 bucks. Inside we found Mother cradled around the Family Book with pages open to a tulip spell. One that required a couple of petals to be ground down and added to a tea. She wasn’t gone yet, so Tom took his shoes off, knelt beside her and hugged her like a small child cuddled up to his mother. Tom was like mom’s pet. His existence was tied to hers. Looking at him, nuzzled up to her like that, the pathetic nature of him was un-ignorable. I always thought it was a mistake that mom gave him human form -- he never really pulled it off with his weird plaid suit, curly, cowlicky red hair, patched up pants, hole in his sock, and his obsession with gambling even though he always won -- but he was a good companion. It was when he faded from existence, leaving only his shoes behind, that I cried.
That’s when I knew that Mom was truly gone. That’s when I realized it was all on me. I should have felt it. That’s what I was told, but I felt nothing. Not until I got the tulips in my hands.
I stepped outside and tore them out of the soil. Everything happening in my mind all at once.
Tulips. Fire. Ashes. Earth.
I heard screams when I reentered the home, clumps of soil falling off the roots as I went upstairs. Every pillow, every room, every chair, every soft space -- a tulip underneath. I grabbed the spell book, opened to Encanta and read words I never understood before. I stood inside for a moment, unable to look away from the flames that sprouted in the colors of their originating tulips, but when a flame flickered near the pages of my single tangible inheritance, I ran.
I didn’t stop until morning.
The world was lighter. The prison was gone, but so were the prisoners. So, I’m here to say it one more time, and then you’ll never hear from me again: You’re welcome.

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The inspiration

Here is the video of the prompt so you can write your own story.

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