The Rose Bush

Today’s post is based on a writing prompt I shared in a previous Daily Drafts & Dialogues post. Keep reading to see what I wrote, and to access more writing prompts.

What I wrote below is based on the following writing prompt: Write a dramatic scene in which there is a rose bush.  

---

Now, I can’t quite recall all the details of how I found myself in this precarious position, both literally and figuratively. 

Nevertheless, here I am crouched between a rose bush and the ocean contemplating whether to continue to get pricked by thorns and bleed or go drown myself. 

Yes, I am well aware how melodramatic that sounds. But what would you do if you were walking along the beach enjoying the salty sting of the ocean breeze, finally finding your zeal for life again— tra la la la la — when you spot your mother making out with the pool boy who must be at least thirty years her junior. 

Imagine the sand coming up to your ankles when you spot them over a large rose bush, whose placement is as bizarre as what you’re looking at when regarding the organic order of the world. He’s bronze and lean and in a thong bathing suit that looks like expensive but uncomfortable underwear, while she is wearing a neon floral beach wrap over a bright green one-piece and a white floppy beach hat that looks foreign on her.

Also, imagine that your mother is usually so demure and by-the-book, excessively modest, to the point that for a split second, although she is technically the eldest member of this scandalous tryst you’re witnessing, you want to tear the boy off her and punch him hard, right in his beautifully sculpted, sun-kissed throat. How dare he defile her!  

But you don’t, because you must investigate further first, of course. 

Keep in mind, in this scenario, that you also dislike the beach almost as much as you dislike your mother’s purity, and that—

“Achoo!”

— you’re—

“Achoo!”

— suddenly highly allergic to rose pollen, which is both new information to you and incredibly inconvenient considering your present placement in life. 

As you try to crouch even lower to further conceal your presence, and to peer through a small hole in the bush to get a better vantage point, which is nearly impossible because your rear end is already grazing the sand, you hear the woman who couldn’t possibly be your mother on the other side of the bush speak from the side of her mouth, which is still mostly attached to the lips of the pool boy. Or should you call him a post-pubescent adolescent, who may or may not be considered a legal adult? You’re not completely sure. TBD. 

“Is someone there?” is what the woman mumbled, by the way, when her lips partially detached from her affair.

Instead of responding, you stay silent and try to make yourself smaller somehow, which is obviously not possible. You’re not an idiot. But still, it would have been more idiotic to announce your presence at that point.  

“Who’s there?” the woman asks as she fully detaches her lips from the pool b–, um, young person’s face.

Wait. That’s not your mother. Oh, okay, thank God. 

It’s your neighbor Mrs. Jankowicz, who is also, not surprisingly, prone to scandal and intrigue.

Before seeing this, you used to think Mrs. Jankowicz was always in the tabloid headlines because of how well-known and wealthy her family is. But apparently there are other reasons too. 

Hang on. That’s not the pool boy either.

That’s Mister Jankowicz’s brother’s adoptive son who is barely twenty years old… and is supposed to be currently spending three consecutive life sentences in federal prison for murder.  

[Write what happens next and share what you come up with in a comment or subscriber chat thread below.] 

---

© All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC. The above work is a piece of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

---

Today’s Writing Prompt