Freak Eden (standard:fantasy, 1313 words)
Author: Violet	Added: Jun 14 2002	Views/Reads: 3307/2131	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
a girl, a faerie, a secret. joy.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


thought. 

Today Eden is wearing his French shirt appliquéd  with a daisy, and more
daisy 

chains in his hair.  He is writing.  “What's that?” 

“Nothing.”  He covers the lined paper with his small jacket decorated by
Indian glass 

cherries. 

When we get home, my mother is rustling through cardboard boxes that
smell like 

perfume and old people.  She plucks a rose out of the box and Eden comes
and kneels 

beside her.  “It's pretty.”  Two petals fly from the flower on to the
floor.  “It's so old.” 

The box is loaded with photos and papers.  In the middle there is a bag
of my mother's 

strawberry blonde locks.  On the bag is written: ‘Clare's first trim'. A
piece of paper is in 

her hand.  Eden is reading the delicate hand writing on the yellowed
page.  “Clare in 

April.  Five elements.  Earth, for the fertile ground that grows the
tulips up the path. 

Water, for the April rain that keeps them alive, for the puddles on the
porch.  Fire, for the 

strawberry sun in a spring sky.  Wind, for the protection, driving
demons back into the 

hole from which they came.  And the fifth is Clare, blending all
together in dance.” 

When he finishes the poem, she is crying.  My father wrote that.  My
father, who I barely 

remember. 

She puts a delicate hand around Eden's back, shaking with tears.  Snap. 
The 

sound of brittle card board cracking echoes through the room as Eden
cries out in pain. 

“I have to leave, Delilah,” He says.  Then, eyes tearing, he walks out
of the house through 

the heavy old French doors. 

“I'm sorry.”  My mother says.  The ink drips down the page, wet with
salty tears. 

“I didn't mean to.” 

“That's okay,” I reply.  “He knows.” 

I once had a dream that Eden was glowing.  Glowing with the florescence
of a 

thousand fireflies, winged like tinkerbell.  A faerie that made things
better with flowers 

and light.  But that night I had another dream.  Eden holding the rose. 
No longer 

shimmering on the strawberry sun.  Dying, with no one there clapping
‘believe' to make 

him come back to life. 

About a week later at 1 AM, someone knocked on my window.  All I had to
see 

was the fuchsia hair to know it was him.  Eden waiting in my mother's
1945 cherry red 

ford convertible.  Motioning ‘come with me'.  So I came. 

We went to the desert.  It was hot as hell there, even at night.  The
wind blew 

through our hair, blazing the dusk.  The night of a thousand fireflies.
The he stopped the 

car and, with out saying anything, took off his shirt. 

Wings.  Magnificent butterfly wings full scale.  One falling off like a
broken 

cobweb inside my mother's cardboard box.  And suddenly I understood.  He
was the 

faerie, I was the evil queen.  But he made me better with flowers, light
and cupcakes.  “I 

have to leave, Delilah.  I'm sorry.”  He walks off into the distance,
wings trailing behind 

like nets full of dead butterflies. 

“Wait!  Eden, stop!  Don't...”  Suddenly his small faerie feet lift off
the ground 

into the desert air. Like butterflies awoken after a long winter,  the
wings spread, 

engulfing the sun-rise, beating to the windmills, mesmerizing the hills
full of hot sand 

and Joshua trees.  “Don't leave me.”  I mutter as the great expanse of
wings that once 

protected me was gone in a split second. 

I stumble back to the car, get in and drive.  I blast my music loud,
drowning out 

the windmills, drowning the silence that has engulfed me so long. 
Flipping open the 

glove compartment in the car, I find my mom's last pack of Marlboro
lights.  For 

emergencies, she had said.   I don't care.  I have to fill the car with
smoke.  Drown out 

that ever-present scent of rose and lavender.  It suddenly bugs me. I
grab the lighter, 

pluck a cigarette out of the box and stick it in my mouth.  I find one
of those pesky daisy 

chains on the wheel and light it with the small flame.  It licks up the
chain, burning the 

last souvenir of him to ashes, gone with the wind, just like he was. 

When I get home, mom is still sleeping.  To her, Eden had never come by,
never 

drove me out to the desert, never left me with pain at a glimpse of
magick.  Why did he 

leave?  I want to be her so much right now. Ignorant. Never get
attached, Delilah, for 

only bad can come of it, I counsel my self as I turn on the music top
volume and hop 

around wildly on the bed, trying to make myself forget, but the scent
still lingers. 

Lavender and rose blending together.  Eden. 

When I wake up, the music is still blaring.  An envelope smelling of new
paper 

sits at the foot of the bed, the sun glazing through the clear glass
windows and reflecting 

onto the white.  ‘Delilah' written on the cover in Eden's small,
delicate hand writing.  I 

open it.  The envelope is over-flowing with daisy chains, but amidst
them is a dirty piece 

of lined paper.  I open to paper to find one of the glass treasures that
used to adorn his 

little woolen jacket.  On the paper, a poem: 

The girl who was a garden 

Tinkerbell. 

She was a dark little tinkerbell with pink hair and a blazing car. 

A mother like cracking rose petals, 

A father gone with the wind like that last daisy chain. 

Though I was the faerie, she was the queen.  Better now. 

She was a garden. 

The garden of Delilah. 


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