Rooted beneath the Bruise

The shooting pain hit in my head hit me like a clap of thunder splitting the sky.  

I was on the grass.  

No clue how I got here, and I don’t think I want to know why. 

My arms didn’t feel like mine, I lifted them up, dropped them back down but something was deeply wrong about wearing a coat of goosebumps in the height of summer. 

The view around me was never ending, a field with blooming peonies, the same ones I have in my garden. A sea of crimson and deep, ink-stained violet colours emerging from the ground beneath me. 

My jaw began to shiver, the bone still vibrating from the phantom memory of a hard fall. 

But then it suddenly stopped. And instead, a wave – or perhaps a rushing of boiling suffocating heat strangled my neck and flooded into my face.  

The heat consumes me, but as I look down a more terrifying sight unfolds. A dark stain – almost shadow like appears and starts spreading up my right leg and arm. A mark that looks exactly like the ink-stained peonies around me.  

What the hell is going on? 

The once bright blue sky surrounding me turns a dark grey colour. Rain starts flooding down like a waterfall cascading over cliffs. The wind picks up, howling at a vicious fifty kilometres an hour. 

I just sit there, paralysed. I can’t move my body anymore.  

My heartbeat starts to pick up – the sound of it overtaking the gushing wind. A ringing in my ear builds, drowning me in the sheer terror of this nightmare. 

The dark stain on my skin turns warm, pulsing as if literal flowers are rooting into my veins. 

Then I see it: a small violet petal pushing its way through my pores, blooming right out of my arm. This must be a hallucination, right? 

But worst of all – the peonies. They start to.... move. Side-to-side, growing taller and taller until I can’t even see the sky anymore – just blooming flowers. 

My eyes begin to go blurry – until I can’t see anymore. 

I don’t know how much time passed. I had blacked out – or so I thought. But as my vision cleared, the nightmare dissolved, leaving me on a damp grass of my actual garden. 

I check my arms and legs. Hidden beneath my wrist is a faded bruise staring at me.