"It was the recipe for a life she had never asked for, a life of death, and loneliness and cold."
Her Future in Bloom
The sloshing of the gasoline can was the only companion Beatrice had walking through the long, lying halls of her childhood home. These walls had once been so safe, so kind and so warm; the gardens surrounding the home had once seemed deep and endless — a majestic world her father had grown just for them.
Just for her.
Reaching his office where this all started, his sanctum where he'd kept his secrets, she dumped the empty can on the ground and lifted the next one. Father knew everything that happened in this place; he was deeply connected to his garden, and to the swamps of Louisiana beyond, but he wasn't omnipotent.
She watched him on the security cameras for a while as he tended the beehives that surrounded their garden. How many had died because of him? Because of her. She wanted to cry about it, but couldn't. There was work to do. She took a second to cycle through the security cameras to make sure none of her father's associates were on the property at all.
She didn't want anyone getting hurt.
Beatrice spins and spins and spins, the world around her a carousel of color. She swings her arms wide as she spins, the hundreds of plants in the beds around her are like a beautiful gown. He grew them just for her, he said!
"Beatrice?" His voice is warm and curious as he rounds the corner from his work bench, her giggles having summoned him. "Mea flosculissima!"
"Papa!" She barely stops her spin and using its momentum sends herself running towards him. "Papa, come play!"
Her father laughs as she throws her arms around his waist. She's not the little girl she was before, and even though she misses the days he could lift her up, now he places a warm hand against her cheek and says, "And who will finish making your birthday gift, Bea?"
"I just want to spend time with you, papa! You don't have to make me anything," She laughs. "Let's go play tag with the Bugles!"
"Turning ten is a big occasion, Beatrice." Her father looks down at her warmly. "It'll be the start of your whole life, so I'm going to make it very special for you. Then we can play with the bugles as much as you want. Why don't you go count how many leaves the azaleas have?"
"They're endless, Papa," says Beatrice, her giggle carrying clearly through the warm spring air.
"Are you sure about that? Maybe go have a closer look."
He turns away, heading for his work bench again, but he's smiling so warmly over his shoulder at her that it doesn't matter what the gift is. He grew this kingdom just for her!
Maybe the plants knew what was coming; any of those capable of motion rattled and skittered their protest. The Bugles lazily snatched at the gas can, but she held it at a distance. She loved this garden, but it wasn't going to stop this from happening.
How many women had he killed for this place? How many had just been failed experiments leading to his pièce de résistance — Beatrice herself? How many of these women had been fertilizer and nothing else?
It didn't matter.
He'd grown it all for himself, so she would do what she wanted with it — just like he'd always done what he wanted with her. She just hadn't realized it. For years his evil had seeped its way into her life, into her breath and into her touch. Each loving gift he'd given weighed on her as she passed their sources in the garden.
The Lying Belladonna fluttered their flowers at her as she doused them, remembering her excitement at receiving the soaps he'd made for her tenth birthday. The strange symbols stamped onto the soap had been so interesting back then, and now she just knew why they were there. She'd always known he had books about occultism — thaumaturgy, as the Foundation liked to call it — but she'd never thought she was the reason he was reading any of it.
She headed towards to the Dead Men's Bugles. Playing tag with them had been a game she used to play and now the rage that burned in her when she looked at them needed release. The Bugles seemed to know what was happening, like they could smell the gasoline. Their vines were more like tentacles and the more they reached out for her, the more the prickly hairs that ran along their length poised to strike.
She stopped outside its reach and watched for a second as the plant recoiled at first, then reached repeatedly for the gas can.
"Alright." She said and launched the can into the air and a trail of gasoline traced through the air behind it, splashing down onto the violent flora below. The Bugles rattled erratically as the gas droplets hit them, but the can kept its arc and landed squarely in the middle of the Bugles' main mass. The vines retracted, trying desperately to toss the cannister out, but it just sent more gasoline all over itself.
She would make sure that there would be nothing left. He would never do this again. All the Foundation files she'd found with all the medicines her father was making were on his work bench. Or at least, the medicines he told them he was making. How much did they know?
She'd thumbed through them, but she'd only understood some of it. She was only halfway to seventeen and most of the thaumaturgy went above her, but it didn't matter. The two files that lay on top of all of them were all that mattered to her.
First, Rappaccini's Poison. It was the recipe for a life she had never asked for — a life of death, and loneliness and cold. She'd never be able to touch anyone or anything. It didn't matter why he'd done it. Not to her. It was done and it couldn't be undone.
Beneath that were more personal notes. She'd never seen them before and she'd never heard the names of the women listed in there before either. Evelyn Miller. Helen Williams. Giulia Conti. Antonia Marinelli. Eleanora Russo. Eudokia…
Her mind raced as she doused the generators in gasoline. How long had this been going on? How much had he lied about? How long had the Foundation let him get away with this? Did they even know?
Tears stung her eyes, but she forced herself to believe it was the gasoline fumes. He didn't get to ruin more of her. Blinking away tears, she fixed her eyes on those two books as she fished a lighter out of her pocket and approached his workbench.
Her past lay before her and it left her with nothing but the results of a life she'd never asked for.
Her thumb flicked across the flint of the lighter and a flame flashed into being a second later. Without needing to see where it landed, she threw it and braced herself as flames blossomed into the air and the Dead Men's Bugles began to screech.
"PEPPINO!"
Beatrice's cat stumbles away from her, yowling as it collapses against the wall. Blood and bile bubble from his mouth as she reaches towards him. Peppino swats at her hand, leaving a trail reddened with blood behind. He yowls louder, flicking the same paw uncontrollably like something was stuck to it.
"Peppino! Peppino, please!"
The fit had come on so quickly. A moment ago she was holding him, playing with him to pass the time for the afternoon, but now he jerks uncontrollably, weaker by the second. Her sobs come quicker as she cradles her hand, watching helplessly as Peppino's feet slip from beneath him.
She quickly reaches to catch him again. Beneath her fingers she sees his fur come loose and the skin beneath redden quickly where her hand grabs him. His yowl is weaker this time. He can't get away, but the skin she touches twitches uncontrollably and her sobs break into hysterics.
"Peppino!"
"Beatrice!" Her father's voice calls from down the hall. "Beatrice!"
She lifts Peppino into her arms, tears flooding her face as she turns to see her father enter the room, "Papa, help!"
The door swings open and he enters. In a moment, she sees her father's eyes drink the situation in, — her tears, Peppino's slowly weakening body twitching in her arms, the blood pouring from the cat's mouth — and he freezes.
"Papa!" She scrambles towards him. She knows he can save Peppino. "Help him! Papa, help him!"
"Stay away!" Rappaccini yells and quickly steps out the room, the fear in his eyes paralyzing her.
"Papa?" She asks as the door slams closed. A moment passes and she hears the door lock. Peppino stops moving. "PAPA!"
Beatrice coughed as the thickening smoke finally reached her. There, in the center of the garden where her father kept his research table, she sat and waited for it to end. What more was there for her? She didn't want to be another notebook for him. Not again. Not like before.
All the pages of his notes lay before her, the detritus of a life she never knew he had. Many were in English. Many in Italian. These she understood, but her eyes kept resting on the oldest notes she could see, titled Eudokia. She recognized the script as Latin and she recognized the hand it was written in — his.
Who any of these women were would only ever be a mystery, but she knew that they had died so she could… succeed.
Her file was the thickest and as her eyes had scanned them earlier. It detailed every soap he'd crafted, every tea he'd brewed and every damned gift he'd given her that had soaked this curse into her very being. Every lie he'd told had burned her eyes like the smoke that drew in across the sky like a pall. She was afraid of it, but what choice did she have? The flames would cook her body and make sure she never hurt anyone again. It would end his work.
"BEATRICE!" Her father's voice rang out across the flames that crackled louder by the second. "BEATRICE! WHERE ARE YOU?"
An explosion rocked the house and she gave a shriek, diving under the table. Ash and rubble clattered down around her, but the villa wouldn't be done that easily. Alarms rang out from across the grounds, but she couldn't say who they were alerting. She hadn't even known they were there.
The garden, on the other hand, was ablaze on all sides. The heat pressed in and as she sat under the table, the panic rose in her as the world drew in tight around her.
She was going to die.
"Beatrice!" Her father rounded a corner, vaulting over burning vines that shriveled under the flame. He scanned the area and she tried to hide, but the movement caught his attention and he stormed towards her. He knew his beekeeper uniform would keep him safe from her. It had been months since he'd touched her and now she knew why. She was everything he'd ever wanted her to be — his.
"No!" She shrieked and scrambled further into his little research station. "Stay away!"
"Beatrice, we have to leave!"
"No! I won't!" She stood, coughing, but wielding Eudokia's notes at him. "How long have you been doing this? How long?"
He stood still, his eyes resting on the notes for just a second before another explosion rocked the house. She looked away to shield her head from falling debris, but a second later she felt his arms wrap around her.
"NO!" She yelled, thrashing against his strength. She may as well have been a bouquet from how easily he lifted her into the air and over his shoulder. Who was this man? He hadn't picked her up in years, but now she was a paper doll in his arms.
She aimed a kick as she fell over him, but he took the blow to the shoulder stoically. She hit him again and again, but he carried her swiftly back into the burning garden. With each strike she panicked more, her hands colliding with nothing but the thick beekeeping uniform.
Tears ran freely now, her voice turning hoarse from the smoke and the sobbing. She knew what needed to happen.
With a great yell she reached behind her and grabbed the front of his beekeeping mask, shoving the netting towards his face. Now he cried out.
Beatrice felt his skin brush her fingertips and he recoiled and let go. She hit the ground with a hard thud, but she didn't stop moving for a second. She didn't have the time to risk him overpowering her.
She jumped up at him again, her hands reaching for his face as he tried to keep her off. His foot struck her stomach and she fell backwards. A nearby flower-bed erupted into flames, blasting flames across his uniform.
He stumbled and slipped. In the light of the flames in the clearer air closer to the ground, she saw the reddened skin under his beekeeping helm and she dived at him again. She yanked hard at it and she felt the material tear. A second later, her hands closed over his face.
"Beatri— No!" He yelled, but it didn't matter. The skin beneath her fingers blistered and she watched his fearful eyes run red. She sat on him, gripping his face and digging her nails into the side of his head.
Blood burbled from his mouth. The grip he had on her arms was already weakening, but she wasn't going to risk anything. Blood dribbled out of his ears, through her fingers and onto the floor as his body spasmed beneath her. He wasn't fighting to get her off him anymore; he was fighting to keep his grip on life.
But Giacomo Rappaccini was good at his job. His flesh blackened beneath Beatrice as red-green spittle dried at the side of his mouth.
His eyes locked with hers for a moment before glazing over. The flames licked the air closer to her and she allowed herself to fall off him as his final death rattle escaped between her fingers.
She lay next to his twitching body, slowly letting go of its functions, and she waited for the flames to take them both.
But the sound of an approaching helicopter caught her attention.
She sat up, peering through the smoke at the sky and watched as a helicopter passed over, showering Beatrice's garden with water. Her heart sank and she turned her attention toward a new sound rising across the crackling fire. The thundering footsteps forged a path through the smoke and she watched as armed men in gas masks appeared from the smoke, with machine guns raised at her.
"Gardener 1, reporting," the lead gunman said. "We've got her."
Peppino hops onto the coffee table sniffing at the gift wrapped in soft, lilac paper. The yarn binding it catches his attention for a bit before Beatrice lifts him into her arms.
"Nosey boy," she chides, then plants a kiss on his head.
"He seems more interested in it than you," Rappaccini says to her and she sighs. "Why don't you open it?"
"I will," she says. "I'm just nervous."
"For your sixteenth birthday gift? Why?"
"You always give me such amazing gifts. I just wish I could the same for you." She scratches Peppino behind the ear and he purrs deeply. "I want to be more involved, papa!"
Rappaccini smiles and takes her hand. "Mea flosculissima, you're my life's work. You couldn't be more involved if you tried. Now indulge an old man, if you please."
He slides the gift forward and Beatrice smiles sheepishly, but sets Peppino down and lifts the gift. She can feel the sloshing contents and her heart warms. She knows it's perfume. She'd been complaining that real women wore perfume and she didn't have any.
Wordlessly, gratefully, she unties the yarn and folds open the paper to reveal a small wooden box with a glass window revealing the bottle inside.
"It's beautiful!" She whispers and she beams at him then flips the box open to the release the teardrop crystal bottle from inside. It's heavy as she raises it and the deep purple liquid inside glows warmly at her from within. "Thank you, papa!"
He places his hand on her cheek like he did when she was young and for a moment, she loses herself in the gaze of the man who'd loved her here in their secluded garden for years.
"Anything for you, mea flosculissima. Anything."
| More in this Series | |
|---|---|
| Part One | Her Future in Bloom by Mr Panik |
| Part Two | SCP-7493 by Socksesforfoxes |
| Part Three | Secure Facility Dossier: Site-101 by TheChunk |
| Part Four | In Small Doses by TheChunk |
| Part Five | Fruit of the Poison Tree by Socksesforfoxes |