After calling the police, Sam called Cecile, and as the phone rang, he could already hear the sirens in the distance.

"Cecile, Rose is dead! She's dead! You killed her! You killed my Rose just like you apathetically killed my rose bushes!" Sam cried into the phone; his life was in shambles.

The door opened to reveal Sam and Cecile walking through with a bouquet of lilies.

"Cecile, why the lilies?" Cecile looked bashfully to Sam before turning back.

"A lily, or a rose never pretends, and it's beauty remains constant."

"But why bring flowers?" Sam, who carried Timmy in, finally put him down after his constant squeamish attempts of escape.

"Auntie Rose, auntie Rose!"

"Tommy, be careful now." Cecile worriedly murmured out. Timmy was excited to see Rose after what felt like years to him.

"Sam, can we talk? Uh, Rose, we'll only be a minute." Once the door closed, Rose calmed Timmy down to a quiet lull.

"Alright Mr. Shelby."

"My name's Tommy." He pouted back annoyed.

"Okay, Mr. Tommy, what is ever so piquing your interest today?"

"Mommy says you're dying." Rose stalled taking in the statement.

"We all have to die at some point, Tommy, some sooner than others." Timmy shrank in terror and hopelessness. "But don't worry." Rose continued, "You have a long life ahead of you."

"Why do you have to go?" Timmy interrupted. Rose began running her fingers through his hair.

"Death has always been ahead of us."

"Who's death?" Rose sighed, looked off into the distance, and recalled her distant memory.

"Death has no name, nor face, nor body. Death is not a person. Death is not alive. We do not know death until we are staring it right in the face; that sudden epiphany of existentialism, of reality that we all die at some point. We all have to say goodbye, but most don't know when or how. I knew the moment the phone rang, that I was on the road to my end. It was raining—it was always raining—but it was raining quite heavily when I picked up the phone that night, and that... voice... monotonously spatted out that someone dear to me had died. My head came down into the table bruising my forehead. I don't know why, but I stuffed my bag in the trunk and started to drive."

"Where?"

"Anywhere. I drove and I drove, all the while the rain fogged my memory, and heavily puttered on the car. The radio began fuzzing out, losing signal until it was lost all together. The road soon disappeared, changing to a dirt road. It was a short distance right after the radio lost signal that the car sputtered to a stop. From there I lost total memory of the following actions... I remember the lights, the glamour of the mansions, but... I walked up the path.

There seemed to be a party; an uncountable amount of roaring Studebakers and Chryslers parked outside. Inside was carpeted with vibrant bloody reds, so much so they seemed to be bleeding thick mucus of bubbling bloody tissue. 'Welcome miss, won't you be staying for the party...' the beautiful tall man gazed down, closing the door behind. The world began to sway as I became dizzy. Round and round the vision went until all went completely black..."

Rose was lost in her story of what she remembered before, so lost that she forgot about Timmy's existence.

"I love your stories Auntie Rose; I'm going to miss them."

"I'm going to miss you too, Tommy." Timmy lit up almost instantaneously, remembering his gift. He turned, jumping off the bed reaching for his drawing of a get well card, but when he turned back, Rose was already asleep, drifting into the unknown far far away from the reality she once lived before; a life completely forgotten.

It was the life of prosperity, but she had all forgotten it when she received that phone call oh so many moons ago. Rose expected that when she'd die, she'd see her life flash before her, but that was false, all she saw was the back of Timmy, the voice of his angelic laughter, and then nothing.

Sam and Cecile stood outside the hospital room in the dimly lit hallway. It was chilling to stand in a hospital where no one was to be in sight, and the faded fluorescent lights buzzing in the quiet expansive, yet strangely claustrophobic hall. One would look down the hallway in either direction and only parts of the boney white tiles in certain areas, and off in the distance...total pitch darkness—a void that led to only a place the omniscient emperor would know. Yet, in that darkness, two dark red eyes whispered with a menacing glint.

"What are we to do, Sam? Tommy is really worried about her, and I broke his poor heart to tell him she could die." Cecile buried her wet face from her miserable tears to hide herself from the

Sam's mind was racing at the thought of it all ending just like that. He worked so hard to craft such a beautiful and desirable life, and now the natural course of life was going to rip away his happiness. No. No, he decided. He decided that he was in control of his destiny, and he believed he had an interior locus of mind; the idea that we all can control fate itself. Barging into the room, Sam found a dead Rose, and his son weeping before the crumpled and mushed roses.

No! No, it can't be over. It was too soon. Sam grieved for a moment, thinking it was all his fault the roses died because of his lack of sanity; because of his lack of actually providing for them. He realized he harmed his loved one's more than he helped and decided to start over.

"Sam? Where're you—" Sam left before his precious Cecile could finish her sentence. Days passed like seconds, and in just that amount of time, Sam found himself running back to his empty home. Up the stairs, and into the dusty light, Sam reached out for heaven, but, just then, he looked over... and saw her. He saw her standing there with young fresh skin, and wild green eyes back from the dead. NO! She is supposed to be dead. Sam immediately turned around—he all of a sudden couldn't live with himself now that she was back. He needed to start anew and make things right.

Sam remembered the open window by the master bed—an opening to the sky and wondrous bay. The sky was a beautiful light blue as Sam stood at the cliffs edge, and, imagining that he could fly, stepped out onto thin air.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His eyes fixated on the blurry speaking screen as it came into focus. Then, he was able to discriminate the sounds: his mother in the kitchen, and the television set softly, yet with a crisp and crumbly voice, acting out a film. His attention was called for elsewhere, and the voices subsided as he turned to his father stiffly sitting in the Bladen recliner.

The outside was a foggy white three-dimensional canvas that curved around the waxy figure through the windows. It was early evening when the sun was slowly setting, and the boy's mother was in the kitchen with her sister, but the boy was suddenly interested in his father who sat in the recliner without any kind of movement whatsoever. He was frozen still, eerily unmoving.

His head was covered by a hat that bent forward with the bill shadowing his face. The boy climbed into his father's lap, taking off the hat to find icy cold blue eyes lighter than the sky during midday, and harsher than the mother's strict scolding hand staring off into the distant past and orgasmic future.

"Dad?"

The boy spoke immediately out of fear and worry; the kind of simplistic fear and worry only a young innocent mind would know. The boy touched his father's hand that rested palm down on the arm of the chair. It was cold. He picked up the stiff hand and moved it with little resistance like a wax doll.

Then, he moved the hand with ease up to his father's unmoving face so that the tip of the index finger barely grazed the soft skin of the cheek. The boy at this point didn't exhibit any fear, but a curiosity that sparked his mind to start prodding the skin and moving the limbs. He laughed at the silliness of his dad.

But after a brief period of foolery, the boy began to worry about his father's unresponsive behavior. He called for his mother, and as she came into the once warm and comforting living space, but now cold and desolate, she wore a happy effusive smile that was soon to be terror. And once that terror set in, she was livid with alarm and panic.

"Go get your aunt!" And so the little boy ran into the kitchen to find Rosalind in the kitchen frozen with absolute terror that the boy reflected in his weary voice.

"Auntie Rose! Mommie said to—" Rosalind picked him up and began comforting the poor boy... It's going to be alright, Sam. Your father is going to be alright. The ambulance came with the noise of an army, and they took the frozen doll to the hospital where they shocked him back into existence...

—-

He came bursting through the door at the sound of her death. He was almost too late, but held fast her steady aging hand. The other people hadn't noticed him, or maybe they couldn't see him, but that didn't matter to him. The roses died from his bouquet, and now he was about to lose the last meaningful flower.

"Who are you?" The old lady blabbered.

"You don't remember? It's me, Rose, it's Sam."

"Sam?" She inquired, but did not recall.

Sam watched as his last rose withered away, and finally turned into dust. He had to accept, but he didn't want to. He had to. He just had to.

After jasmine's family came in, Sam ran. He ran and ran as fast as he could. Then, days flew past as he ran to the grave yard. There, he searched for her grave, but he didn't find it. All he found was Jasmine Dogwood.

—-

He opened his eyes to find his family right by his bedside. There was Rose, the botanist and mafia gang leader. There was Cecile, the celestial being of the night; the star. And last but not least, little Timmy, the angel, climbing up the side of the bed into his father's hands. Sam couldn't remember what happened, but when he asked, Cecile responded with as much of a commitment as an easily broken promise.

"Cecile, darling, I want to go home."

Rose offered him a bouquet of deep red velvet roses from his garden with the absolute promise they'd last forever. She described them as the "best gift any person could receive." And they were the best gift, the gift of permanence.

"Cecile, I want to go home."

Cecile didn't respond, but rather stood there smiling. The doctor came in and as Cecile was having an intense conversation with him, Rose and Timmy played with Sam in his bed, and Sam was happy.

There was no difference between the happiness the real Rose and the real Cecile lived between what Sam lived, for that's how he constantly perceived them as and himself: happy.