Norman lived in a lovely little cottage by the seashore. It was perfect, with a backyard and a white picket fence and all. He had a garden in his backyard ... or perhaps the garden had him. Rows and rows of buttercups decorated the length of it and he worked hard to keep them healthy, tending to them day and night. Buttercups were hard to come by.
There was also a circlet of tiny daisies at the very core of this garden, a drop of white that he barely noticed in the sea of gold and green. Passerby's would stop and admire the buttercups that stood proud and tall. They would then notice the center; the daisies that gave the garden it's warm and quaint touch. They would come to realize that without the white, the glare of gold would be too garish for their eyes.
Norman, however, had long forgotten that he had planted them. Rarely remembered to tend to them. Barely noticed them. They had flourished solely from the nutrition they consumed from the ground beneath and the sunshine they bathed in at daylight.
One fine day Norman came across an exotic blue flower in a desolate moor. It was wild, untamed and magnificent to behold and he felt the desire to posses it, to make it the crowning glory of his beautiful golden garden. So he brought it home, pulled out the daisies like he would pull out weeds, and threw them over the fence without hesitation or a second thought. He then planted the blue flower at the very center where the daisies used to be and coveted it, like a miser would his gold.
It became his one obsession, what his life revolved around, the only thing he lived for.
So much so that he completely failed to comprehend that from the moment the exotic blue flower dug it's roots into the ground, the buttercups around it started to wither and die, row by row, circle by circle and disappear one by one, while the blue flower continued to bloom and grow more glorious to behold. Almost as if it fed off the life force of the buttercups, until there were no more. And one day, when he woke up at dawn and looked out of his window, the garden was a barren mound of earth devoid of life. The solitary blue flower stood tall and defiant but there were no remnants of the splendor his garden had once possessed.
He then noticed the sea of white on the other side of his fence and looked over to see that the daisies he had thrown away had taken root and grown in abundance. They danced in the breeze, wild and carefree and he longed to reach over and touch them, to once again possess them, for he saw the beauty of their simplicity now.
Years went by and Norman tried in vain to return his garden to it's former splendor but everything he planted would wither as soon as their roots touched the soil, almost as if the blue flower had poisoned the very essence of the earth itself. Yet he could not bring himself to uproot it. It was all he had now.
He loathed himself for his impetuousness, for his negligence and cruelty. Above all he loathed himself for his cowardice, for he knew he could not go on without the flower. His cottage no longer held any warmth for him and he derived no contentment from the sunsets. His life had proved to be a monument to the oldest of cliches.
It was a cold dawn when Norman felt his chest constrict and he staggered outside to slump down by his beloved blue flower. He lay on the dry earth and reached over to caress it one last time when the flower changed it's hue to a vindictive maroon. Sensing the life draining from Norman's body, it mutated into a mass of writhing flesh and razor sharp teeth and clenched it's jaw-like body around his neck. Norman felt the teeth sink and puncture his veins as he convulsed and the breath left his body.
The mutation devoured every last bone and every little bit of flesh as his blood lay splattered all over the soil, until Norman ceased to exist altogether. Sated now, it mutated back to it's former semblance, more glorious and vibrant than ever.
And waited patiently for the inevitable.
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