Glowing horizontal stripes painted the far wall, cast upon by the streetlamp peaking through my blinds. It wasn’t morning. Maybe it was. Somewhere in the early digits. Too early for the grey of five am. I was sitting up, clutching the soft fuzzy blanket around me, my shield of pink hearts. My ridden up shirt clung to me, twisted sideways from the tossing and turning. It felt like hell  itself was rising into my room, even with the fan on my shelf lazily rotating this way and that.

It wasn’t quiet, the hum of the fan and the gruff labored breathing of the giant creature I called a dog came from the side of my bed. My own heart thudded, the blood rushing, making my eardrums pound.

Pounding. Like the drums. Were they drums? Were they booming steps? Was someone chasing me in my dream? I couldn’t remember. Everything was static. Crossing images and dark shadows.

Shadows. I shuddered. Like the ones that lurk on the walls. Just out of eyesight. Instinctively, my gaze shifts to my desk, cluttered with crumpled words and a tipped over can of pencils I should have cleaned up. What caught my eye was the vase. Light pink with ceramic buds adorning the sides. The opposite of the contents entirely. Bunched together, stood dark black blobs of roses. Grouped like freaks of nature. The very sight of the accursed floral arrangement brought my lower lip between my teeth.

Quietly, I shrugged the blanket off my lower half and swung my legs over the side of my bed, my feet touching down on the carpet. Carefully, I shuffled around the snoring beast, to my desk. My fingertips grazing against the silk petals and down to a stem. I plucked a single rose out of the vase, bringing it to eye level.

His face. The moment he presented the flower to me. Pride. A grin spread ear to ear. His blonde curls tousled across his forehead, he always looked like he just woke up. Tired purple hues under his eyes, bed rolled clothes, he often rubbed at his eyes like he was ready to go back to bed any second. It’s what made it easy to be around him.

He proclaimed that he had painted the rose black just for me. Because, I didn’t like ordinary things. Because, I was different.

I remembered how I reacted. How my eyes widened, and a heat crept from my neck onto my cheeks. I couldn’t even make out words. I was never good with these situations. We had just met that week. Everything had escalate in such a short time.

I had become comfortable. Let his cold fingers grasp onto my heart, yanking out feelings I’ve always locked away from the world. How did he do this? How did he sneak into my world? He was just the random neighbor boy who couldn’t tell the difference between our property lines.

He was different than the boys at school. He didn’t even go to school, or maybe he was homeschooled. That was how little I knew about him, yet he was all I thought about. Not even in the romantic sense at times, just everything about him aroused my curious nature.

He told me nothing. Nothing about his days or his life or even about the heavy silver ring he constantly twirled around his thumb. The dark metal twisted around his finger, fitting perfectly so it wouldn’t fall off.
I often caught myself looking down at it.

We sat on my bed, side by side, feet knocking against one another as my TV in the corner droned on about the pyramids, the screen flicking to sandy deserts. He looked so intently at the screen, I found myself staring at his interested expression. I leaned sideways, my hand reaching across him to pick up his right hand that lay flat on his thigh.

His skin was rough, calloused from guitar? Working? The questions raced through my mind. The icy temperature of his hands brought me to rub it between my warm ones. My thumb grazed across the ring, I had never realized the coils were actually the body of a snake, it’s head poking out of one end.

I looked up as I felt his hand leave my grasp, a shadow crossing his features.

“I just want to look at it”, I practically whined.

He smiled that devious grin and held his arm up, the ring high in the air out of my reach. He thought that would deter me. I sprung from my seat on the bed, bending his arm down and almost laying on him entirely, until the ring is down to my eye level. Through my excitement I didn’t realize the predicament I had gotten into. A boy’s body was laying beneath mine, his face inches away. All thoughts of the ring vanished and everything in that moment became still. I could feel no heat from him, only my own.

His grin faded, replacing itself with a thin line. A sudden urge tugged at my stomach, an uplifting feeling like I was in an elevator going down. I wanted to lean down. I wanted to lean down and kiss him. To crash our lips together and breathe in his scent and feel something for once in my awful lonely life.

I closed my eyes, the darkness washing over me.

“I can’t,” He spoke, his voice coming from the other side of the room.

I opened my eyes, no boy under me. No boy in the room. Only the TV.

“Wh-” I looked around confused, swiping the hair out of my face so I could see properly.

“I’m sorry,” the air seemed to whisper in my ear. Goosebumps cross up and down my arms and neck. He disappeared, left me.

I flinched, removing my thumb from the tip of thorn still attached to the rose I was grasping. A warm trickle of dark liquid dropped from the wound onto my pajama pants. I stuck my thumb into my mouth, sucking on the bitter taste.

I see him sometimes. Out of the corner of my eye. Watching me. His blonde curls still as messy as ever. I’ll get these feelings and then these flowers in my room. Black roses. Different, like me.

Slowly, I plopped the rose back into the vase and shuffled back to the comfort of my bed. I crawled in, throwing the blanket over me. It’s not long before I get the feeling again. The elevator feeling and the tingle of goosebumps as I feel the slight pressure of an arm around my waist. I smiled, he was back.