Midnight Bloom

Twin fluorescent lights buzzed incessantly overhead filling the steady silence of the rectangular room. Slate grey paint covered the walls, forbidding any sort of creative storytelling or imagination. A reinforced steel door gleamed in the far left corner of the room, providing privacy except for a narrow slit at the top serving as a peep hole. A steel table sat in the middle of the room flanked by one old office chair with its back to the door. Anyone could walk up to it from the door with a reasonable element of surprise. Two others were placed on the opposite side of the table in the obvious command position, able to survey the room and its occupants. On the wall behind them was a two-way mirror covering half the wall.

“The walls have ears.”

“What was that?” the detective asked, his brown eyes piercing and studying her face keenly.

She simply shook her head.

“Alright.” he cleared his throat and resumed reviewing the contents of the manila folder in his calloused hands.

He was a brawny man probably in his late thirties. The thinning curly hair on his head was greying at the temples. Flyaways stuck out like he had been pulling at them while concentrating. He wore a simple grey Henley shirt that hugged his muscular frame and dark blue jeans, a standard issue firearm strapped to a holster on the right side from his brown leather belt.The detective kept massaging his slightly overgrown beard at intervals and making a ‘hmm’ noises.

There was no clock in the room, like the gambling floor of casinos. Only this time the stakes were much higher than a few millions.

The deep unsettling silence was finally broken when the steel door clunked open and was quickly shut.

“Apologies for my tardiness,” a sweet voice sounded from the door.

A woman in a deep maroon skirt suit came up to the empty chair next to the detective and sat down. Her long auburn hair bounced at her shoulders like a shiny waterfall. The faint woodsy scent of her perfume hung lightly in the air. She could be in her early thirties, but her smile lines and sunny disposition did not give anything away for sure.

“Detective James,” she acknowledged her colleague with a pleasant smile and a nod which he returned with a brief grunt. She opened a worn yellow legal pad and scribbled a few notes from memory before looking up again.

“Hello. My name is Emily, I’m a social worker. I’m here to make sure you’re ok during this process. Do you have any questions?”

“No.” The word was soft, almost indiscernible.

Detective James inhaled and straightened up to look at the young woman sitting across from them.The room was fairly warm but she seemed to be sweating. Her long dark hair formed a halo around her head in a thick tightly coiled mass. She wore a pale yellow sundress with fading white daisy flower patterns and a fuzzy oversize green cardigan despite her discomfort with the temperature. Every few minutes, she kept pulling it over her body like armour. She wore soft slippers on her scratched up feet borrowed from the station’s lost-and-found bin.

“Can I get you anything, some water perhaps?” Emily offered.

“No thanks,” her voice sounded squeaky.

A round locket hung at her neck from a cheap faded gold coated chain. She would fidget with it at intervals, betraying her nerves.

“So Miss-” the detective began “what’s your first and last name for the record?”

She swallowed faintly and fidgeted with the locket again, “I-I’m Daisy. Daisy Green.”

“Mhm. Daisy, can you tell us what happened?”

She winced and looked from the detective to Emily,”Er-Well-”

“It’s ok Daisy. You’re safe here.” Emily assured, glancing worriedly at the woman’s forehead. The bruise at her left temple was covered with dressing now but from what the medic said, she probably took a hard hit. An evaluation in the hospital would be the wise thing but Daisy had ardently refused along with any further physical examination.

“They’ll find me there. They’re everywhere. Don’t take me to the hospital please” she had begged.

James cleared his throat. “You were found in quite a state. What happened?”

Daisy took a deep breath as if to psyche herself and looked up to the detective’s incredulous expression. “They have been following me for weeks. That day they tried to grab me.”

“Who tried to grab you?” Emily asked.

“The people in the black suits and black cars.”

“Why would they want to grab you?”

Daisy turned to look at Detective James, tears in her brown eyes threatening to spill over.”I’m their reborn queen. They wanted to take me to fulfill my destiny.”

James could not disguise his scoff, “ You’re their queen? You don’t look like it.”

Emily next to him cleared her throat uncomfortably and put down the pen with which she was jotting down copious notes.

“How did you get the head wound?” she asked gently, making eye contact with the forlorn girl. She looked to be in her early twenties, but she hadn’t been forthcoming with the exact information to the medic earlier.

“I was walking down the street. I thought I had avoided them by cutting into alleys. They pulled up in front of me and the door flew open. A huge man jumped out and grabbed me then slammed me on a building wall.”

James folded his arms in front of his chest, “Go on.”

“I tried screaming but there was no one around. I was dizzy and I couldn’t see their faces. They grabbed me and threw me into the car.”

“What did the car look like?”

“Black SUV”

“Make and model?”

Daisy hesitated. Her tongue felt like lead, time seemed to stand still. “I don’t know.”

“What did the man look like?”

She shook her head as if to shake the memories loose. “He was wearing a black suit and tie. His face was covered in a mask.”

“What kind of mask?”

“The ones that cover the face except the eyes.”

“A balaclava?” Emily asked.

“Yes, like robbers.”

James sighed with mounting impatience, “Had you been drinking, Daisy?”

Emily turned to look at him aghast.

“No.”

“You’ve given us quite the story here. Who told you they wanted to make you their queen?”

“I’m their reborn queen.” she snapped then hesitated. “I-I mean they said that to me when they were grabbing me.”

“Uh -huh. What organisation or group did they say they’re from?”

Daisy stammered and flinched, pulling the locket. “I-I don’t know.” Tears spilled down her cheeks freely, “I was so scared. I thought I was going to die.”

Her shoulders shook as she broke down in gulping sobs pulling the cardigan around her.

“Detective, can we talk outside for a minute?” Emily asked, already standing up.

“What are you doing?” she asked more sharply than she intended it to sound, “she’s clearly distraught and confused.”

“I don’t believe her story. She clearly heard about the Black Cloud in the news and came here with a hair-brained scheme for attention.”

“We can’t know that for sure. It could be something else.”

“Don’t be so emotional. There’s a nutty group of terrorists creating chaos in the city and this groupie is wasting our time. This takes actual logical police work, not hand-holding.”

“There’s more to her story,” Emily insisted. “We have to be patient. I have a-”

“Don’t say you have a hunch. I’ve heard enough. I’m releasing her with a warning not to waste police resources. She‘s clearly confused. If her boyfriend did that to her face she probably deserved it, crazy bitch.”

He took advantage of Emily’s stunned silence to barge back into the interrogation room.

Daisy whipped around in the chair, coming out of a stupor.

“Get out.”

Daisy hesitated, her doe eyes looking from the annoyed detective to the social worker’s defeated expression.

“I will brook no interference in police business by terrorist groupies. Get out. If you come back I’ll cuff you and throw you in a cell.”

She pulled the bulky cardigan around her again and walked past them. The long corridor towards the main police bull pen felt endless.

“Please sir, you don’t understand. They’ll find me. They know I’m here.”

“Keep walking,” James snapped. “You’re lucky we’re busy with this Black Cloud thing. Go home.”

“Detective-” Emily began.

“We’ve heard enough. She’s leaving. Grab my folder for me, would you?” James dismissed her with a flick of his head.

“Fine.” She stepped back to the interrogation room. That careless jackass always made her life more difficult than it needed to be. She had turned him down for a date several times and he never let it slide.

On the table next to the manilla folder, sat Daisy’s locket. It was a flat round unremarkable piece. I should take it back to her before she leaves. It probably means a lot to her.

Curiosity took over and she opened the locket. Inside sat a single tiny picture of a black cloud.

“Perhaps James was right,” Emily muttered, pushing dow the nagging feeling in the back of her head. She grabbed the folder and headed toward the main entrance of the station.

The receptionist, Lucy, perked up on seeing her. “Hi Em, are you looking for someone?”

“Yeah, James just released a young woman from interrogation room one?”

“That asshole. He was snapping at me like I’m some servant.”

“Hand him this folder please.” she asked, whipping her head around distracted. “Did you see the girl?”

“Was she wearing a dress with daisies on it and a green cardigan? Check the parking lot.”

“Thank you,” said Emily as she left, already scanning the front parking lot for her.

Just as she was about to give up, she spotted Daisy standing in the middle of the cars, staring blankly across the street.

“There you are. You forgot your lo-” The words died in Emily’s throat. Across the street was parked a Black SUV with tinted windows.

Daisy stood shaking like a leaf, “ They found me.”

“What does that mean? Who are they to you? Daisy, look at me.” She grabbed Daisy’s hand forcing her to make eye contact. “Tell me. I believe you”

Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “You’re a nice person. I’m sorry.” The green cardigan fell open revealing a flak jacket strapped over her daisy sundress. Red and black wires poked out of the numerous pockets. Daisy was sweating profusely.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

Emily stepped back looking around hoping to get the attention of one of the police officers. “Done what?”

“You shouldn’t have opened it.”

A hush seemed to fall around them, for the first time a loud ticking noise could be heard. Emily’s heart leaped to her throat, the stakes finally becoming clear. “Who are you?”

“Daisy.”

The ticking stopped, followed by a loud blast that reverberated across the police complex. A massive column of fire consumed the parking lot and every person in the vicinity. The pressure threw Emily across the lot into the front glass wall of the station. She landed hard like a thrown marionette on the ground. The shattered glass flew into unsuspecting members of the public waiting at the reception. Some ducked for cover, screaming and wailing in confusion. Detective James lay on the reception floor unconscious, a large shard of glass stuck at an obscene angle in his neck, the manila folder in his right hand spilled its contents stained with his gushing blood.

Across the street, the SUV had long screeched off leaving only a black tyre mark in the asphalt. “Deploy the next queen.” a shadowy figure sitting in the back directed into the burner phone. “This one was a dud.”

“Apologies for the error. We were sure the instructions would be heeded.”

“No excuses. Deploy the Sunflower”

“Understood.”

💐💐💐Whats your favourite flower? I might feature them in an upcoming installment. 💐💐💐