I posted this before last year, but I improved it a lot.
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"The Rose Stem"
Children’s laughter rang like crystal bells at a family’s dinner table. Heat and sun saturated the air, and a dazzling mist rose to the sky from garden hoses kids used to spray each other. Water would stab their eyes, but they’d scream with pleasure and resume tagging their friends with cheap water guns in the apartment parking lot.
However, it seems that their piercing laughter couldn’t reach the woman at apartment 186; either that or she pretended not to hear. She sat on a foam couch with her legs crossed in the dark living room, with its only window heavily veiled by a half-inch thick quilt. She stared at the blank TV screen at the corner of the room and lightly tapped her foot next to her suede purse. The only time she’d stop frowning was when she’d take quarter-second intervals of aggressive puffs on her cigarette butt. She’d occasionally lean over and take a sip of expired beer that rested on the coffee table.
She sat to recharge her batteries, zoning everything out. She didn’t even react to the loud yelling from outside that floated through the front door, nor the man who had just entered from it.
The man stood in front of the woman and waited for her as she took a long inhale of smoke and sucked the fire at the end of her cigarette until it flared red like an armed nuke.
“Want to tell me what happened here?” he asked, shifting most of his weight onto his right leg.
She didn’t answer the man and his question. A long gray draft floated out of her nose and curled through the slits at the corners of her mouth like sleeping Vesuvius, ready to destroy Pompeii.
“Do I really need to tell you, Darling?” she finally responded, crossing her arms with her cigarette stub pointing out.
“Did you fight with her again?”
She tapped her cigarette and ash flaked off like dandruff from a dry scalp. “She’s in her room now.”
Her boyfriend sighed and crossed his arms. “Didn’t you promise that you’d try warming up to her?”
“She wouldn’t let me, Darling. You know how she is. She’s selfish and so damn conceited. She is the most stuck-up bitch I’ve ever met, and there is no way I’m talking to her.”
“It doesn’t seem that you’re putting a lot of effort into this, Hera. You’re not putting any effort at all.”
“I’m putting up with shit that isn’t mine. What do you expect?”
“Miriam’s not my daughter either. Do you hear me complaining?”
She crushed her cigarette butt on a sandy ashtray and picked up the beer can. She sipped at what was left, never meeting the man’s gray eyes, just watching the smoke rise and hang in the air. “This isn’t working, Darling.”
“‘Cause you’re not trying to make this work.”
“So this is my fault?”
“Yes it is, Hera. You’re not trying.”
“Miriam’s a conceited shrew.”
“She’s a depressed kid! You know what she went through.”
“That’s no excuse for her attitude.”
“What’re you talking about? You didn’t show any kind of concern when she renounced and cussed at God last December.”
“Damn it, why can’t you see things the way that they are? She doesn’t do anything. No work, no chores, no discipline. All she does is cry like a little baby and walk around like some ghost.”
The man scoffed at his girlfriend. “You can’t love anything outside of your immediately family, can you? Do you not at least sympathize for the poor girl?”
“She doesn’t deserve any pity. She’s a bitch, just like her mother. She knows this. She's still crying about it, I bet.”
The man shook his head with great disbelief. “Hera, I can’t believe you just said that.”
She uncrossed her legs to pick her purse up from the ground. She smoothed out its creases and recrossed her legs.
He softly sighed and ran both of his hands through his rough hair. “You know, if you can’t love Miriam, I can’t love you. She’s my niece, I’m her guardian now, and you have to accept that.”
She glared at him with a viper’s eyes. “You can’t have both of us, you know.”
He closed his eyes and scratched the bristles of his sideburns. He crossed his arms. “Get out.”
The woman stood up. With the manner of a Victorian lady, she stoutly picked her bag up and walked swiftly, directly to the door, and was gone.
The man sat down on a dining chair and massaged his temples. The apartment was silent. Children weren’t laughing anymore. He stood up and took off the LAPD jacket he was wearing since investigating a homicide crime scene in Beverley Hills. He plodded towards the door to his niece’s room.
He knocked. “Miriam, are you there?”
Silence.
He knocked again. “May I come in?”
Nothing.
The man exhaled, hoping his sigh would take some unwanted stress away with it, and let himself into Miriam’s dark bedroom. The room was painted a deep, ocean blue two weeks ago by Miriam and he, while they laughed and joked, splashing blobs of paint onto each other until Hera stomped in to ruin the moment. That was the same day he gave her a rose bouquet. She squeaked with glee, promising him that she’d cherish the flowers forever. Everyday she’d come home from her new school to water her roses and to prune any abnormal buds that sprouted on her babes while she was away. But this tender caring didn’t last. The terminal roses immediately lost their straight stature from neglect. Their petals shriveled, becoming brittle and delicate, falling one by one like silent tears.
The bedroom’s only window was placed directly across from the door on the opposite wall, with an ancient willow tree right outside of it, which blocked the sun with its mossy tresses. But today, some beams of sunlight managed to penetrate the willow’s heavy green curtain. The rays looked like thin ladders connecting the earth to the heavens, with glowing rungs that angels could ascend and descend on between the stars and this lonely world. Those ladders illuminated the dust falling in the air and the room’s occupant, who sat up against the headboard of her bed.
Miriam’s uncle hung his belt with all his gear on a chair and sat on the bed next to her. They didn’t say anything to each other for a long, awkward time.
After an eternity, her uncle cleared his throat. “I finally got that promotion I was hoping for. Looks like I’m officially gonna be lieutenant in a few weeks.” He chuckled. “How was your day?”
The girl ignored him.
He rubbed her shoulder, but she didn’t respond to the weight of his hand.
“Come on, don’t be upset, kiddo. Don’t listen to anything that Hera says. You know and I know that she’s the worthless one. This is all temporary. You’ll see, Miriam. You’re gonna laugh your head off.”
She still didn't reply. Anxiety flooded the man from being ignored by the girl he has long cared for and loved.
The man noticed that the roses he gave to Miriam were all dead, except for one that was practically just a stem, with its last petal on the foot of the vase on the nightstand. The rose must have recently lost its final petal, since it was still red and soft. He also saw that she was holding her smiling mother’s photo with white-knuckled hands.
“You miss your mom, huh? I miss her too, kiddo. I know how you feel. When your mother got into that car accident, I also lost my big sister. We used to do everything together when we were kids. I remember this one time when I nine and she was eleven. I was riding my bike barefooted, but then I fell and ripped off my big toenail.”
He smiled and looked up at the ceiling.
“I was bleeding all over the place and crying and stuff, but she was suddenly there with her red wagon to pull me and my sorry toe back home.”
He looked back at the girl, who was staring off at something a million miles away, glaring right past the drywall as if she had x-ray vision.
“She took care of me, you see, and now, by taking care of you, I hope that I’m somehow paying her back for all the good things she’s done for me. I hope you understand.”
There was silence. The man sighed and watched the swaying willow tree outside.
“You know, I never, ever really believed in God. Never went to church, never read the Bible. But now, I think that your mother is truly in a better place right now. I bet she’s in heaven, looking down on you and me, knowing that we’re doing good."
He looked back at his niece. "You know that your mother wants you to do your best, especially in school. It’s tough. I was a kid too. I know what it’s like. Stupid tests and stuff; but I regret that I dropped out."
He exhaled, resting his hands on his head, lacing his fingers.
"She’d like it if you can get to college. I know you just broke up with your boyfriend, who offered you a mental escape and emotional relief from Hera and the big move to Seattle, but you shouldn’t be thinking about that kind of stuff now. Just get through high school, go to college, get a good job that pays good money, meet a good man who’ll take care of you, respect you, and love you. Buy a big house, have some kids, and live happily ever after.”
His right hand lazily floated from the top of his head where it was resting and squeezed the girl's shoulder again. “That’s what I want you to have. A happy life. I know these last few months’ve been extremely hard on you, but let’s just get through the day. Tomorrow will be better, Miriam, I promise.”
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. He got up and retired back into his own bedroom.
The girl continued staring into space for five hours. It was midnight when she rose from her bed and grabbed the pistol from her uncle’s holster, which was attached to the belt that he left on her chair. The willow tree’s shadow danced on the walls as Miriam crept out of her room. With her mother’s smiling photograph in her left hand and the cold gun in her right, she stealthily progressed to the master bedroom at the end of the dark hall.
She silently opened the door and tiptoed up to her uncle’s sleeping body on the bed. She watched his chest rise and fall with his breath and listened to his soft snores. Miriam cocked the cold iron in her right hand. She raised it and pulled the trigger, firing a lead bullet through her forehead.
