FLOWERS

 

He was up early. Thunderstorms woke him throughout the night, and once up he’d never been good at getting a good night’s sleep afterward.

The sun was out, peeking through the trees beyond his yard. While sitting on the toilet, he looked out the window and saw them.

Little patches of bluish-white flowers. Tiny little things. Very pretty - but he’d never seen them before.

There were four or five little clumps of them in his yard. He could see them in his neighbor’s yard too.

The rain must’ve given them the push they needed. He didn’t give it any more thought.

He ate lunch on the front porch. He noticed the little flowers in his front yard too, as well as the yards of all of his neighbors. The little things popped up faster than dandelions.

At three o’clock, he went out to grab the mail. The little flowers were popping up around the post of his mailbox. He noticed they were coming up through the cracks in the pavement on the street and sidewalk.

Crazy old Mrs. Hughes was trying to take pictures of them with her cell phone.

His neighbor, Elena, was picking them and stuffing them into a jar. She was hoping they’d have a nice scent - a new potpourri.

He thought they were both nuts.

Just some weedy little flowers. They didn’t look particularly hearty, and he wondered if they’d die off as quickly as dandelions. They were all over the yard, and he decided he’d give them a day or two before mowing them down.

He was looking at his social media over dinner. Everyone and their neighbor were posting pictures of the cute little flowers. A few had posted news articles about them. The reports stated they seemed to be a new species of wildflower, but harmless. One or two of his more conspiracy-minded friends shared posts about dogs, cats, and wild animals avoiding the flowers.

Best he could figure, they just smelled different than what they were probably used to. Made sense to him.

By the next morning, the flowers had completely taken over everyone’s yards. Everything just looked like fields of bluish-white petals.

He noticed them popping up out of his neighbor’s gutter. He took a look - yep, they were in his too.

He grabbed some weedkiller out of his shed and attached the little jar to his garden hose. He knew it might kill his grass in the process, but these little things were out of hand. He soaked his yard, and his gutters, until the jar of weedkiller was empty.

Fingers crossed.

He wasn’t the only one to try. The local news reported that shops couldn’t keep weedkiller in stock. It was as bad as the run on toilet paper during the pandemic.

None of it seemed to work.

---

While in the basement doing laundry, he noticed a crack in the wall. The last thing he needed (or could afford) was a foundation problem. His house was over a hundred years old. Built back when houses were built to last. But this crack, small as it was, was going to have to be sorted - and quick.

He found the number of a contractor and made the call.

He wasn’t the only one.

Lots of people were reporting similar issues. Cracks in foundations, retaining walls, even some ground-floor walls.

What the hell was going on?

---

He was sitting on his porch having a smoke when his neighbor Elena called to him.

“You gotta see this!” she shouted.

She came over holding a jar. In it were the little flowers she’d picked the day before. And the roots were spreading out, almost as if the little flowers were trying to bust out of the glass itself.

“Ain’t that wild?” She was excited, no doubt there. He was less-than-thrilled.

He began to wonder if the crack in his basement had been caused by these things. Maybe the weedkiller had forced them deeper. That’s what plants did, right? Fight for water.

It was the best guess he had.

---

By dinner time, the flowers were all over the outside of the house - mostly on the ground-floor walls, but they were spreading upward.

Mrs. Hughes’ little garden shed was little more than a mound of bluish-white flowers now.

The local news reported that experts were investigating a possible cause. A cross-pollination between wildflowers and kudzu. They noted that this new species of plant spread as quickly as kudzu but with alarmingly deep root systems.

Then the news broke to a story about a water main break. They showed footage of a lightly flooded street. He noticed the little bluish-white petals floating in the water.

His dryer buzzed. He went down into the basement to take his clothes out. He looked over at the crack in the wall.

A few little bluish-white buds were popping out.

He stepped closer.

They weren’t growing on the wall.

They were pushing through it.

For a moment, he just stood there, laundry basket hanging in one hand, watching them. The paint around the crack shifted slightly, a few, faint chips falling to the floor.

One of the buds twitched.

Not much. Just enough.

He set the basket down.

Reached out.

Stopped.

Something about it didn’t feel right. Not fear. Not exactly. Just a quiet sense that he didn’t need to touch it to understand it.

He backed away instead.

---

By morning, the crack had widened.

Not by much. Maybe an eighth of an inch.

But there were more of them now.

Not just buds.

Stems.

Thin, pale, pushing through the wall like veins finding their way to the surface.

He went upstairs.

Stopped halfway.

The house was quiet.

Too quiet.

He looked back down the basement steps.

Something pale had begun to spread across the floor.

---

The little suburban village of Glen Park was gone by May. Most of the inhabitants got out safely, but the homes, shops, and streets were all destroyed. The culprit: an invasive flower species.

It appeared overnight and within days was spreading outward and upward.

The National Guard was called in after the governor declared an emergency. The tiny flowers had an impossibly large root system that burst through walls, foundations, and retaining structures.

They spent nearly a week burning everything within a twelve-square-mile radius. Controlled burns extended beyond that perimeter to prevent further spread.

---

Dennis Bagley was forever entombed in his basement, near the ironing board. 

copyright notice © 2026 Michael C. Metzger

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