%title Wednesday, December 23rd --- Midnight
:writing:fiction:horror:novel:chapter:inner-demons:

Kayla's mind was blossoming.

She felt sick to her stomach, having mostly pushed her food around the plate, taking a few bites that she knew she needed.  Hunger would eventually win out and she would down a whole meal and then some in a day or two, but for now, the macaroni and cheese, when it wasn't obscured by lilies, looked like a mound of undifferentiated plastic, and the broccoli was too close to blossoming itself to seem appetizing to her.

She took up the time alternating between drawing and pacing back and forth in the living room.  She would spend enough time on a drawing to feel it either finished or abandoned, tendrils of morning glories creeping across a page, or slender, crowded stems of snapdragons.  When a page was set aside, she would walk from the kitchen to the living room, turn on the television, watch for a few minutes until the vines had thoroughly covered the screen, turn the TV off again, and walk back to the kitchen where she would draw again until the flowers had been beaten back through acknowledgement.

Kicking her feet at the table, head bowed over the was distracted by a light flickering to life at the periphery of her vision.  Kayla realized she had lost track of time -- it felt late, and she felt more than a little sleepy.  Looking up from her paper, he peered around the warm glow of the kitchen, eyes lingering tiredly on the digital clock above the stove.  Just a bit after midnight, she realized.

She tore her gaze away from the clock and continued to peer around her for the source of the flickering before her eyes landed on the large picture frame on the wall of the living room opposite the television.  The picture was obscured by the reflections in the glass that covered it.  Flickering orange, too much contrast.

And no flowers.

It was the last part that got her to lever herself out of her seat.  She slipped carefully from her chair and walked delicately through coarse rows of decorative flowers, until she had made her way back to the living room, looking up at the picture.  The orange glow was gone, and there were creepers exploring the edge of the picture frame.  Instead, the glass reflected her face, sad flowers of eyes, and a gentle, flickering orange glow lighting up her left cheek.

Turning to look out the picture windows across the street, her eyes going wide.  Fire!

Her father had been adamant about raising her to fear fire and he had done a good job of thoroughly instilling that fear.  She had had no desire to play with the few flames she had the chance to see throughout her life.

She ran to the window, heedless of the plants beneath her feet -- though, as usual, there was no sensation of walking through them -- to gape at the fire outside.

It was obvious that there wasn't a fire in the house across the street itself.  The flames flickered and rose in a smooth, unbroken ring around the property, crossing the driveway about two thirds of the way down.  And in front of it stood a man.

Her father.

She saw him take a step back, get a running start toward the fire, and then, as his courage failed him, skid to a stop inches shy of the flames and fall back onto his rear, hurriedly scuttling back from the fire.

"Daddy!"

She ran for the front door, stepping through rows of flowers, vines reaching in toward her and crowding out her vision.  The door was a solid mass of ivy.

Kayla scrabbled frantically at the door, struggling through the mass of green-turned-black in the darkness of the living room.  As always she felt only the faintest brush of leaves, but it still took her what felt like achingly long seconds to find the handle and deadbolt.  She hurriedly unlocked the door and yanked it open.

She gasped.  The whole street was lit by the yellow-orange glow of light from the flames, and yet, for once, wherever that light shone, there were no flowers, no plants except the cold, greenish-brown of the grass in her yard and the stubbly scrub of the house across the street.

The change was drastic enough to stop her in her tracks.  The flowers had been with her for months, something that she had never talked about and had only just started getting used to, and now, for the first time, she could see the ground beneath her feet, could look at the houses on the street and finally understand that clinging vines were not a feature of every building around her, blurring corners.

The flicker of the flames once more caught her eye as her father gathered up his courage once more and this time leapt successfully through the flames.

"Daddy!" she cried once more and raced forward, forgetting about her lack of flowers and racing forward to the end of the sidewalk, her hands balled into fists as she plowed straight through that second barrier, the invisible wall that responded only to anger.

Her body flushed with heat and her her arms pumped along her sides, tears flowing hotly down her face as she raced through gate after gate until she came up on the curb, catching the toe of her shoe against the edge of concrete and falling into a rolling jumble of limbs, clothes, and skinned elbows blood flowing down along her forearms.

Shaking, she struggled back to her feet, crying openly as she approached the wall of flame before her, feeling more cautious than before with the smarting pain streaking through her arms.

The heat grew oppressive as she approached the wall of orange, red, and yellow before her, the flames licking quietly at the air and leaving delicate trails of sparks that spiraled up into the night.

She reached out a hand, but the heat seemed to grow exponentially more intense near the flame, so she drew back a pace.

"D-daddy?" she called out, whimpering slightly at the pulsing pain in her elbows and her desperation.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the ring of flame went out, leaving behind no marks on the ground, no sign that it had been there except for the soft *whoomp* of a fire going out.  The heat lingered for a moment longer before the chill of the night air stole in to replace it.

Kayla blinked quickly, struggling with the sudden darkness that had greeted her.  The flowers remained gone, but perhaps that was only due to the way the night pressed in around her once more with the fire gone.

She heard a shout, a stream of curses ahead of her.  
