Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds ft. Kylie Minogue – Where the Wild Roses Grow

They called him a murderer. They called him a psycho. None of them understood what really happened, until something came along that understood only too well.

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“Fucking murderer!”

I started to turn just as a half-full can of energy drink clipped my shoulder and bounced into my face. Upended, liquid spilled down my chest and soaked into my t-shirt. I dropped one of my shopping bags and flapped without thinking, like I was trying to swat a fly. An embarrassing display made worse as I nearly tripped on the bag.

A horn blared, belonging to the truck where the can had come from. A tan four-door pickup. Young men hung out of every window, all about the same age as me in their early twenties. It sped off, horn blaring, wheels screaming. I tried to get the license plate but I was too shaken. The numbers and letters got scrambled in my head, trading places until the truck and its plate were too far away to make out. It didn’t matter, the cops wouldn’t care.

“Fuckers! Fucking assholes!”

My cheeks burned. I pulled my wet t-shirt away from my chest. Humiliation made my breath hitch. Murderer, they called me. Killer, psycho. It wasn’t fair. They had no proof of it, no evidence to be accusing me. They didn’t even know me.

I did it, yes, but they didn’t know that! It wasn’t fair.

Collecting my shopping off the ground, I found sour cream leaking from the dropped bag. I couldn’t go back to the store now though. My hands shook. Legs weak, I lurched the rest of the way home. A few cars drove past but none of them stopped. I didn’t see anybody in the windows of my neighbours’ houses or anything. All the same, I felt eyes burning into my back the whole time.

‘KILLA’ was scrawled in black paint across our garage door. I’d scrubbed and even repainted the door but the ghosts of similar accusations haunted the pale yellow surface. It must have been the work of those guys in the truck. They were getting more arrogant, painting their graffiti in the middle of the afternoon. It didn’t matter. All those eyes I could feel on me from the surrounding houses but I’ll bet not one of them would admit to seeing a single thing. You would think I would get used to it but the accusation stung. Even if it was correct. They didn’t know, they didn’t understand.

I checked the paint. It was wet and tacky, obviously fresh. Obviously the work of those guys in the truck. Black paint stained my fingertips. I tried to scrub it onto one of my shopping bags but it wouldn’t come off. I was marked. A marked man in more ways than one.

The graffiti bothered me but I wasn’t really shaken until I walked to the front door. There’d been accusations painted on the door as well in the past. One time a knife buried in the wooden surface, the mark was still there. Threatening letters left on the doorstep, smashed eggs, a bag of human shit. There wasn’t anything as disgusting this time but it was somehow much worse.

A rose lay across the welcome mat. A single flower, its petals blood red, its stem studded with thorns. The bottom of the stalk looked like it had been snapped rather than cut. A wild rose, lacking the polish of one of its contemporaries born and raised in a tended garden. Somehow all the more beautiful for its untamed imperfections and the cruelty of its wild thorns.

They didn’t know. They made all these accusations without any proof, just assigning blame to whoever they felt like. But then, how did they know about the roses? How could anyone know about the roses?

I picked up the rose carefully around the stem, avoiding the thorns. Somehow, it felt like a far worse accusation than the graffiti on the garage door. I stashed it inside one of the shopping bags and then looked around hoping to see who might have left it. It didn’t seem like the style of the guys in the truck. Of course, no one showed and nothing moved.

“Mum, someone painted graffiti on the garage door again!” I shouted as I entered the house. “Did you hear anything?”

I dropped the shopping in the kitchen then stripped off my t-shirt on the way to my bedroom. The energy drink soaked into the material smelled sugary sweet. I dropped it in my hamper then went to the bathroom. My cheeks felt hot. I used a wet hand towel to wipe the stickiness off my chest then tried to wash the paint off my hand. The black stain wouldn’t come off. Replacing the shirt, I went back to the kitchen.

“Mum, are you home?”

Mum appeared from the living room wearing her dressing gown, nursing a mug of tea. Her face looked pale, her hair grey and bedraggled. These days, she haunted this place like a shadow.

“Of course, where would I go?”

I started unpacking the shopping. “Did you hear me? I said they painted more crap on the garage door. More lies.”

“I heard you.”

“I told you, we need to get cameras to catch them in the act.”

“Yes, I know.”

I bit my tongue in frustration. I knew why she didn’t want to get any cameras. It was because she agreed with those who were persecuting me. She thought I was a killer too. What kind of mother thought that about her own son?

Elisa had been like a daughter to her, I know. The daughter of Mum’s best friend, the two of us had grown up together. I know she’d loved her too. But I was her real child, her flesh and blood. Couldn’t she see that if I’d had something to do with Elisa’s disappearance that I must have had my reasons? I must have been driven to it, somehow? She’d never asked, she didn’t want to know. I just saw her watching me sometimes like I was some kind of dangerous animal.

“They assaulted me too,” I said, trying to clean up the stuff that had gotten coated with sour cream. “Yeah, I saw them driving off. Or, I guess they saw me. They threw a can of something at me. It’s a good thing it was already open because it spilled everywhere, otherwise it could have knocked me out. Not that I guess you care.”

“I do care,” Mum said. “I’m just so tired of all of this. I don’t think it’s ever going to end.”

“It will end if they find Elisa,” I said. “Or they find out what happened to her.”

She looked at me sideways again. Like I couldn’t read that look in her eyes.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

Reaching back into the shopping bag, I felt a stabbing pain and recoiled. For a second, I thought it was broken glass but then I remembered the wild rose. How could I have forgotten it so quickly? Subconsciously, I must have pushed it out of my mind. Its sudden appearance made so little sense. Mum was still standing there, showing little reaction to the way I flinched. I didn’t want her to see the rose and ask questions so I wrapped the bag around it and balled it up, avoiding the wicked thorns. Dripping with sour cream, I stuffed the whole bag into the rubbish.

xXx

The next day, the police were at the front door although I never contacted them. I’d done my best to scrub the latest graffiti off the garage door but the faded ‘KILLA’ was perfectly readable. Two uniformed officers, a man and a woman who I’d met before but whose names I hadn’t bothered committing to memory. At first, I’d learned the cops’ names and faces and I’d tried to talk to them like human beings, even tried to charm them, but it hadn’t helped. If anything, they’d used my friendliness against me to try to convince me they were on my side.

“Mr Stonewell,” the male cop said. “May we come inside?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“We could speak here, or we could speak down at the station,” the woman said.

The cops came inside and made their way to the living room without being led. Neither mentioned the graffiti on the garage door. Mum stared sightlessly at the TV from her chair, a cold cup of tea in her hands. When she saw the two officers, she jumped up and offered them something to drink. Both politely declined but she shuffled off in the direction of the kitchen anyway.

“What is this about?” I sat on the couch across from them. “You know, I was attacked yesterday. I hadn’t reported it yet but I was.”

“We have a new witness,” the male cop said. “One that can place you with Elisa on the day of her disappearance.”

Silence yawned in the room as the two cops waited for me to fill it. My heart pitched and rolled. Outwardly, I was pretty sure my face didn’t betray anything though as I turned the words over. What he’d said, how he’d said it, all the implications, before forming a response.

“No, you don’t,” I said. “Because I wasn’t with Elisa on the day she disappeared, as I’ve told you.”

They tried to hide it but I could see both of the cops immediately deflate. They’d lied, they were always lying. If there was any such witness willing to go on the record, they would have emerged long before now.

“It was an anonymous tip,” one of the cops said.

I forced a laugh and threw up my hands. “Anonymous tips! Yeah, there’s been a lot of those, hasn’t there? How many of them have turned into anything?”

“We thought it would be best to come over, as a courtesy, and check on your statement. Make sure no details have been missed.” The female cop flipped open an old fashioned notepad and waited, pen poised.

“I’ve been over this so many times now.”

“Are you refusing to cooperate?”

“We’re trying to help you,” the male cop said. “Clearing up this new report.”

I knew exactly what they were doing. They took any excuse to make me repeat my movements for the day, looking for any inconsistency they could use as a wedge. Who knew if the anonymous tipsters were even real? Fortunately, I’d repeated the story so many times that I knew it by heart. I knew it better than I knew the truth.

“Elisa and I were friends, just friends. We’d always been friends since our mums knew each other when we were kids. One of the things we liked to do was go on walks together. That day, I messaged her to ask if she’d like to go for a walk in the woods behind my house, like we’d done hundreds of times before. She said yes, I waited for her to show up and she never did. I messaged her again, asking if she was still coming and when she didn’t reply I went for a walk by myself. I thought something must have come up, not that she was blowing me off or anything, but I wasn’t worried at the time. But then, as you know, she just disappeared.”

“You’d been friends for a long time but you hadn’t been talking as much lately according to her mother, why is that?”

I faked a casual shrug. “She had a lot going on, she had a boyfriend. I had stuff going on as well, it happens.”

“Why that day then?”

“No reason.”

“Your messages said you had something to show her though, what was that?”

My pulse thundered but I kept my face blank. “It was a nest, I’ve told you that before. I thought I saw a nest with some eggs in it. One of your guys told me that the birds weren’t laying eggs at that time though, so I guess I was wrong. I couldn’t find it again anyway.”

“Right, the nest,” the male cop said. “And that first message you sent, what time was that?”

“You already know that, you’ve seen them.”

“In your recollection, what time was that?”

They asked the same questions as always. What time did I send the message? What did I do while I waited? Napped, I told them. When did I send the follow-up message? That second message was what gave my story legitimacy. After everything happened, I’d kept a clear head and sent that second message as a way of giving myself an alibi. What time did I then leave? Where did I go, how long, when did I get home again? I gave the same vague answers I’d always given. The timeline didn’t make sense, according to them, but as long as I stuck to the story and insisted that it was all to the best of my recollection then they couldn’t use it as ammunition.

The truth was, of course Elisa had shown up that day after I invited her over. Of course we’d gone walking in the woods. I bitterly regretted it now. I wished it had never happened. I wished I could get rid of all those years of friendship, that we’d never met as kids, if it meant she’d have never shown up that day. But it had happened and it wasn’t my fault. There was no point in me being punished even further. So I’d hidden the body and I’d sent the message acting as if she had never shown up and I’d stayed in the bush for a while as if still out on a walk, eventually making sure I was seen returning alone and seemingly untroubled. But I was haunted ever since, by what had happened, and by the constant visits by police and wannabe vigilantes and my mother’s empty eyes.

“I guess that covers it,” the male cop said. “Unless there’s anything else you want to tell us?”

The two of them waited expectantly. For what, I wondered, a full confession? I just shook my head and led them back to the front door.

“Looks like you’re got a secret admirer,” the female cop said, as they stepped back out of the house.

“What?”

The cop nodded at the welcome mat that she had very deliberately stepped over. With blood red petals and a dark green stem, another wild rose had been set in front of the door in the exact same spot as yesterday. Both cops stepped over it and regarded it with curiosity.

“It’s, uh, part of this harassment!” I said. “You obviously saw the graffiti on our garage door. I told you yesterday I was attacked, this is part of it.”

“With a rose?”

“I don’t get it either. I don’t know, Elisa loved roses so maybe that’s supposed to be it.”

My heart raced. I could feel myself starting to babble and reined my voice in. The cops could sense that the rose had put me off balance. Like sharks following the scent of blood in the water.

“Would you like to make a report?” The woman reached for her notepad again.

“No, no, that’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine but it doesn’t matter, does it? Nothing will come out of it and I just want some peace and quiet.”

After the cops left, I picked up the rose like it might be radioactive. If it had just been the graffiti and the guys who threw the can at me, I might have made a report just to have it on the record, this campaign of harassment against me, but I didn’t want the cops asking questions about the rose. Avoiding the thorns, I brought it inside then shoved it deep into the garbage like I had done with the first one.

How could they know? Elisa loved roses, that much was true. But the connection to her death that only she and I would know was obvious. Could it really be a coincidence? A strange taunt? Someone leaving flowers for my funeral, maybe. I don’t know. I tried to put it out of my mind, the way I’d done with the first rose, but it wouldn’t leave.

xXx

I found the next rose in my car when I went to drive to work the next day. There it was on the passenger seat of my car. My locked car. Nothing else seemed to have been touched.

A fourth rose was on the doorstep again when I got home. There was no fresh graffiti, no one had egged the house or covered it in toilet paper, no broken windows. Just the rose, waiting, accusing, its stem broken and ragged and still bleeding sap. When I picked it up, I turned and swept the street. No one watched me, at least no one I could see.

I’d left the rose I’d found that morning in my car so I had two to get rid of when I went inside. Just stuffing them down inside the kitchen bin no longer felt right. I passed straight through the house to the back door and exited again into the backyard instead. The lawn unrolled right to the bush behind our house. A thick strand of trees that towered and whispered. It retreated into shadows with no sight of other houses through it although there were other houses, of course, to either side. The path that Elisa and I had taken was vaguely printed on the undergrowth, leading deeper into the trees. Taking the roses, I tore at their petals and leaves.

“She loves me,” I said, taking and twisting the heads off the roses. “She loves me not.”

Shredding them as best I could, I scattered the roses in the undergrowth. When I tried to break the stems, however, I cut my hands on the thorns. Crying out, I stuffed the meat of my hand into my mouth and tasted blood. I tossed the naked stems away in disgust. I hoped by doing so, I’d said goodbye to them entirely.

That night, I showered as normal. As I climbed out of the shower and started to towel myself dry, however, a streak of colour caught my eye. Yet another wild rose lay on the bathroom sink. Impossible, it was impossible that someone had snuck in here while I was showering and left it. I had to make sure it was actually real by reaching down and touching it. Stroking the silky petals, testing the point of one wicked thorn with my finger. It was real, alright. Actually, there was one explanation I realised.

Still wet, I wrapped the towel around my waist and stormed out of the bathroom holding the rose. Mum was in the living room, staring vacantly at the TV. A plate of leftovers sat uneaten in her lap.

“What is this?” I shoved the rose at her.

“What?” Coming out of her fugue, she looked at me with genuine confusion. “You’re dripping on the carpet.”

“Don’t play with me, mum, what is this?”

She squinted. “It’s a rose, why?”

“You’re telling me you didn’t just leave this in the bathroom while I was showering?”

“I don’t understand, why would I do that?”

“If you didn’t do it that means there was someone in the house, you understand me? Someone somehow knew I’d be taking a shower and they just walked in without you seeing, and dropped this on the sink for me.”

Mum lowered her eyes, shaking her head. “No, no, I don’t think so.”

“Then how did it get there? Look, mum, I know you loved Elisa too.”

“No! Patrick, I don’t want to talk about this!”

“I just mean, if you’re trying to send me a message or something-,”

“I don’t want to talk about this!” Her voice grew shrill.

“Fine! Is there-, do you think-, just forget about it!”

I tore up that rose as well and stuck it in the bin. That night, I wedged a chair under the handle of my bedroom door. Either it was Mum or someone capable of getting through locks like they weren’t even there but I figured they’d have a harder time getting past that.

It took me a while to get to sleep. Staring at the ceiling, listening for a scrape at the door as either my lying mother or someone else tried to get inside. Eventually, when that never happened, I fell asleep and dreamed. Fitful dreams that made no sense. I was in a dark place and being held on all sides, unable to move. I felt things crawling on my body. All the while, I couldn’t see or hear but I could smell the perfume of wild roses. The patch of wild roses I wished I’d never found, never visited, and where everything went wrong.

Waking up in the morning, dawning light slipping through my window, I rolled over and my hand found something sharp on the empty side of my bed. For some reason, I instinctively tightened my grip around it instead of flinching away. Thorns punctured my palm and fingers in half a dozen places. Pain rocked me fully awake. I looked to find myself holding yet another wild rose that had been dropped on the mattress beside me. With a yell, I tossed it aside. Blood dripped from my palm and onto the sheets.

“What the fuck? What the fuck!”

I checked my door. My chair barricade was still in place. My window was locked. I couldn’t see how Mum or anyone else could have gotten through the door without waking me and then put the chair back as they left. I also couldn’t imagine my mother climbing up to the second story window to leave a rose on my mattress and while maybe it was theoretically possible that someone else could have none of this was adding up in any way that made sense.

The illogical was starting to make more sense than anything else. The unnatural, the supernatural. Elisa and I were the only ones who knew about the wild roses. I knew where I had to go. I was less sure what I was going to do when I got there.

I cleaned my hand and covered the deeper punctures with bandaids. After getting dressed, I messaged work that I was sick and wouldn’t be coming in that day. They were looking for excuses to fire me but I couldn’t find it in myself to care much about that right then.

I left my phone behind, worried about it being tracked. When I left the house via the back door, I tried to make sure I wasn’t being watched. That paranoia stayed with me as I walked into the trees and took the path leading deeper into the bush.

I walked for close to an hour, further and further from civilisation. There was a creek that wended through the bush and, for a while, the path ran alongside it. Eventually, I came to a section of brush that screened the creek from view. Based on the sound of running water, there was nothing to be seen on the other side of the brush but more of the creek’s rocky bank. I ducked down though and crabwalked through a hidden gap in the bushes. One I’d discovered months ago.

Below, down a shallow bank, was a cove tucked into a curve in the creek. It had an open span but was surrounded by coils of rose bushes. Growing wild in the rich, silty soil here in the middle of nowhere where a few random seeds must have been carried by the creek. Thorns bristled from winding stalks and vines that colonised every centimetre of available space. Sprouting from them in haphazard protrusions were explosions of violently red flowers, oversized, their petals frayed from exposure. Dozens of roses, hundreds, growing in fat, red blooms.

After I discovered this place, there was only one person I wanted to share it with. Elisa, she’d seemed a little nervous hiking so deep into the bush with me, and crawling through the natural screen of brush that shielded the roses from view. But when she’d seen the secret rose garden all laid out in front of her, she couldn’t help but be blown away by its beauty. She’d gone from bush to bush, gently stroking the budding roses and inhaling their scent. It was all so perfect, and then it all went wrong.

“I’ve got to show Tad this place, next time I’ll bring him,” she said.

“Your boyfriend? Why are you always thinking about him?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I thought this could just be our special place. Just you and me. You know how I feel about you. How I’ve felt about you for a long time. Look, I brought you here, I showed you this, isn’t it perfect?”

“Patrick, no, we talked about this.”

I tried to explain but she wouldn’t listen. We were meant to be together. She kept talking about her stupid boyfriend and eventually she just started laughing. I think, on reflection, it might have been a nervous laugh but I couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t my fault. She couldn’t see it, she wouldn’t listen, and she pushed me too far. I was out of my mind as I bent over and picked up the large, smooth stone from the bank of the creek, although my thoughts felt strangely clear. Before she could react, I whipped around and hit her in the temple with it. I didn’t mean it, but it was done. There was no going back after that. I didn’t mean for it to happen.

I’d had the presence of mind to send that message asking if she was still coming over, as if I hadn’t seen her. Then I’d buried her, here, among the roses. I mean, I couldn’t really take her anywhere else but I’d still cared enough to give her a beautiful resting place, right? After her disappearance, the police combed through the bush with sniffer dogs of course but they’d never found this place. Maybe it was the natural screen or the running water, or the perfume of the roses themselves, they’d never found her.

Only Elisa and I had known about the roses. I had to be sure that she was actually still here. I hadn’t brought any tools with me to dig her up, too afraid to be seen carrying them by someone, but I’d managed to bury her the first time with only my bare hands after all. Kneeling in front of one of the rose bushes, I sank my hands into the soft and forgiving dirt.

“Elisa, my love, my beautiful wild rose.”

I hadn’t been digging for long before I uncovered the shape of a body. Her chest, sunken and rotting, wrapped in the filthy remains of the dress she’d been wearing for our walk. The roots of the rose bush had found her. They wound in and out of her spoiled flesh like worms. The smell almost made me retch but I managed a smile of relief.

“Elisa, what was I thinking? Of course you’re still here.”

Suddenly, a skeletal hand erupted from the dirt and seized me by the throat! Yellowing bone showed in patches where the flesh had peeled back on her fingers. Roots and thorned vines wound in and around her withered forearm. In spite of all that, her grip had a new and terrible strength. I clawed at her hand but I couldn’t get her to release me.

“Elisa, please, no,” I gasped with the last of my air.

Elisa sat up, pushing dirt ahead of her. Her face was badly rotted. Teeth were bared in a lipless mouth, with thorns wound between them. Her eyeballs were completely gone, withered or eaten away. In their place, a pair of wild roses bloomed inside her skull.

I tried to fight but a second bony claw gripped me by the shoulder and drew me in. Down, down into the wet dirt. Elisa and I, we would be together forever just like I always wanted. In our special place, where the wild roses grow, just not exactly as I’d hoped.

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Sean: Absolutely adore the music of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds! The album this one came from, Murder Ballads, might just be my favourite album, every song is a ripper. You know, I say music has always been a part of my writing but I don’t usually expand on that a lot. One of my many, many attempts at writing a book series in the past was kind of this supernatural mafia story and it was heavy into music references. It was kind of like, if you imagine music as a folkloric thing then you had all these folklore characters appearing in the story. Characters that both consciously and unconsciously mimicked these folklore depictions from music. Both Stagger Lee and Crow Jane planned to make appearances. I mean, neither of those characters originated from Nick Cave but they were absolutely inspired by Murder Ballads. That idea will never see the light of day unfortunately but if you’d like an idea of what I’m talking about, Stepping Razor probably comes closest to the vibe.

By the way, there is already a book of short stories based on Nick Cave songs that I came across at the library, Into Your Arms: Nick Cave’s Songs Reimagined. I saw that only earlier this year and thought, son of a bitch, they stole my idea. Anyway, it was from various writers and there were a few good ones in that but it didn’t grab me as much as I hoped if I’m honest. But that’s okay, it was pretty literary stuff so I don’t think they’d care much for my take on Where The Wild Roses Grow here either. Actually, I think I mentioned in another note recently I’d been watching a lot of Tales from the Crypt and I’ll be honest I think the ending here has come right out of that.

Finally updated the playlist with a few more tracks if you’d like to know what’s coming up, and do me a favour and check me out on Facebook or Twitter, Bluesky, Reddit, or Instagram!

Next Track: Blondie – Heart of Glass