Sunflowers

Brianna rides Penelope across the road. The horse trots comfortably, no longer anxious about the cars; this part of the road is usually quite, which is why Brianna likes riding here.

Dressed in her bright, yellow hi-vis jacket and black leggings, she looks down instinctively at the floor for her little dog. He isn't there. She shakes her head. She keeps forgetting she left him at home today. He’s become such an overweight little thing he doesn’t enjoy their morning rides as much as he used to.

So, today is the first day Brianna rides alone, although she isn’t really alone when she’s with Penelope. The few cars that drive past slow down and she gives them a little thank-you wave.

The morning air is still chilly, with an iciness attached to the low-hanging mist. Around these country roads, there’s always a smell of burning manure. Typical British weather, laced with oaky scents and slight chill. It has been an unusually cold autumn.

Penelope begins to snort and grunt. She halts on the road and clops her hooves on the floor, a sign she is distressed. Brianna pats Penelope’s back and tries to soothe her. When Penelope continues snorting and whining, Brianna jumps off the saddle. Holding the reins in her riding gloves, she tries guiding Penelope across the road, intending to cut through the narrow woodland separating the road from the field. She’s always at ease along the perimeter of a field.

Penelope clops along, still releasing the occasional shrieky whine and snort. Stopping on the edge of the field, Brianna takes a long look at the distance covered in mist. The trees are dark contorted shapes.

And a couple miles in front of these dark shapes are figures of weeping woman.

Brianna’s breath catches in her throat. There are several woman, dark figures of them dressed in robes, their frames so skinny they couldn’t have been any wider than Brianna’s arm, standing in the field surrounded by the dead plants. Their heads are bowed as though they’re crying.

Penelope goes on clomping and trotting on the spot, her shrieks growing longer and deeper. Brianna looks again at the weeping women and find that they aren’t weeping at all, and neither are they women. They’re just rows of sunflowers. Blackened and shrivelled and dead from a hot summer cut short by the chilly autumn. Brianna’s chest loosens. It had given her a real fright.

The horse goes on grunting. Brianna tears herself from the chilling figures and takes Penelope back to the stable. There she makes sure she is fed and watered and her bed is ready.

She returns to her house, a short five minute drive away, and spends the night in bed with her husband Charlie.

There’s a clicking noise by her ear. In her dream-filled, deluded mind, Brianna imagines the clicking noise coming from an elderly woman. She has a chalk-white face and is sticking her tongue into her gums and clapping them together.

Brianne feels an icy breeze on her face, as though someone had blown on her skin. She wakes up, realising it’s still dark out and that it is almost 2 o’ clock in the morning. She rolls onto her side and sweeps her arm over her fiancé’s body.

Except, he isn’t there.

She searches the room with the light from her mobile. The door is still closed. Strange. The shadows move around the room, alive and swooping across the furniture like bats. Brianna gets up and opens the door slightly.

"Charlie?" she calls.

She keeps the door ajar and pokes her tiny face through the black gap. Again she calls for him. She strains so hard to hear him, she can make out the humming noise from the fridge in the kitchen downstairs. She hears a distant noise. It’s Charlie's low voice.

The panic she detects in his voice forces panic into her body, and she hurries down the stairs and out the house where her breath escapes her mouth on little puffs of cloud. She can’t hear her husband anymore but the naked cry of a woman weeping into the darkness.

Flustered with fear, Brianna spins around to find the front of her house bordered by the weeping black-robed sunflower-women. They howl at her. Sobbing as they bow their heads in deep despair.

Brianna shrieks and flies off her pillow in a hot sweat. She’s back in her bedroom and the sunlight bleeds into the room. It’s morning. Charlie isn’t here. He's probably gone to work. No, it's wait a minute, she thinks drearily. It's Saturday. Where has he gone?

She gets up, trembling and feverish, and heads downstairs to the kitchen.

While she prepares breakfast, the front door unlocks and she waits for Charlie to walk in. Her husband has a newspaper in his hand and his other hand is hidden behind his back. His well-slept face and dishevelled hair brings Brianna back to her youth when she first met him. She smiles weakly at him and opens her mouth, about to tell him about her nightmare. But he cuts her off. He thrusts a bunch of flowers at her and kisses her cheek.

“This is for you, my beautiful,” he says. "There's an old lady giving them away outside the corner shop."

She stares at his hand. He's holding a bouquet of sunflowers.

“Well aren’t you going to take them?” her husband asks.

"Uh..."

"Don't you like them?"

"Charlie..." she says uneasily.

"Go on. Take them. They're for you. The old lady said to give them to my wife."

Brianne blinks rapidly. "How did you know you were married?"

Charlie raises his ring finger. "Isn't it obvious? Why aren't you taking them?"

Knowing she can't delay it anymore, she takes them from him. The sunflowers are weeping. Where there should be seeds in the centre, she finds dozens of old lady faces. Their faces are pale brown and tears are streaming down their wrinkled cheeks.

"Aren't they pretty?" Charlie asks cheerily.

"Yes. Thank you." Brianne gulps. "I love them."