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The first petal came after their first interview.
It came when Michael left the room, closing the door behind him and completely shutting Gallant in the darkness, that’s when he felt the itch in the back of his throat, like something was scratching him from the inside of his body. He coughed, and it was normal, that is, until he noticed the colorful, bright object gliding down into his lap. A flower petal. A pink, silky flower petal.
“Maybe I just swallowed a rose.”
“Gallant,” Coco’s voice rang in the empty room. “What roses are there to swallow? The world ended a fucking year ago, and unless you know of some secret garden growing in this damn place, I think you just have cancer.”
Gallant scrunched his nose, taking a sip of whatever knockoff bullshit they put in their glasses to look like champagne. The answer startled him for a second, but then he came to the conclusion that if he had been camping in the Outpost for about a year, everything was fine. “I don’t have cancer,” he stated confidently, as if he had something to lose.
Cancer didn’t make you cough up flowers.
It didn’t scare him; not as much as it should’ve, at least. There was nothing left he really cared about. It’s not that he wanted to die, as much as he pranced around and paraded that he hated the life he lived down in the stuffy Outpost, death wasn’t something he’d like to experience.
Langdon made him want to experience death. The man was wicked, and he was vile, and he smiled with such venom it made the temperature in Gallant’s blood drop into the negatives. It hurt to watch the sinister man give nothing but an unmoved, unexpressed glance to the stylist when he walked down the hallway, hands behind his back and eyes staring forward into nothingness.
It hurt to watch him walk down the hallway, and not just in a figurative way. It was literal, because it’s when the second petal came in the harsh, unfamiliar cough. This time, it was white; and this time, he didn’t tell Coco.
This time, he almost cried.
When the walls felt as if they were closing in, and the internal claustrophobia kicked him in the ass, Gallant liked to sit alone in the bathroom, splashing water on his face and trying to get the feeling of being alive. The Outpost had water limit, and there was only so much everyone was allowed to use. One shower every two days, washing hands was only allowed twice a day for a ten second period, and the amount of water the prisoners were allowed to drink was very little; just enough for their health to not deteriorate and spiral into death.
It didn’t matter to him as he stumbled into the bathroom that day, coughing out his lungs and slamming into the sink, watching blood splatter into the rich, porcelain bowl. He turned on the sink, splashing water onto his face and into his mouth, almost gagging up bile. A familiar wetness filled his eyes, and he saw it when he looked into the mirror a second later. Blood and saliva trailed down his chin, and made a gross puddle in the sink bowl.
It scared him to death when he coughed up a second petal that day.
Gallant kept the petals in the bedside drawer, locked in a small container that he had taken from the dinner table one day. It was a butter dish that he had emptied out when Venable wasn’t paying attention. It sat under a few folded clothes that didn’t need to be in there. The risks of getting searched and caught with remnants of a living plant were too high. Being sprayed down and scrubbed was a memory he would rather not relive. Contamination was a threat here, and the cost could be a life.
He hoped that it wouldn't matter soon. Once he made it to the Sanctuary, hiding his petals wouldn’t have to be a problem, that is, if the petals stop coming by then. There were no doctors in the Outpost, no medicals, no nurses, nobody to diagnose the disease growing within him.
So, he kept it a secret. A secret from anyone out for blood.
“I can see why your grandmother is disgusted by you.”
Michael didn’t like Gallant. As obvious as an observation could come, it still made the blond’s heart collapse in agony. The reason? Unknown; but the long haired son of a gun made his cheeks blush red whenever he spoke. His icicle fingertips would graze longingly on the skin of his back, brushing against the deep welts that impacted there. It hurt like never being able to hug a loved one, and Gallant liked to bite back at it.
The itch in his throat was always waiting there when Michael came around; the strange man flaunting like a peacock, yet vowing his own, derisive silence. When it looked as if he would pounce, he stood his ground in a way that felt almost as if he was taunting someone. Michael baited every fish in the sea, and Gallant had the hook stuck in his lip.
A leaf came up this time when he coughed, and it tickled the roof of his mouth as he tried not to let it flutter down this time. But it wasn’t helpful when he kept coughing through Michael’s speech, noticing as the man looked at him with a teasing glare as if to say he was interrupting.
When it became too hard to hold back, Gallant opened his mouth in a coughing fit, and dozens of leaves and petals tumbled out and cascaded to the floor. It was embarrassing to not be able to wipe the saliva off his mouth, seeing as his wrists were bound to the ceiling by a cold, metal chain.
The lack of noise that followed was excruciating. Michael stared at him, and then at the nature on the floor, and it looked as if he was familiar with it; like it was normal to retch flowers.
And just like that, he was gone, and so were the chains that bound Gallant in his personal prison, and he felt like vomiting.
Doing Coco’s hair was the therapeutic thing Gallant had done in a long time. It was the first time in weeks he had thought about the petals, about Michael, about the outside world. They laughed and chatted for hours about memories and stories, bad times and good. Gossiped about Venable and Mead and their horrific rules, and even made bets on who would be the first to give up and die. As horrible as it was, it made the blond feel a sense of belonging and motivation. He was getting out of here, no matter who had to go in the process.
As he strut through the halls, he thought about it. To his little knowledge of the people inhabiting the bunker, Mallory would go first. The gray was small, fragile, and gave no resistance to orders and commands. If she was found hanging by the neck by her bedsheets, Gallant would be less than surprised.
“You have injected all of the apples, correct?” came a familiar voice. It came from Michael’s room. What was Venable doing in there?
The door was cracked open, just enough so that the tiniest bit of candlelight could seep through the slit, and just enough for Langdon’s voice to ring out.
“Down to the last bite, Miss Venable,” he said in a way that sounded sing-songy, yet maniacal.
Gallant’s brows furrowed, and he let his eye peek into the room. Venable’s back was facing him, yet Langdon’s frontside was, too. He stood like usual; hands behind his back and a winning smirk on his face.
“If you’re lying to me about this, we’re going to have a problem,” the woman spat, keeping her voice lowered to just above a whisper. He watched Michael shake his head.
“I keep my promises, Wilhemina. Every single one of them will be gone by the end of the night, and if the apples won’t kill them…” Michael started, and Gallant couldn’t help but notice that he was staring right into his one eye looking through the crack in the door. Keeping his stare, the devilish man delicately picked up a rose off of his desk. A bright, red rose.
“-the nature sure will.”
Gallant gasped and stumbled backwards, keeping his gaze fixated on the light pouring from the room. As his breathing became heavier, so did the scratch in his windpipe. His lungs felt like they were being squeezed, strangled, as if a rope had been tied around them and tightened ten times. Finally, as if it were some forbidden luxury, he coughed, and three to four petals flew out of his mouth. Red petals. Roses.
He gripped the rail of the balcony, clutching his chest as he continued to try and breathe, vomiting up an arrangement of leaves and blossoms until he couldn’t anymore. Until his legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor, blood dripping from his eyes and spilling from his lips, staining his teeth and skin in a bright maroon.
And eventually, his lungs didn’t hurt anymore. Everything felt like nothing, and the nothingness engulfed him until he wasn’t trying anymore. The thorns crept up his throat, filling his mouth as a flower grew there, overtaking the bottom half of his face.
The Outpost knew no such thing as nature. It was Hell inside Hell where light couldn’t reach and plants couldn’t grow. It was a deserted island, and a dry, vast, claustrophobic cave where even the faintest sliver of hope learnt how to die. It was structured to contain nothing but prisoners, nothing but fear. Nobody was ever going to leave. They would all die off eventually, and nobody would be there to plant flowers on their graves.