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the moment he spit out the yellow petal, he knew his time was up.
trey clover, a boy who cater set his eyes on the very first moment he met him.
those golden eyes, the way he laughs, when he has his glasses off, cater feels like he could drown in it.
but it was futile from the start. trey loved someone else.
he would never look at cater the way he looked at them.
he spat out two more petals this time, smiling sadly to himself.
————
progressively, it got worse. small coughing fits started during class. professor crewel berated him for interrupting.
he didn’t care though. what he did care about was when trey started to notice.
he didn’t want to worry him. cater felt like every time he looked at those eyes, a coughing fit would start.
and boy, it sure did.
so now here he lays, 4am in the morning, hunched over a toilet throwing up his guts out. tears streamed down his face, dizziness arose. he wondered how trey isn’t awake.
when he opened his eyes, a whole yellow tulip floated around in the bloodied, flowerly water.
he stumbled out of the bathroom and smiled once again. he paid no mind to the one petal left on the dirtied bathroom floor.
————
he hated these flowers. these damn tulips.
whenever he saw them in the garden, pure malice and rage overtook them. it angered him so much.
coughing started to guess worse after that, his body felt like it was held down by a massive weight.
————
a small, tiny tulip appeared on his forearm. it amazed cater, had this disease always done it?
he didn’t care though, he could cover it up easily with his blazer and white shirt. he could wear a hoodie or long sleeved shirt around trey, that way trey wouldn’t-
the next morning, the spot with the small tulip had grown more flowers. it traveled down his arm all the way to his wrist.
how was he going to hide it now?
————
a few months had passed by now. gradually, the disease got worse and worse. it got to the point where he couldn’t hide it anymore.
cater got gravely sick one day. trey urged him to go to the infirmary, but he waved him off saying “its just a common cold.”
lies. the flowers had spread to his face now. this morning, he woke up and he couldn’t open his eyes. the flowers had grown on his eyelids.
so now, here he lies, coughing once in a while begging to wake up from this dream.
only for him to realize it's not a dream. this is real.
so then, he relents.
he doesn’t get up when the coughing starts.
he curls into himself.
he doesn’t scream when he can feel the flowers grow more.
he hugs his knees tighter.
he doesn’t try to stop himself when whole entire flowers come from his throat.
he doesn’t panic when he can see blood through the thick yellow petals.
instead, cater cries one final tear before giving up finally.
the flowers overtake him, the vines climb up his throat. he tried to scream but nothing comes out. a single big tulip blooms from his mouth.
when trey walked back to the room and pulled the curtains back on caters bed, he found a pool of yellow tulips, a few bloodied.