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The doctor says it’s retinal detachment from the blows Nathan rained down on him but Magnus knows it’s not. Every day he watches the dark shadow in his left eye grow, twist itself into grotesque shapes. He is certain that the last thing he sees in that eye is a root sprouting.
…
He forgets the band, his hopes, his dreams, moves on. It hurts like the headache that’s dogged him for months but he can live with pain. A poster advertising their first big show without him sends Magnus reeling to the nearest bathroom clutching his stomach. He spits out bile and tells himself the red floating in a stained toilet bowl is just blood.
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He takes medicine for his stomach and smokes to dull the pain that seeps through his limbs day by day. Sometimes his joints creak like fibrous branches in the wind, his breaths at night rustling leaves on a tree only he can hear. If he can’t switch the radio to a different song fast enough Magnus tastes dirt and rot on his tongue. He spits the gritty black out his car window and keeps driving.
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If he could pass along the twisting, gnawing pains in his gut at the sight of Toki Wartooth just feet away, he would. Magnus stiffly unfolds from his audience seat and marches to the shoddy campground stage.
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There is no room in his stomach for food anymore. Magnus tells himself that the hate is all he needs. Revenge is coming after all. He doesn’t bother to dress for the occasion. Roy was just a name to him, never anyone he really knew.
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In the dark and damp of the rotting audition space Magnus feels like he’s putting down roots. This is the soil he has nurtured for so many years. It is right that he has come to ground in such an awful place. Nobody really hears the gut deep cough that spills thorny wet blooms at his feet. They mark a gleaming trail wherever he goes.
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The pipe is just a stake set in the ground for his craggy soul to climb its way up. It is only when he sees them again, so close, burning like a star, that he realises just how wrong he’s been. Magnus weeps. It’s far too late now. Who would hear his confession if he said it? And what good would admitting anything do now with his body little more than dirt awaiting the shovel’s strike?
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When the knife plunges deep there is no blood. Creeping tendrils sprout from his chest, thorns taking root in his fingers as they crawl out. Red bursts into vibrant bloom, soft petals masking the death smell with their sweetness. He spasms as thorns wind down his arms, petals falling from his lips.
…
They find him in the dawn twilight, a garden of roses clutched in cold hands, blooming from the blood pooled under his back. One glassy eye stares unseeing at the fading stars. From the other eye, small and darkest of them all, the first rose reaches for daylight.
