Danny had been but a young boy the day the meteor fell from the sky nearly hitting him in the head. He'd felt the 'swish' as it passed by his ear, almost like the sound of a bullet traveling at high speed. And for a moment, he'd actually thought that to be the case until realizing he'd not heard the rapport of a gun being fired. Turning, he saw where the earth had been impacted just behind him. It was hard to miss in the wheat field. As tiny as the rock ended up being when he uncovered it, it had torn up the ground a good foot in nearly every direction.
His parents had died when he was a mere baby, now raised by his grandparents on the small farm they ran and owned. He had taken the lumpy, pockmarked stone to his grandfather to look at, telling him how it had fallen from the sky nearly killing him. His grandfather had laughed, tussling his hair shrugging it off with a, "That's a good one Danny boy," which as far as it ever went.
Danny added the small dollar-sized meteorite to his rock collection, where it sat for the next ten years.
#
It was the day of the fire that changed Danny's life forever. Changing it in ways he could never have begun to even imagine.
His grandfather had died two years earlier. Old, tired and unable to continue running the small farm they once had, Danny's grandfather eventually sold out to a large conglomerate at a reasonably decent price, with one small concession. His grandmother was to remain in their small but modest home on a tiny one acre parcel of land until her death. After which, the remaining property would then be taken over by the property owners who had purchased the land.
His grandmother had died in that fire. Danny had been away at school at the time, summoned home upon hearing the news of her death. There were suspicions about the origination of the fire and how it had started. But nothing was ever proven. All that was salvageable was a few smoke damaged odd and ends, along with his old rock collection.
He'd received a modest amount from an old insurance policy as well as a long-standing trust fund left by his parents. Together, he managed to use that money to buy a small run-down shop that had once been an old bakery. It had living quarters upstairs, more than adequate for his needs and sufficient space downstairs for the business he had always wanted to run. So it was that Danny became a florist. And not the kind of florist that sold long stemmed roses, or made boutonnières for Prom night. Danny sold only potted plants and flowers, things that were alive and meant to stay alive with nurturing tender care.
He made a pretty good profit, and slowly his business grew. In time he had gotten busy enough that he'd had to hire on additional part-time help. Fresh out of high school, he'd hired on a young woman with a love and an affinity for plants nearly as great as his own. And the fact that Stacy was attractive was purely a bonus. Especially as Danny was at the age of 24, still a virgin.
"Danny? What's this?" she asked him one day.
All that remained of his past life had been his rock collection. He had placed it inside a glass case where it sat in the front window of his shop as a reminder to him of how he'd gotten started. Stacy stood holding the small little pockmarked meteor within her hand.
"Is this what I think it is?" she asked.
Danny was pleased that someone at least actually recognized it for what it was. He walked over to her about to tell her the story of how he'd found it when he noticed a small tiny bit of green fungus growing along one edge. It was hardly even noticeable, but it had never been there before now.
Gently, he touched the small pinprick growth with his finger. It tingled, or at least he seemed to think that it did. So he touched it again, but this time felt nothing. "That's interesting," he thought. Rather than replacing the stone back inside the case with the others, he instead set it within one of his potted plants wondering if he watered it, cultivated it, that perhaps more of the fungus might indeed continue to grow.
For years Danny had had this tiny little voice inside his head, something he'd always considered as a sixth-sense, telling him to nurture, taking care of the plants he'd grown so fondly of, almost like having children of his own in some ways, and so he did. In the days, weeks and month's ahead, those sensations, that voice became clearer, stronger, almost speaking to him as though it were a separate entity altogether.
For a time, Danny periodically checked his little rock to see if anything more was happening. But the small patch of fungus never really changed or grew. It remained as it was, even when he placed it more directly in sunlight, watered it more, watering it less. Nothing ever changed, and so he left it, forgetting all about it once again.
He and Stacy took turns opening the shop and closing it. Today was her turn to open. But as was usually the case, once awake, Danny couldn't fall back to sleep. He knew Stacy would come in early, she always did. With nothing better to do, Danny got up, dressed and headed downstairs to the shop. He had reached the top of the stairs when he froze. Looking down, he could see Stacy as she stood deadheading some of the live roses they actually carried. He smiled, pleased at the thought that she was just as enthralled with her work as he was. About to call out to her, telling her "good-morning" the words stuck in his throat as he watched her lean over, lifting her tee shirt. Curiously, she then rubbed each and every one of the tiny rose buds against her nipples, as though using them to kiss herself with. Now his respect for her diminished within the span of a heartbeat. If she was in fact doing nothing more than some sort of decadent kinky little activity with his plants, then he would have no more of it. She was done here!
"You want to tell me just what the hell it is that you're doing?" he blurted as he came down the stairs. He'd caught her by surprise, she turning red-faced as she fought and lost the battle for a brief moment in trying to cover up her exposed breasts.
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were even up yet!" she stammered by way of explanation.
"I can see that!" Danny spat furiously. "What I want to know is, what the fuck are you doing to my plants?"
In all the time they had worked together, he had never once used any form of profanity around her whatsoever. In doing so, he told her in simple quick terms just how truly upset he really was.
"Danny? Please listen to me for a moment, give me a chance to explain!" she said pleadingly. He did like her, or at least had liked her. So deciding to give her the benefit of the doubt, he walked over to her and stood.
"Go ahead, but it better be good," he said sternly. He waited patiently, Stacy was obviously thinking about what to say, merely confirming his own suspicions that she was going to come up with some far-out hair-brained justification for what he had just witnessed. And as she began, that's exactly what he heard as she explained.
"I've been doing something," she told him. "I can't really explain why, the only thing I can really do is to show you."
Stacy led him over to the other side of the isle where another batch of potted roses stood growing. "You see these?" she asked.
"Yes, of course," Danny replied irritably.
"Look at them, then come back over here and look at these!" Danny did so. To the novice, the untrained eye, there was hardly any difference. But Danny saw the difference almost immediately. One side of the isle, the roses seemed to have a sharper color, a darker sheen to their leaves.
"So?" he asked. "Yeah, there's a difference...so?" he repeated asking again.
"So...this side I've been letting the roses kiss my nipples, but not on this side," she announced as though it made perfect sense.
"I'm still not following. You mean to tell me that the roses over here are doing better because you've been rubbing your tits on them?" he questioned actually laughing.
He could tell in speaking that he had indeed hurt her feelings, she appeared ready to cry. "Yes Danny, that's exactly what I'm trying to tell you!"
