ENCANTADORA (PART 4 - FINAL)

 

Arnold dreamed that he was in a garden with Emma.

 

They run across the acres of hundreds of flower-like little children savoring the years of their innocence. The breeze smells of life and all its zest and sweetness as they fling themselves in a bed of technicolor; dipping their body into the pools of petals with laughter that made the birds in the birds in the sky appear and dance above them.

 

It was the kind of dream that everyone, even Arnold, would wish will never end until something just shatter than a breakable wall between dreams and reality.

 

And for Arnold, that was when one of the flowers suddenly flaunt a red eye right in front of him the moment she looks at Emma. It gave him the look that will eternally haunt even on his waking life.

 

“Arnold? Arnold?”

 

Pain shot right through the skull or Arnold upon opening his eye with his heart skipping some of its beat upon his awakening. The first to greet him is their ceiling and the voice of Emma whose right beside their bed where he lay.

“Thank goodness…your alive!”

 

Arnold can’t remember when was the last time he felt the warm embrace of his wife nor even the smell of hair. But right at this moment, those memories didn’t matter for everything he felt right when Emma gets close to him is all but new and delightful yet it never lose any of the warm, mellow feelings he feels each time he is with her during those days when everything is just plain yet perfect.

 

“Emma..I--”

 

Now with all his senses back, Arnold felt the need to explain himself to Emma with what happened. He knew he nearly did something that might really destroy their relationship and despite its validity to some degree, he can’t just that happen to his wife that despite of everything, he still loves no matter what she had done.

 

“Don’t worry. It's fine. Everything will be ok from now on.”

 

“W-what do you mean?” Confused, Arnold tries to rise from his bed but to no avail, his whole body somewhat weighs now for almost thrice his weight before. He can’t any of his limbs and even his fingers. He feels like a dead weight that can only talk.

 

“Maria told me that you are jealous of her. That’s why you are always mad.” Emma said while trying to avert the gaze of Arnold who looks bewildered upon hearing again the name of the encantadora plant. What’s more, making him perplexed is how on earth did that plant see right through him.

 

Then it all crashes down on him the moment before losing his consciousness. He remembers those eyes once more right in those flowers; those dreaded eyes that devour him.

 

 

“But Maria has the solution: she says you two become one instead so that my attention will never stray off.”

 

“What do you mean, Emma?” Arnold doesn’t like the way Maria sounded was despite the genuine happiness evoked by her smile.

 

“You and Maria are now one at the same. Now I can love both of you without the others getting jealous!”

 

The answer to the puzzling statement of Emma didn’t catch immediately by Arnold until he looks at his belly and found sitting on top of him is the diabolical encantadora with all its roots punctured all over his body and pulsating with gusto as it drinks all that it flows inside him: blood, fluids, phlegm, and fats.

 

As it drinks his life away, the more its petal becomes vibrant in real-time to a degree that it seems glow of overflowing vitality.

 

But the one thing that is now filled to the brim is the crimson eyes in those pistils that look at the pale face of Arnold with demonic glee while its color is turning redder than blood.

 

“I win, Arnold. I win.” It speaks while watching the latter shrink to its bones.