NOVELTY

B. McGILLICUDDY

Jared liked to collect fake flowers. He had all kinds of them. There was one bouquet that looked kind of like it was made from real flowers, and each one had petals made from fabric and plastic stems. Then there were kinds that didn't resemble real flowers at all, but were brightly colored toys with pink and blue and purple "petals", and with yellow centers attached to green "stems" and pivoting "leaves" that he purchased in conjunction with a childrens combination meal at a popular franchise restaurant. There were also some metallic pins and ornaments cast to look like nice flowers, and some were even gilded with real gold.

He also had images of flowers. For example there were quite a few pictures of flowers he had taken and printed from 35mm film. Some pictures he found from the internet were printed from his mother's computer and set in floral frames and hung on his walls. There were also large posters of flowers that were blown-up copies of photographs taken by famous photographers as well as prints of old, hand-drawn ecological and agricultural drawings of flowers like the kinds you might find in a survival guide.

His pillowcase, comforter, wallpaper, and the outside of his dresser drawer were all made from patterned prints made to resemble some of the flowers renowned for their exceptional beauty and elegance. Unfortunately, the architect who built his house did not appreciate Victorian-era floral engravings and did not incorporate them into the trim, door or window frames, otherwise Jared would have been very happy about that.

Instead of watering them daily, since they weren't real flowers, Jared would spray the fake flowers with perfumes made from extracts of actual flowers or made to approximate the smells of the flowers depicted on their bottles. Each morning he would go to his cabinet and pick out the perfumes of the flowers he wanted to smell that day, and would spend as much time as was necessary to create the most elaborate amalgam of aromas until his room was full of fake, floral splendor.

One day a girl named Amanda came over to Jared's house and experienced the experience that was his bedroom and that had become his passion and daily routine. But her reaction to it was a less than exuberant one, and she commented on the notion that Jared might be "a faggot". So Jared poured the perfume all over his floor and bed and dresser drawer, ignited it using a wooden match and burned his house down.

B. McGILLICUDDY