For about one year.

That was how long fear left her mind. Her child was named Alexander, after the great conquerors of the past. He surely had conquered her heart: she spent many a night holding the baby against her body, without a care in the world. She had wealth, a loving husband who did not complain too much about her occasional libertine lifestyle, her beautiful baby. Everything she could wish for.

Alexander grew strong. At eleven months of age he had developed dark brown hair and piercing green eyes – a trait of his father’s family, for sure. He had just learned how to stand up and take his first precarious steps when something happened that threw Franca back into the throes of anxiety.

A small thing.

She had taken up the habit of cultivating flowers – it was in vogue among women of her rank. She had her husband build her a glasshouse where she could have all sort of flowers and roses to tend to. One day, as she was changing the earth inside a vase, she looked at the roses she had transplanted the day before and let out a little gasp.

The petals, that used to be so thick, rosy and plump, had withered, losing their pretty shade to an ill grey.

“What happened?” she whispered, turning the flower this way and that to check if some insect had made it its home. She found nothing. Shaking her head at the wasted hours, she cut down the sick plant and changed the soil, making sure to give it a lot of water.

She then tended to her other plants.

The next day when she went to check on the rose, she found it wilted, laying against the vase, reduced to a grey mold that seemed to spread over the floor like a spiderweb.

“Oh no no no,” she groaned shaking her head.

Then her heart sank.

The glasshouse was filled with dead flowers. All the plants she had been working for the past few months had turned the same sick grey as the roses and seemed to be hanging on for dear life.

Echoes of fear shook her heart.

Could this be…

No, it couldn’t. This was not magic, or a curse, or any other supernatural occurrence, just plain bad luck. A malaise of the plants must have spread in the glasshouse. All she could now was to salvage what plants she could have start anew… forget this accident.

And she could have convinced herself it was but an accident, if she hadn’t come back to her rooms to find the flowers on her balcony dead and grey as well.

She stepped back onto the white and red tiles of the bedroom, shaking her head and holding her hands in front of her face, as if afraid they would turn into hooked talons at a moment’s notice.

Nothing happened. She stood alone with her fear – and perhaps the hints of a far-away voice caressing her ears, carrying words of vengeance.

No. Fantasies! These were nothing but coincidences.

She began to use gloves. It was supposed to be part of the modern woman’s attire by the way. She had gloves shipped to her from London and Paris.

But they could do little to protect plants from her withering touch. She had the flowers in the glasshouse renewed three times. They all died withing hours. What was worse, people began to complain about a strange odor lingering in the house.

A damp, foul smell like a dead thing slithering out of a bog. Like the scent of damp earth and misshapen things standing on their legs under the moonlight.

“No no no,” she whispered that night kissing her baby, holding him onto her as he looked up at her with those large green eyes. Her husband, careful as always to keep track of her moods, hugged and embraced her all night while she cried her eyes out.

The plants on her balcony had all died as well. She had drenched herself in perfume and yet that foul, horrible odor never seemed to leave her, following her steps like a dark cloud of storm.

Servants began to gag and retch in her presence. They excused themselves prof, profusely, but couldn’t seem to stand staying close to her. Even her husband, the man who had given her a son and more pounds than she could count coughed and heaved as he held her close.

She trembled in his embrace all night, until she at last fell asleep.

On the next morning, she woke up to the dreary sound of Alexander crying. She blinked and stood up, extricating from her husband’s embrace. She went to the child’s room, taking him up in his arms. The baby seemed to clam down in her embrace and she felt a little relieved, like she could still save this.

She still had her child. The most precious thing in the world.

When she came back to the main bedroom the only thought she had in her mind was to wake his father up and share a good breakfast like a family. They’d laugh and joke about her fears and they’d disappear like whimsical plums of mist under the mornings sun.

Turning back to the bed, Franca shrieked.

Her husband was laying on his back, panting. He turned one of his eyes towards her. The other bulged out, vitreous and bloodshot. From the side of his mouth he coughed black phlegm.

She put down the baby, who had started to cry again, and harder – in a panic, she ripped out his nightgown to help him breathe, only to find his skin stretched and blackened, showing the shape of her body as he had hugged her all night long.

Her husband reached for her cheek and cupped it with his hand.

A soft breath escaped his lips – his one good eye rolled up and his hand fell still to the bedside.

Franca’s panicked sobs echoed that of her son.