Twelve Short Stories of Christmas 4: Frozen Rose

To read day three click here.

The rose was kept in a perfect temperature controlled climate, watered on a schedule and kept safe from insects by a glass case that surrounded it. In this way the rose could never die and would stay in bloom forever.

Mandy went into work in the morning, taking off her gloves as she came from the cold winter air to what she hoped was the warm air of the laboratory, but inside she could still see her breath in the air. Puzzled, she switched on the laboratory light and gasped. All the plants were dead. The only plant that had survived what must have been a power outage overnight, was the rose. It was still encased in its glass case, but even so there were small droplets of water that had frozen into ice on the petals.

She carefully lifted the glass dome and picked up the frozen rose, carefully brushing the ice off the petals. One of the thorns pricked her finger, but as the blood welled up from the cut she could see that her blood was already starting to freeze in the cold.