Ine’s Flowers : Black Orchid                      by: Maggie Finson

 

Dark eyes idly swept the street below, mainly to hold the tedium at bay, while a mind almost as dark as the eyes considered the ironies of existence. Hate, anger, fear, pain, loss, and grief intermingled with half familiar - half forgotten - lighter, kinder emotions. Emotions her self proclaimed mother, Ine, championed. Love, mercy, generosity, others the dusky figure wearing dark clothing shied away from as too painful to recall, or too sweet for her present activities.

The being called Black Orchid shifted her lithe, beautiful body with a grimace of near distaste for the sensations that motion brought her. She had been dead once, until the god-like Ine had raised her in the form that now stared at her from the mirror or any reflection she cast. Black Orchid almost preferred dead to what she had become. Almost. She recalled her first awakening as Black Orchid, how shocked and enraged she had been to be living again, and in a shape that was entirely alien to anything her former self had ever imagined himself being. A delicately featured oval face had replaced the square, almost rugged one he had known since childhood, with large, liquid brown eyes looking out of it instead of the almost black pair he had possessed. The only familiar thing in her new visage was the look in her eyes; one of pent up anger, despair, and hatred that demanded revenge for all that had been done to her former self. She told herself that all she wished for was justice. Something her old self had not been granted. Framed for a murder he hadn’t committed, imprisoned, raped by other inmates, and savaged so badly he had hanged himself to avoid a repetition of the hateful act. At least, he had thought when death finally came, there would be peace. Then Ine had intervened.

And made him into THIS. This curvaceous, delicate beauty with the long wavy black hair that shone in the light, light mahogany skin that gleamed like the softest satin, and with a physical grace designed to be delightful to any male eyes beholding her. This new incarnation was hateful, uncomfortable, and all too natural to the remade being who couldn’t quite be called human any longer.

There was, however, one thing about the new form that she had embraced with a fervor that was almost frightening. She had power. Power to change others into something just as alien to them as her own shape had been and continued being for her. Power manifested through a basket of lovely, exotic black orchids that never seemed to empty.

Power that she had already used several times in her quest for justice. Memories of the gang-bangers who had committed the crime her old self had paid for accepting the black orchids and their transformations into pretty young things just as vulnerable as any of their former victims brought a brief smile of satisfaction to her lovely face. A smile that faded with the troublesome thought that self administered justice was terribly close to a crime itself, and the niggling question of when obtaining justice crossed the hazy line of good to become the ugly thing called personal revenge.

"This body is making you soft, Orchid," she whispered in a velvety contralto while shaking those thoughts away from consciousness. "These people have to Pay for what they did. I can see that they do, and won’t give up that determination."

Still, the seeds of guilt had grown into real doubts about her purpose, no matter how much she denied the facts to herself.

* * *

Ine watched her most troubled, and dangerous Flower Child wrestle with conscience and thirst for revenge with a sadness that was tinged with hope.

"You could guide her, Mother," Daisy, offered with a gentle touch to Ine’s shoulder.

"No, Daisy," Ine sighed, taking Daisy’s hand in her own and giving it a small squeeze. "Orchid must find her own way, dear one. She will not accept my intervention, and is still reluctant to take the love we all have for her. We just have to give her time and remember that Black Orchid will always be one of your more troubled sisters."

"We all try, Mother," Daisy let out a small sigh, "But she really frightens me at times."

"That is in her nature, dear," Ine responded a bit sadly. "Every family requires one, at least, who is willing and able to take on the unpleasant tasks without flinching or being afraid of the consequences of her actions. I truly believe that she will become the family’s most dedicated protector."

"If she doesn’t go back to what she was before," Daisy watched the image of her sister with a mix of fascination and mild fear combined with pity.

"That will be her choice, child," Ine simply returned. "It is one we can not make for her, or even attempt to influence."

* * *

Putting her doubts away, Black Orchid felt a thrill of anticipation upon catching sight of her next target. The Judge who had simply believed her former self to be guilty of the crime he was accused of because of the man’s race and where he had lived.

This was the only one she had real doubts about, since his actions had been without true malice. Judge Richard Harrison had based his sentencing on misinformation, a lack of understanding, and a callous lack of tolerance that had grown from seeing so many unrepentant criminals of the same race passing before his bench.

Her hesitation irritated her, the man had been an integral part of her former self’s downfall and required punishment for that. But something deep inside - perhaps a shred of the honestly decent man she had been - insisted that Harrison deserved a gentler treatment than the others she had found received at her hands.

But he still required a lesson.

One she was fully prepared to give, doubts or not.

* * *

Judge Richard Harrison was tired. It had been another long day of dispensing justice that he often wondered if it was truly justice, or simply a society’s retribution for acts committed by those who just didn’t fit into the molds that were expected of them.

Not that it mattered. He had a reputation of being tough on offenders, and did believe that getting criminals off the street was a necessary thing. Law abiding citizens of all races needed the protection he gave in his court. Even if sometimes the dispensation of that justice was something that wrung his heart.

"Buy a flower, sir?" a velvety, feminine voice stroked his ears and interrupted his thoughts.

Harrison glanced up, ready to shake his head in the negative, and stopped in mid shake, thinking that maybe he could ease things at home with a floral peace offering to his wife Elizabeth, who had been withdrawing from him so much that she had moved him out of their house not long ago and was talking with a divorce laywer.. Not that he blamed her for that, with his unapproachable preoccupation with work. But that had to stop, he knew, even if it meant resigning his position and stepping down from the bench. The girl, young woman actually, was a beauty with her mahogany skin, long wavy hair, and soft, doe like eyes. As she offered him a truly exotic black orchid, he briefly wondered if she was dealing or prostituting on the side, and instantly regretted the thought.

She almost seemed to read what had passed through his mind, and frowned for a moment. The expression gave her a different, dangerous, look, but that was negated when she replaced the frown with a small smile. Slender, but with enough curves to leave no doubts as to her sex, if any could be there given her delicately featured face and that soothing voice, and nicely dressed in an off-white silk blouse and long, flowing black skirt, she gave him a brilliant smile and offered the odd looking orchid again.

"You really do look like you could use some cheering up, sir," she offered an even more brilliant smile along with the flower. "For someone so obviously in need, I’ll give you a very special price."

"I’ve never seen a black orchid," he commented, drawn into conversation by her smile and beauty. "or even heard of them before."

"They are quite rare," the young woman answered, never letting her smile waver. "I have them specially grown for me."

"How much would you take for the whole basket?" Harrison questioned, reaching into his breast pocket for his wallet.

"Oh, I can only give out one to a customer," the young woman gracefully, regretfully gestured to her filled basket. "I’m sorry, sir, but I never sell more than one at a time."

"All right, I just have to take what I can get, then, I suppose," Harrison brought out his wallet and opened it, a bit suspiciously, and carefully glancing over his shoulder to make certain no one was loitering behind him to move in and take advantage of his brief vulnerability.

Bitter amusement flashed across her lovely features for a moment as she watched the sidewalk behind him, then submerged in that radiant smile once again. "Five dollars will be enough, sir."

"That seems awfully inexpensive for something so rare," Harrison again entertained thoughts of stolen property and the indignity he would go through for purchasing any such thing, even a flower.

"Payment varies, according to the buyer," she answered that without the slightest hesitation, or acknowledgement of his too obvious concerns. "From you, I ask only five dollars because you are already paying for many other things that weigh your spirit down."

He passed her a twenty, "All right. You can keep the change."

"Oh, no, sir," she demurred, carefully taking three five-dollar bills out of her own purse, and handing them back to him. "I never accept gratuities.

Spreading my lovely flowers around is more than enough for me. Please enjoy the orchid, sir."

* * *

Black Orchid gleefully watched the Judge walk away with his newly purchased orchid. "Oh, I think you’ll find the true price of that lovely bloom to be something more than you either expect or would be willing to pay if I’d told you the truth, Judge. Shame on you for thinking I had stolen these, or had an accomplice waiting in the background to rob you.

But that kind of attitude will change very soon, my so dear, sir. Yes it will," Orchid crinkled her eyes in a highly amused, and anticipatory grin. "Since you’ll find what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that kind of attitude."

With a final smile at his departing back, uncaring if anyone witnessed her next act, Black Orchid wished herself elsewhere, and vanished with a small rush of air filling the void where she and her basket had been.

* * *

Richard Harrison heard the small snap of disturbed air, and turned to see if the young woman had done something to cause the sharp little crack so reminiscent of a gunshot. She was no longer there, and more, no trace of her having been there at all was left. He shrugged, thinking she had likely gone into one of the businesses lining the street to sell more of her unusual orchids, and laughed at himself over the needless paranoia he had been feeling in her presence.

"Silly of me," he murmured with a small chuckle, "The girl was just making a living with some rather extraordinary flowers. Bet she makes a killing with them, even if they have only been dyed to that color. The rich, deep purple highlights on the bloom he carried within its wrapping of clear plastic put the lie to any ideas that it was artificially colored to be such an arresting, vivid black, and with another shrug, he carefully placed the bloom in an outer pocket to free his hands. His fingers tingled and twitched, almost as if they had minds of their own and regretted letting go of the beautiful thing.

* * *

Back in the darkened room she had rented specifically for the purpose of catching Judge Harrison, Black Orchid concentrated her will on the bloom carried by the man she had targeted for her next act of retribution. And faltered again.

"What’s wrong with me?" she questioned, both angry and frightened by her sudden lack of resolve. "That man deserves whatever I give him. He sentenced me to a slow, painful death, regardless of the original length of time I was supposed to be in prison."

‘What happened to you in prison wasn’t that man’s fault,’ the small, still, but niggling voice from deep within her insisted.

"Ine, get out of my mind!" she nearly shouted, then realized that her self styled Mother and creator had nothing at all to do with the voice. "I’m going to make him pay, just like the others. And I still have half a dozen more to get once I’ve finished here."

Pushing doubts, voices, and regrets back down to places where their voices couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be heard, Orchid bent her will to the transformation she had planned over many weeks of preparation.

* * *

Richard Harrison carefully removed the orchid from his pocket and set it on the table of the restaurant he frequented now that he and his wife had separated. Briefly wondering why he had bothered to buy it for a woman he still loved, but who had simply told him to choose between her and a job that was nearly life itself to him then walked out of his life, he looked up to see the same young woman who had sold it to him ready to take his order.

Her nametag read simply, ‘Orchid’, which he found oddly appropriate considering the strangely compelling blooms she sold on street corners. "So, I never thought I’d see you again... Uh, Orchid."

Favoring him with that brilliant smile once again, the young woman gracefully tilted her head and actually laughed. "Oh, I show up in some pretty strange places at times, Your Honor, but selling flowers won’t make my living for me. I do that here."

Chilled in spite of her friendliness, and recalling how she had simply seemed to vanish earlier, Harrison didn’t even wonder how she knew he was a judge. "I’m sure you could do far better, Orchid."

Eyes crinkled with an engaging grin that lit up her entire face, the young woman shrugged, showing off a very enticing amount of jiggle in all the right places. "You have no idea of the tips I get here, sir. I like my job, too. I get to meet such interesting people."

"I would imagine you do," he answered with a grin of his own, then glanced back at the menu. "I’ll have the sixteen ounce porterhouse - rare - with the salad, baked potato, and iced tea. With a double scotch for an appetizer."

"Coming right up," she replied, not even bothering to write the order down.

"Unwinding?"

"Fortifying," Harrison responded. "I’m meeting my wife later and trying to reconcile some differences we have. Otherwise, next time I see her, her lawyer will be there, too."

"Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, sir," Orchid sounded genuinely honest about that, then quickly turned away to get his order in. Harrison found himself idly watching her move, entranced by both her beauty and unstudied grace. He also found himself wishing, in a half guilty way, that he could get to know her better. Orchid steeled herself against the man’s pain, thinking he richly deserved anything the gods meted out, and still fully intending to do her share. An estranged wife would be the least of Richard Harrison’s troubles in a very short time, she thought in satisfaction while bending her will back to the transformation her orchid would enact upon the man.

* * *

Harrison was beginning to feel more than a little strange, sitting there in a restaurant he had frequented for months and wondering why he’d never seen the girl calling herself Orchid before. His stomach churned and the tingling in his hands had spread to the whole upper half of his body. With a lurch, he managed to get out of his chair and move towards the restroom with the imminent sense that he was going to be ill. Without thinking, he took the orchid with him. By the time he had reached the restrooms, situated behind a paneled divider, the tingling had spread over his entire body and his stomach was threatening to dislodge everything he had eaten for the past several days, along with about half of itself from the way it churned, lurched, and rumbled.

Pushing the door open and nearly running to a stall, he failed to notice that the restroom he had entered was the women’s. Almost slamming the door shut behind him, he nearly ripped his pants in the hurry he felt to void himself. It felt as if every bone in his body, each separate muscle, and even his flesh was churning with the same violence his stomach and intestines were.

"Little bitch," he moaned, "She poisoned me."

"Not really," the velvety voice soothed from the other side of the stall door. "I’m just dispensing a little justice. Surely you can understand that, Your Honor?"

"Justice?" he croaked in a cracking voice, barely able to sit up as the ripples in his flesh and bone reached a peak. "How is killing me serving any kind of justice?"

"You killed me," the simple answer, sounding a bit regretful, came back to him. "You didn’t do it intentionally, but the sentence you passed might as well have been a death sentence. I was raped by other inmates in prison, on top of losing everything I’d ever cared for. And I was innocent, Judge. But you couldn’t see that, wouldn’t look past my color, or where I’d come from." the voice held an edge like sharp steel sheathed in velvet now, with something like rage and sorrow honing it to razor-like perfection that cut as surely as a real blade would have. "I had a life, Your Honor, one that was ripped away without so much as a regret on your part, and I bet you didn’t even know that I’d hanged myself in prison, did you?"

"Who are you?" Harrison croaked in a voice that was no longer familiar to him.

"Retribution," the velvet voice grew gentle again.

"I didn‘t know," Harrison choked out, nearly overcome by the twisting sensations of his suddenly traitorous body. "I don‘t even know who you were."

"It doesn’t matter," Orchid replied, surprised to discover that it really didn’t any longer. Her voice softened even more, "Look at this as another chance, Beatrice, a chance to make a few wrong things right, or to at least make them right for yourself."

"Who is Beatrice?" he questioned in near panic as he heard the velvety tones of his own voice.

"You are, sweetie," Orchid replied, opening the stall door to look at him for the first time, and shaken to see a mirror image of herself. "That’s your name now."

His clothing had changed during the bout of illness in the restroom. To fit his new body. Harrison felt unfamiliar undergarments hugging equally unfamiliar curves of soft flesh. His shirt had become an off-white woman’s blouse made of soft, shimmering silk, while his pants had transformed into a flowing, ankle length black skirt of the same material. The expensive suit coat had remained expensive, but was now of black silk and cut for a woman. Wingtips had become patent leather black pumps with a three inch heel, as socks crawled up his still tingling legs to become smoky stockings.

For the first time in his life, Richard Harrison knew what it felt like to wear a bra, and have the garment cup soft mounds that needed its support. Without looking, he also knew that his jockey shorts had become panties and there was a garter belt encircling his higher, much slimmer waist and holding the second skin feeling stockings up tautly.

"Whu...what have you done to me?" he questioned in a voice that was both higher pitched and cadenced differently than his had ever been. Staring at the slender mahogany colored hand tipped with bright red nails that insisted on being at the end of his slimmer, and matching arm in shock that was growing into horror, he brushed at a dark curtain in front of his eyes with the other. "That should be fairly obvious," Orchid smiled wickedly while watching the newly made woman brush her shining waves of jet black hair away from liquid brown eyes. "I’ve made you into someone who can not only experience the differences of gender and sex, with the assumed expectations everyone pins on those, but who can also learn to deal with a racial difference that you did your best to ignore in the courtroom even when the inequities of it nearly hit you between the eyes. "Have a good life, Beatrice," Orchid quietly went on, actually meaning that to her great surprise. "You’re healthy, unhooked on anything, beautiful, graceful, young, and intelligent. That’s far better off than I’ve left the others I’ve caught up with.

Make the most of what I’ve given you and you might even find that it is a gift instead of a curse."

The newly christened Beatrice wiped herself carefully, assiduously supressing an urge to explore her new equipment down there, arose and smoothed stockings and skirt as if she had been doing it all her life, and stared at the image presented to her by the mirrors in the ladies room.

Every detail, from the part in her wavy, glossy black hair, down to her dainty toes was an exact duplicate of the girl who had sold him the black orchid. Her full, sensuous lips parted to reveal white teeth as she moaned, "I can’t do this..."

"You don’t have a choice, Beatrice," Orchid interrupted. "The only choices you have are to rise above indifference and ingrained prejudices to be the person you have the potential of becoming, or to give in again and become like so many of those people you’ve sent to jail from your bench. I hope you choose wisely."

"But..."

"No arguments, now," Orchid actually gave a real smile, without malice or even triumph in it. "You still have a life. A very different one, granted, but it is a life with just as much potential for good as you had in your first youth. Try and get it right this time, won’t you?

And remember, I’ll be watching for you to fail," Black Orchid told her latest victim with a very soft smile, "or to succeed. That choice is yours to make, Beatrice, and yours alone."

"But I’m...."

"A woman?" Orchid questioned with a tilt of her head and brief flash of a smile, "or black?"

"Both," spluttered the transformed male in absolute confusion. "Don’t worry about it," Black Orchid advised. "You’ll get used to both situations in short order. Now, you have a customer waiting for his food out there. Don’t you think you’ve spent enough time with female problems in the bathroom?"

"Damn," Beatrice whispered to herself as her identical twin vanished with a rush of inflowing air she had heard earlier. "Now what do I do?"

"You pick up the life my flower gave you," another, unfamiliar voice responded with a tinge of amusement, "and do the best you can with it."

* * *

Black Orchid watched in near fascination as the former white male made the built-in adjustments to her new self, and felt a moment’s fond annoyance as Ine answered the largely rhetorical question Beatrice had asked.

This one had not turned out at all like she’d planned, or wanted, but for some reason, she found herself being glad for that. Then considered the meaning of what she had told the newly made Beatrice about choices and applying the same rationale to herself. It was a small step, but with that understanding, a badly needed healing was allowed to begin.

* * *

Ine watched the newly made woman glance upwards, then around the restroom before giving up with a sigh and nervously working her cautious way to the door and the completely different life waiting for her on the other side. Her nervousness did not diminish, nor did the sense of complete unreality she felt while stepping back into the familiar, but vastly different world she had left while entering the shunted restroom door.

"Your sister did very well with that one," Ine spoke to Daisy with a smile evident in her voice. "There is hope for her yet, I believe."

"For which one?" Daisy questioned innocently.

"Both of them, daughter," Ine chuckled.

END

 

 

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© 2001 by Maggie Finson. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.