It took them three tries to kill the woman with bougainvillea in her arms. She was a nuisance—she left papery-pink petals everywhere, which the wind would take until there were pieces of her drying and crumbling all over town. One man claimed to have found a petal in an egg one of his hens had laid, although this was generally disregarded as exaggeration or perhaps delusion. The man liked his stories, it was known. But still people worried suddenly about the food and water—they feared somehow it would infect them, that they would wake one morning to find their beds littered and stained with fuchsia.

The woman with bougainvillea in her arms lived in a small box of a house. I was one of the few visitors that approached her not out of disgust or ill-will but out of a certain curiosity. And she was beautiful—it should be said.

She steeped her petals for our tea and her vines rustled as I touched her. I won’t divulge every particular of our lovemaking but I will say that there was a wildness to her that I have not met in any woman since.

I began my note-taking right away. When she one night found my notebook—which I had left insufficiently hidden in my bag and had all but forgotten at the sight of her—she held it open and read about herself, closed it quietly, and replaced it in the bag.

“Won’t you throw me out?” I asked her. Perhaps I wanted her to, so I could study her capacity for fury—would she strike me, her arms, as they were, sprouted thickly with canes? Would she weep, would she shed her petals, or would she bloom?

And so I was disappointed when she merely said, “Not tonight,” shut all the lights, and returned to bed.

My editor phoned me almost daily, and I was growing tired. His patience and my own grew thin. I began to become easily frustrated with the woman with bougainvillea in her arms—one day she would behave normally, kind even in the extreme, smiling sweetly at bank tellers and grocers and passersby who grimaced at her or swept themselves of her pollen or petals—of her essence—hurriedly and in her full line of sight. The next she would be erratic, almost manic, lunging at the people she’d pass around town. One night she would ask me to slap or choke her—and again I will not divulge exact particulars—when the next she would recoil from my advances or even, as became her habit, lie naked in the sun on her roof, her branches stretching high seemingly of their own accord.

I was under pressure, I mean to say. And the town, too—mothers had taken to covering their children’s eyes, and there was a petition that went quite far through the legislature, I believe, to instate a curfew during the times of day one could most expect the woman with bougainvillea in her arms to be out for a walk or to terrorize local businesses.

I decided to present some of my findings to the town in order to complete my research, my hypothesis of course still unproven. And so I told the major that it was my belief—and I did say belief—that if the bougainvillea were to be removed or eradicated, as it were, the woman’s behavior and decorum would stabilize and the town would be once again clean and orderly. Businesses would remain open and parents could raise children without fear of infection. I did not necessarily fear infection myself or even believe in its possibility—by that time the woman with bougainvillea in her arms and I had made love some fifty times; I had drank tea from her petals and licked pollen from her skin and stems and nothing whatsoever had happened to me.

First, they tried uprooting the bougainvillea from the woman’s arms. It is true I suggested the method and assisted in the procedure, as I was unafraid and largely unaffected by her (except carnally). I drugged her and set to pulling. I was sterile and followed proper protocol as outlined in my research, but due to blood loss I feared the removal of the roots entire would be lethal. The woman with bougainvillea in her arms—though I did explain the scientific motivations at play and emphasized the greater good—at this point barred me from her home.

Next I suggested a poison. The woman with bougainvillea in her arms had ceased venturing from her house but did still sun herself on the roof, which is how I saw that the stems I had surgically uprooted had resprouted with a fresh ferocity. The branches increased in not only thickness but density, so she was in effect hidden under a canopy of pink petals. The town canals began to require daily skimming, and there came then a flood of reports of pink cow’s and goat’s milk, of girls entering menses too early, of babies being born small and sickly and blind.

If the woman with bougainvillea in her arms were fed an herbicide, she may experience significant ill effects. However, I posited that a topical application may yield non-lethal results. And if it turned out to be indeed too harmful, at least then my research would benefit. My editor was calling daily by then. His panic was assuaged somewhat by my promise that, as her branches withered, I would be able to record resulting changes to her personality and behavior. (But of course only those I could see through her windows or from my vantage point atop a building across from her roof.) 

By now I had well catalogued her schedule, so I provided the mayor a timetable denoting when the woman with bougainvillea in her arms would be sunning. A small plane was scheduled to fly over and release a powder—with her body shaded under the canopy of petals, the woman with bougainvillea in her arms would be largely protected; the herbicide would primarily touch her petals. The hour came, and as her branches twisted and fanned above her to receive their sun, I waited and watched as the woman with bougainvillea in her arms was poisoned.

Her petals, as predicted, collected the powder from above. It was a powerful agent—immediately they began to brown and fall, with such speed I could hardly keep up in my note-taking. Her branches unfurled and untwisted themselves from their canopy and shivered violently, raining and sending dry brown petals into the wind—they dispersed into dust throughout town. Children began to play in piles like snow.

I wrote furiously, glancing back through my binoculars as much as I could—and then suddenly her nakedness was exposed, her branches wilting and cracking and hanging limply now from her arms. I could see her beauty pure, and I longed to touch her—though I will admit a part of me already mourned her wildness.

I sat and waited, trying to discern from my vantage any changes to her behavior—would she weep? Would she express joy or relief? Instead I observed convulsions. I rushed to her house and shimmied up onto the roof with a new strength, and I held her. Her nakedness, amplified in its movement, was distracting, it should be said. But I remembered my charge and held her head and rolled her onto her side so she would not choke on the sudden flow of vomit and bile. 

Her stems pulled away from her arms easily. What blood appeared was quickly staunched, and I was able to get her into bed, leaving what remained of the bougainvillea on the roof to decay and bleach in the sun.

I studied her as she slept. I left her only briefly to fetch groceries and essentials. After three days, she awoke. She refused to speak, but seemed unsurprised by my presence and accepted the water I proffered. I measured her fluid intake and output, which soon became nominal. And I noted a certain calmness to her disposition—none of the volatility from before. It seemed my hypothesis had been proven: the bougainvillea was the cause of her alienation. Remove the bougainvillea, and the woman would be well again, and with its removal, the threat to life in town would be neutralized. And with this, I would be free to conclude my study. But of course this is not what happened.

I awoke one morning to find the woman sitting in her kitchen, nude and sipping brown tea. She showed me her arms—and she did so proudly, it should be said—and they were sprouted all over with what looked like twigs, like she’d stuck them to her skin, but upon close inspection I saw them to be bougainvillea saplings. A few had even started budding.

“Look, look,” she repeated. And she offered me tea floating with shoots and I refused but she—and this, still, I cannot quite explain—she insisted. I drank, and across the table from me, she bloomed.

The third time, the town succeeded in killing the woman with bougainvillea in her arms. I had gotten word to the mayor and my editor, who said this was our last chance. And so this time—again, at my suggestion—we used an accelerant and flame.

In the corner, the vines creep. They have spread to the ceiling, have inched their way across to dangle just above my bed. They are already within me, I can feel them—I am rooting further and further every day. And I wonder, and I write—when I bloom, will I weep?

Megan Swenson grew up in Chandler, Arizona and currently lives in Kamloops, British Columbia with her husband and two orange tabbies, Leo and Mango. She is employed as a writing coach, freelance editor, and Leo's Emotional Support Human. She received her MFA from NYU in 2018. Her writing can be found in Walkabout Creative Arts Journal and Driftwood Press and is soon to be featured in Fruitslice.