The Rose Garden

I was nine at the time. At the back of our house was a park. BTW our house had two gates. One at the front which opened to our street and the other at the back which led to the park. At the far end, to the left of the park was a SpookyStreet with broken stairs.

  

We were a group of three girls: My sister Khadijah, Our friend Laiba and I. One evening we decided to invade the SpookyStreet. There was a graveyard in front of our back-gate which connected to the SpookyStreet. Rumors were that a fat lady monster lived up there.  

The BigBoys in the park were playing cricket so nobody bothered to stop three little girls making their way up the broken stairs to the monster’s den. We looked around for any sign of ghosts but there was nothing of the sort.

     “There’s no monster here! It’s just trees!” I said and signaled to go back to our world. 

     “Wait! Look at that!” said Laiba, pointing at something.

     “Is that a Swaaaaaaan!” I heard Khadijah’s surprised tone.

I turned around and saw a ROSE GARDEN. It was HANDSOME OUT, BEAUTIFUL IN. The huge black gates were wide open, their designs antique and inviting. I was the oldest but that didn’t stop me from intruding someone’s private property. The others followed without question.  

 

The garden was filled with white, yellow, orange, pink and red roses. It was heaven! I noticed a few roses simply scissored off, so I simply plucked the blossomed ones. 

 

As we happily took lives of roses, a worker wheeled in our direction on his bicycle and advised us to leave the garden at once. But we payed no heed to his words and kept on doing the
     “JUST WHAT ARE YOU BRATS DOING HERE!!” shouted a lady. 

We looked up and saw a fat lady. She wore no dubatta on her head or any to cover her bosom. We froze on our spots, thinking she would report us to the police. We had this idea drilled in our minds(from news channels) that rich people don’t worry to cover themselves and are the most unjust people on Earth.

     “DIDN’T YOUR PARENTS TEACH YOU ANYTHING?” she roared. 

And then it dawned on me. THE RUMOR. Laiba nudged.
     “Where’s Khadijah?” she asked.

I looked around and found roses on the floor where Khadijah should’ve been. BAM. I was convinced that she had been taken to the police.  Grabbed Laiba’s hand(roses secured in my left hand) and flashed out of there. Running like the wind, we reached the backgate and found it locked. So we took the long way and reached the front-gate and found it locked too! 

     “We’ve to climb!” I said, panting.

We climbed in our way to safety which we should have done in the first place! Before I could tell Ammee that Khadijah’s been sent to prison for killing roses, we found Khadijah sitting in the lawn.

     “I was scared and you guys just stood there like stone columns,” she replied to our confused faces.

Lesson: Don’t pluck beautiful things, just scissor them off…