Stop and Smell the Roses.

Mandible didn't have any teeth. He just gummed his food. He didn't mind much; it made him slow down and taste it.

Sandra opened a flower shop above a barber. The shop had large windows in the front and back, so if anyone looked up from the alley or the street they'd see the colorful arrangements looking down at them. Sandy actually had a problem with that: it took her a long time to figure out an easy way to make flowers look good from the bottom when they were for sale and from the top once they were sold.

A warm April night three highschool boys ditched their bikes at the bottom of the fire-escape stairs leading up to Sandy's shop's back entrance. They carried a brick with them. Sandy and her customers seldom used the back entrance, but she put flowers there anyway. The old building's back windows leaked the breeze, and sometimes when the wind whipped down the alley it would rattle the windows, dance with the flowers and throw open the front shutters.

The boys climbed through the broken window, spilling glass and vases and busting stems and petals. They smashed and tore for the hell of it. They left no flower unbroken, or table unturned. They took $320 with them and left the back door open.

Bill walked from his pick-up parked down the street. The early morning thunderstorm that blew off the barn doors was still gusting occasionally. He had put eight concrete blocks on both of the big wet wooden doors in an hurry to make his 7:00am appointment with Sam, his barber. Bill's horseshoe of hair didn't need trimming, but his gnarled dark grey beard was in need of some attention. As he approached Sam's shop, daylight was just beginning to rise. The storm was clearing in the east, behind him, allowing the sun to shine under the clouds and through the drizzle. He heard glass under his feet. His first thought was a broken bottle, but when he looked down toward his beat-up leather work shoes he saw the sidewalk sparkle with the sun's light sending the bright colors of wet darkened flower petals to his wrinkled eyes. The sight made him stop just as the storm gusted a torrent down the alley, through the ramshackled flower shop, past the brick and the busted displays, and out the front exploded windows. Just as the sun and rain surrounded him with a shimmering rainbow, the wind gently rained fresh flower petals on Bill's bald head.