So you’re out for a countryside stroll, basking in the warm sun and fresh air. You stop to pick a few flowers for the new vase in the kitchen. You spot a small daisy, perfectly shaped and white as cream, which you know would look lovely tucked behind your wife’s ear. And as you bend down to pluck it from the earth, a two-foot-tall, 40-pound rat leaps from the nearby bushes and chews a large hole in your face.
You chase the thing away and spend the next month shuttling between the hospital and the plastic surgeon, who tells you matter-of-factly that a nose isn’t really necessary anyway. Still haunted by the attack, you acquire a fearsome companion — a young fire-breathing dragon — and, on doctor’s orders, head to the coast to convalesce. You string up a fishing pole and park your chair on the dock, cold beverage in hand and little dragon at your side. The rising sun only sweetens your bliss, until something terribly strong takes your bait and yanks the pole from your hands. You see something streak through the water toward you, and then you’re in the water, debris all around, the dock shattered and gone, a monstrous serpent towering 20 feet above. You pass out, to wake hours later on the shore, beside the half-eaten and fly-covered carcass of your fiery little pal. For once you’re thankful you no longer have a nose.
Six years later. You’ve barricaded yourself and your family in an underground lab, where you work to create the ultimate fighting monster. With such a creature under your control, you’ll never be afraid or threatened again. Inspired by The Fly, you merge flesh with machine and create tortured beasts which even Dr. Moreau would have called twisted. Predictably, they turn on you, and you flee, leaving your wife and children to their gruesome fates.
You return to your old home, in your old town. It’s where you were happiest. The house is empty now, full of dust and dead dreams. The vase still sits barren on the kitchen table. In it you leave a small white daisy, and then you walk deep into the countryside to a welcome death.