Minnie stepped out into the fading sunlight, the door to the pharmacy swinging shut behind her. As she walked to her car, she thumbed across her phone's screen, pulling up her calendar app and marking another task complete. 

"Pick up your girlie skittles." Her reminder to go pick up her meds. You'd think she'd be able to remember something that important, but Minnie often liked to joke that her brain was like Swiss cheese; stuff just fell out of it sometimes. She was fairly certain she'd forget her own name if she hadn't picked it herself.

She slid into the driver's seat of her car, pulling the door shut with a thud as she tucked the bag with her medicine in it into her glove compartment. She put her keys in the ignition, her hand wrapped around them, and-

-her phone rang.

She was midway through twisting the key in the ignition when it happened. It wasn't until she noticed that her car wasn't running that she realized her hand had already flown from her keys and picked up her phone. She processed the fact that she's answered her phone right around the time that she lifted it to her ear and gave a tentative, slightly confused "Yes?" to whoever has called her.

Then the person spoke, and Minnie noticed how deep and rough their voice was. It was the last thought Minnie would have for some time.

"The summer rains fall."

Just four words. Four simple, perfect words, spoken by a voice she knew without knowing, were all it took. Minnie blinked, her eyes fluttering closed for a fraction of a second as she fell into the void and stopped existing. The person she knew herself as simply dissolved away, forgotten, as White Rose opened her eyes.

White Rose wasn't a second personality inside of Minnie's mind. White Rose wasn't a person, and if she was, it was only as a technicality; White Rose referred to something that was, technically, a human being, and therefore a person.

But White Rose didn't actually exist. She was a name, a face for the tool that had been buried deep within Minnie's mind. She was a vacuum, a label for the blissful nothing that remained when Minnie heard those four magical words, and everything she was fell away.

Minnie was always so burdened. Stress, insecurity, self-doubt. Her mind was cluttered, messy, chaotic. But White Rose knew only peace. Comfort. Freedom. Freedom from doubt, from choice, from herself. White Rose didn't have any of that. She wouldn't have even understood the concepts. She didn't know how.

White Rose didn't know how to worry about the future or reflect on the past; the future didn't exist. The past existed only when it was necessary for her to obey. As soon as it wasn't, it disappeared into the same void that consumed everything else.

White Rose didn't know how to think, or question, or decide how she felt about about anything; obedience was easier without any thoughts. And Minnie, when she was allowed to wake, would think and feel exactly what she was told to.

White Rose didn't know if she was doing the right thing; she was incapable of asking the question. The right thing was whatever the voice told her to do. The wrong thing didn't exist.

She knew only two things. She knew that the voice commanded her, and she knew that she obeyed. There was nothing else.

Her free hand dropped limply to her lap as the tension left every muscle, every bone in her body. Her eyes stared out at nothing as her head lolled forward, barely enough strength left to keep it from dropping completely. Only the arm holding her phone kept its strength, the phone pressed firmly to her ear as her mouth spoke of someone else's accord.

"And the flower blooms and obeys."

"In a moment, you will awaken, and you will receive a text message on your phone with an address. You will immediately drive to this location; you will not question why. When you arrive, you will park your car in the alley behind the building. There will be a door there. You will knock on that door and wait."

"White Rose understands and obeys." The words came automatically. They were little more than a programmed alert, a way for the voice to know that her mind had accepted its commands. Not that there was ever any doubt. She always accepted her commands. She wasn't capable of anything else.

"Awaken now," the voice said. The line quickly went dead. White Rose blinked her eyes rapidly, and Minnie glanced around her car. She must have dozed off. Weird, she slept pretty good the night before. Oh well, time to get ho-

-her phone buzzed.

She didn't recognize the number, but she decided to check it anyways. The message was simple, an address somewhere downtown. She didn't know exactly where, but the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to know. Needed to know, in fact.

Before she could question it, she was driving. Instead of driving home, like she knew she probably should, she put the address into her navigation and made her way there. She wasn't sure why she was doing it, but something inside her needed to know what was there.

After about twenty minutes, she found herself in front of a pretty nondescript building on the edge of downtown. Nothing about it would have caught her eye. And yet as she came up on it, she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something there. Something she needed to see.

There was an alley beside the building. Before she could think about how bad an idea it was, she threw on her turn signal and pulled into the alley, following it as it turned to the left and dead ended between three blocks of buildings. Looking over at the mystery building, she saw a door in the back wall.

She didn't question why she was going inside until she had already gotten out of her car, walked up, and knocked on the door. Why the hell was she even here? She didn't know this number, she had no idea where she was, and now she was knocking on a random door in an alley? This isn't like her, she's not this dumb, why is she doing this?

And yet she didn't walk away. She knew she should, but she didn't. She waited until she heard the click of a lock being undone, until the door swung open, and a man in a black suit and sunglasses stepped out.

She tried to ask who he was. Why she was here. Where here even was in the first place. But the words never came out.

"The summer rains fall."

Minnie's eyes fluttered, then opened, wide and dull, as White Rose stared straight ahead. White Rose wasn't concerned with where she was, or why. White Rose knew exactly what she was to do. She knew it without knowing.

"And the flower blooms and obeys."

The man stepped aside, and commanded her to enter. If she was still here, Minnie would have run. She would have run to her car as fast as possible, blocked the number, and gone to the police. But Minnie wasn't here. Minnie had been consumed by the perfect, calming void, and now White Rose stood in her place. And White Rose had no thoughts, no concerns, no will of her own to act on. White Rose did what she was told. And she had been told to enter.

White Rose obeyed.