Author's Note: Hello. (: This is my first time writing an LSoH fanfic, but I'm very into it. I would greatly appreciate R&Rs to keep me going! I must alert you to the fact that I'm basing this mostly off of the stage musical, not the movie, and I'm making the characters as I imagine them to be. So don't expect much Ellen Greene or Rick Moranis likeness in here. Oh, and yes, I know in the stage musical it is Sept.21st, but seeing as my birthday is Sept.23rd, I went with the movie's account. Thanks!
An Introduction.
All Seymour Krelborn wanted was a life – a decent one. One that didn't include sleeping in a bed that your feet stick off of while your stomach grumbles because it hasn't been filled since last Sunday and you stay awake not only from that but from your asthma going crazy from all the dirt and must. One that didn't include cleaning 'til your hands are prunes and trying to sell flowers that are far past their prime for a money-lusting man that could care less if you were ever born. One that didn't include living like a recluse; never having the mirth of friendship or the gentle love of a family or even the simple pleasures of holidays. A life worth living - that's all he'd ever wanted for the twenty-two years he had been breathing. The life he was given was hardly enough to say he was 'alive', for Seymour was an underdog of society, even for Skid Row's standards. That, you see, is a very lowly existence indeed.
It just so happened that day, September 23rd to be precise, that Seymour Krelborn would unknowingly be given a life. What he also didn't know was that this life was out to do him in, I suppose, as most lives do. And it had to be fed. A lot.
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He had been walking through the wholesale flower district that day, the only place he went out to once in awhile, other than Schmendrick's. There sky was clear and the warm sunlight made the autumn day pleasant, which he was glad for. The sun glistened off his dishwater-brown mess of choppy hair, which he had obviously cut himself, and the crisp wind snuck its way into the tear in his kaki slacks. At least his dingy, white button-up and frumpy sweater vest, striped in the ugliest of shades, kept the heat close to his torso. Behind his thick, black glasses, Seymour's dimly teal eyes took in the bright scenery of sidewalk vendors and rows of greenery. He only wished that his shop could have such thriving horticulture.
One vendor caught his attention in particular. With a loping stride, his old Chucks carried him across the potholed street to a storefront the color of sun-ripened tomatoes. An old Chinese man, complete with a thin ponytail on his chin, squinted up at him and smiled a toothless grin,
"You seek strange plant. Come here for hobby."
Seymour hadn't noticed him until then, and turned around with suspicion and wide eyes. He quickly gained excitement in his meek voice,
"Um, yes, yes I do. A-and yes I am. Do you have any?"
The man gestured with a bony digit to a row of leaflings. They seemed as ordinary as any plants he'd seen all day.
Seymour smirked halfheartedly.
"Heh. Thanks anyway," he said, shoved his hands in his pockets, and walked to the curb. It was then, while he waited for cars to pass, that Seymour Krelborn's life was preparing to take an unexpected twist.