Seeds - 2016 Fall Fiction Contest Winner
“Don’t you dare run out back to your mother,” my father warns me. “You know how she gets.”
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The wallpaper’s floral. The kitchen is bright.
I pat down my pink dress, and run out of sight.
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I make my way to the field way back in our yard, which is surrounded by pine trees and other trees that still have no name to me that grow black and red berries in the summer time. The grass between my destination and our house is plush, green, and newly wet with morning dew. My polished, black shoes squeak as I skip and my tight, blonde curls bounce around my head. I smile. It’s such a nice morning to be outside.
I skip right past my mother, who’s tending to her garden. She’s here on most days, as long as the weather is nice, tearing up the ground and ripping out weeds. She often wears a large-brimmed hat to keep her cool and protect her skin. She’s down on her knees at the moment, leaning over the flowers. It’s doubtful that she even knows I’ve passed by; just the way father would want it.
There’s a plant out in the field. It’s right in the center. My mother didn’t plant this one, but here it is. I’ve watched it grow from my upstairs bedroom window, day after day, for the last several weeks. It grew taller than me by at least three feet. Father thinks it’s strange, but mother thinks it’s beautiful. It’s got some kind of red flowers growing all over it that almost seem to sparkle in the sunlight. It’s beautiful, indeed.
I come up alongside the plant and examine it closer, for the first time. It’s an intricate web of vines, thorns, leaves, and flowers. I wonder for a moment if my parents know about the thorns. Would my mother still find it beautiful then? Would my father cut it down so that it couldn’t hurt me? I reach up and finger one of the red flowers, pushing its petals down. They snap back up into place when I lift my fingers off. I smile and pluck the whole flower, raising it to my nose. It somehow smells sweet and spicy at the same time. I inhale deeply.
The plant retaliates.
-
I look like a doll. They treat me as such.
Like what’s on the inside doesn’t matter so much.
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The vines move. They wrap themselves around my pale legs, the thorns digging into my skin. I try to wiggle free, but they hold me still, standing in place. Holes are punched into my skin and blood starts to drip out of them. It travels down my legs, staining my crisp, white, ruffled socks.
I wiggle again, but the vines only tighten, so I drop the flower in my hand and begin to scream for my mother. My voice is high, screechy, panicked, the way a voice should be when one is in danger. I let a few tears build up in my eyes and then overflow until they’re leaving tracks down my cheeks. The plant pulls and I topple over. I’m on the ground now, grasping for dirt and grass. My dress is ruined, stained with green and brown. I’m dirty.
My mother truly hears me on my third yell. She looks up in my direction. When she sees me she drops any gardening tools in her hands and runs over. It feels like the space between her garden and our field has increased. It takes her too long to get to me. The plant could have eaten me by now.
My mother’s at my side now and she’s grabbing at the vines. She peels them off of my legs and sets me free. Once the vines are away from me, though, they are latching onto my mother instead. They don’t only go for her legs. They go for her whole body. Soon enough she’s so tangled up that it would be impossible for her to break free. I step away and stand off to the side, watching as the plant devours my mother whole.
She’s gone in under a minute, even though she puts up a decent fight. The plant has pulled her into its dark center, scratching and tearing at her skin in the process, and she flails her arms and tries to grab onto whatever she can reach. There’s nothing left of her to see once it’s over, but the leaves are dripping with fresh blood.
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But something’s not right. I’m not what they wanted.
I make them uneasy. I make them feel haunted.
I guess it’s that maybe I’m not just a toy.
I refuse to look pretty, or act proper and coy.
-
The sky has grown darker since I first stepped outside. It’s cloudier now, which is a real shame. My feet hit the ground one after the other and carry me toward my house as fast as they possibly can. I look like a wreck, no longer proper and pristine. I run past my mother’s garden and take a quick look while I can. It’s filled with vibrant, pretty flowers in just about every color of the rainbow. Such things full of life don’t belong there anymore.
I run around to the front side of the house and barge in through the front door. My father is still sitting at the kitchen table, right where I left him. He’s got a cup of coffee off to his right that’s still steaming hot and a newspaper in his hands. He flips through it slowly. I don’t think he’s heard the door open.
“Father!” I yell. “Father! The plant! The Plant ate Mother!”
“Plants don’t eat people, Hon.”
He hasn’t even looked up.
“Father! Mother is gone! The plant attacked me and she came to save me. The plant ate her!”
He sighs dramatically, like this is some kind of inconvenience to him, like I’m playing some childish game. It’s when he sets the paper down that his eyes widen to the point of almost bulging out of his head. He scans me, up and down, several times.
“What on Earth have you done to yourself?” he asks.
I detect a trace of anger in his voice. Mother and father have always hated when I get my dresses dirty. Never mind the fact that I’m scratched up and covered in blood. He probably thinks it’s fake. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s been the case. I let more tears stream down my face, warming my skin in thin lines down to my chin. They drip off onto my collar.
“Father, the plant!”
He gets up and storms out the door. I follow behind him. When he rounds the corner of the house and sees that my mother is no longer at her garden the panic starts to sink in. He calls out to her, but gets no response in return. When he looks my way my hand instinctively flies up to point him in the direction of the plant. It’s moving around now. The wind blows it back and forth.
Father runs out to the field with me still trailing behind. Once he reaches the plant his hand flies up to cover his mouth. He examines the blood, which has now pooled on the ground, but still drips from the leaves. He touches it. He smears his fingers together watching them grow more and more red, and then, without any words or sounds, he lunges at the plant.
I stand back and watch as he tears at its vines and yanks out the red flowers. They drop to his feet at the ground and pile up in the small puddles of blood. There’s the sound of a faraway scream. It sounds just like my mother’s. Father is crying now, and dripping blood of his own. He’s all scratched up as he attempts to dig even farther.
The plant starts to wrap its vines around my father’s legs. Then it moves on to his arms, until he’s just as tangled up as my mother was. He falls to the ground and begins clawing at the grass and dirt. He kicks. He squirms around. None of it really matters, though. In no time at all he’s disappearing into the darkness at the center of the plant. It shrouds him in vines and leaves until all that’s left to see is his blood dripping from the branches and mixing with my mother’s.
-
It’s been this way, always, as long as I remember.
Way back to the day I was born in December.
That winter was icy. It lasted too long.
It was well below zero, the day I came along.
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I stand still for a few minutes, staring at the plant. It has finally stopped moving. The flowers on the ground at its base are soaked a dark red that starts to look brown as it dries. They captivate my attention for another minute or two, and then I begin to walk back to the house.
A breeze plays with my hair and my gaze shifts to the sky. It’s gray, cloudy, dark, like a storm is on the way. I keep walking and walking until soon enough I’m at the front door of our two-story house. I open the door and walk through the living room, not once glancing over in the direction of the kitchen.
Past the living room is a hallway. At the end of the hallways is a large, wooden door. When the doors open they reveal raggedy steps that lead down to the basement. I descend them one by one until I’m standing on the cold, cement floor. In the middle of the room there’s a light bulb dandling from the ceiling. There’s no use in turning it on at the moment, though. Enough light pours in through the small window that I can still make out where everything is.
In the back of the basement sits a pile of boxes stacked higher than even the tips of my fingers can reach. They add to the cluttered mess that is the rest of the room. I walk over to one and pull it open a crack. Inside is a doll. She has blonde hair, just like me. It’s long and it flows in waves all the way down to the middle of her back. Her eyes are blue like mine, like the eyes of both of my parents. She’s dressed in a blue and white dress, a ball gown to be more exact.
I take her over to the middle of the room and plop down directly in the center of the floor. It’s my time to play. With my legs crossed, my hand slips into my pocket to find her hairbrush. I’ve always carried it with me. It’s a pale shade of purple and made out of plastic. It’s just the right size for her.
The winds pick up in the background and the trees whip back and forth. There’s a howl from a far that fills the silence. The tips of my fingers graze the brush, one side flat, one side bristled, a flat handle on the end.
When I pull my hand with the brush out of my pocket something falls to my side. It’s a package of seeds. A few of them even spill out and scatter apart on the floor. I brush them out of my way and get to brushing my doll’s hair, while the song in my head finally begins to spill from my lips.
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“Today it is sunny, light floods the stairs.
It’s sunshine and rainbows, but who really cares?
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Father was in the kitchen. Mother was in the yard.
I was in the back, feeling broken and scarred.
The trap had been set. My part had been played.
I got the job done, though a long time delayed.
I called to my mother, who ran to my side.
I called to my father who, for his love, did abide.
They came one-by-one to set their girl free.
As I stepped to the side, never once caught, indeed.”
