The wound was red, but she didn’t see one of the twisted black roots sticking out and when she probed it, she couldn’t feel a bump under the surface.
“Good,” Sylvia said under her breath. “One less thing I have to pull out of my body.”
Sylvia put her leg back straight, tilting it to the side so that she could get at the back with her fingers. Three purplish bumps pressed out against her pale skin.
She grasped the root poking out of the bump closest to her knee and applied steady pressure. This bulb didn’t pull back against her fingers. It slid out of her with the same amount of effort that the one on the back of her neck had.
Sylvia held the bulb in front of her face, frowning.
It wasn’t smoking.
None of the holes were appearing.
What the hell?
Sylvia was about to toss it onto the tile when the flower bloomed right in front of her face. Feeling the root try to grab hold of her fingers, she shook it loose from her hand with a scream.
It flew through the air, turning end over end, right for the water at her feet.
10
Sylvia pulled her knees up to her chest right before it plopped into the tub. The flower vibrated beneath the water like fat thrown into a hot pan.
The water bubbled and steam rose. Soon, the water stilled and the flower was no more. There was nothing left. No bits of root, no flower petals, nothing.
Sylvia shook her head. “So only the inside is vulnerable to water. Wonderful.”
Sylvia didn’t chance another accident. She pulled the remaining two from her leg, tossing them onto the wet tile and waiting for them to open before deluging them with handfuls of water.
She did the same with the six on her back and one of the two on her ass. She left the two in her neck.
When she pulled out the last one from her ass, she dropped it into the tub on purpose after stepping out. The bulb sunk to the bottom of the tub, gently swaying as the water rolled back and forth from Sylvia’s departure.
She watched what happened, or rather what didn’t. The bloom didn’t open. Whether there was an intelligence that knew it was surrounded by water or it was just a survival mechanism, Sylvia didn’t know and didn’t care.
The bloom wasn’t opening and that was all that mattered.
Not bothering to dry off, Sylvia headed to the kitchen. She grabbed two empty coffee tins from above the stove where Mamere always kept them. Mamere poured grease into them after frying something.
Heading back to the bathroom, Sylvia’s thoughts drifted to the cooking lesson she’d received at the hands of Mamere. The lesson she’d never told Papere about.
When Sylvia had been little, she always wanted to be Mamere’s helper in the kitchen. One day when Mamere was napping—she always napped after watching her daily dose of Days of Our Lives—Sylvia snuck into the kitchen to make Mamere breakfast in bed.
It was really lunch on couch, but Sylvia didn’t know any better. She got the big pot up on the stove and filled it to the very top with vegetable oil before clicking the burner.
She was very quiet so as not to wake Mamere.
When the oil felt hot enough—Sylvia held her hand over the pot like she’d seen Mamere do—and looked hot enough too with the little clouds of what she thought was steam rolling off the top of the hot oil, she dragged a chair over to the fridge. After hopping up onto the seat of the chair and opening the freezer, Sylvia pulled out a whole frozen chicken.
Mamere had fried chicken legs, wings, and breasts, but she’d never fried a whole chicken before.
Sylvia would surprise her.
Dragging the chair over to the stove, Sylvia dropped the whole frozen chicken into the pot.
To say what happened next was a disaster wouldn’t do the word disaster justice.
The pot erupted as the displaced oil surged up and over the edges of the pot, dripping down to the burner where it burst into flame. Standing next to it sounded like standing next to a roll of Black Cats being lit on New Year’s Eve.
Sylvia screamed, as much at the noise and the flames as the burns on her arms where the oil splattered.
Terrified, she stepped away from the burning stove, stepping right off the back of the chair.
She fell to the linoleum of the kitchen floor, crying out as her ankle twisted under all of her weight.
Mamere burst into the kitchen, eyes wide and teeth bared.
She looked at Sylvia crying on the linoleum and sneered. “Oughta let you burn up for this.”
Mamere turned her back and walked away. Sylvia thought she was being left to burn alive and screamed at Mamere to help her.
Mamere kept walking.
11
“Mamere, help me,” Sylvia cried.
Mamere didn’t turn around. She kept walking away, but she never left the kitchen. Instead she opened the pantry and pulled out a box of baking soda. She walked back to the stove and smothered the fire with the baking soda.
Sylvia looked up at Mamere like she was a conquering hero, the tears of fear turning into tears of happiness that she wasn’t going to be burned alive and that she had such a brave Mamere.
Mamere closed her eyes and nodded at Sylvia in a knowing way. Sylvia stretched her arms out to the woman. Wanting her to take the pain in her ankle and on her arms away.
“Jus’ a sec,” Mamere said as she pulled on a pair of oven mitts and turned away again. She picked up the pot and moved it to a different burner.
Sylvia watched Mamere as she paused for a moment and then jostled the pot hard enough so that a big wave of oil rolled over the edge and into the air.
Sylvia watched the oil fall toward the linoleum, confused as to why it was falling toward her outstretched ankle. The hot oil splashed against her ankle and shin and Sylvia screamed as the skin sizzled.
Mamere was on her then. So fast that Sylvia didn’t even know what was happening. Mamere grabbed her shirt collar and ripped her up off the linoleum. She picked her up so hard that her balled fist caught Sylvia on the underside of her jaw and Sylvia’s teeth clicked.
Fresh pain blossomed in her mouth and she tasted blood.
Mamere pressed her nose against Sylvia’s, their foreheads touching.
“I’m sorry,” Sylvia cried out, pushing against Mamere. “I’m sorry, Mamere. I’m sorry.”
“Not sorry enough,” Mamere said, dragging Sylvia by the collar of her shirt over to the stove.
Sylvia put her hands out to stop herself from falling into the pot. The hot oil still on the stove burned the palms of her hands and she screamed as Mamere brought the hand not balled up with the front of her shirt to the back of her head. Mamere guided her head toward the hot oil still in the pan, little islands of baking soda rocking on the surface.
Mamere’s hot breath blew into Sylvia’s ear. “You ever fuck up my kitchen like this again and I’ll put your face in the oil next time. See what a pretty girl you end up then.”
Sylvia had blinked away her tears and the one thing she never forgot was the crackling sounds her tears made as they fell into pot.
12
Back in the bathroom, Sylvia shook her head, looking at the still submerged bulb. It was still pristine. Nothing wrong with it.
Sylvia set the coffee cans on the edge of the bathtub and fished the submerged bulb out of the water by the root, tossing it away from herself on the bathroom tile. The bulb bounced and bloomed, catching itself on its petals.
Sylvia waited for the root to embed itself into the tile.
The root embedded itself, but it didn’t go for the tile. It hooked into the drywall and lifted itself up to face Sylvia.
Sylvia snorted, not really sure why she would be surprised at this. She shook her head and started dousing the flower with water. It disintegrated away into nothingness like all the others had.
She nodded at this before filling both of the coffee cans up with water. She reached around to the back of her neck and pulled out the two bulbs there by the roo
ts.
She dropped a single bulb into each can of water and sealed them both. With that done, she turned to look in the mirror, checking her neck, back, and legs for any bulbs that she might have missed.
Once she was satisfied that all the bulbs were gone, she got into the shower and turned it on, allowing the spray to shoot into the holes left by the vacated bulbs. She rubbed soap over the holes, irrigating them with hot, soapy water. When her pinkie slipped inside one of the holes left by a bulb, she bent over and retched. After her stomach stopped heaving, she glanced down at the porcelain of the bathtub, and saw black drops splashing down on the white porcelain. Sylvia decided it would be better to finish up with her eyes shut.
Sylvia stayed in the shower for thirty minutes, letting the scalding hot water clean her.
She stepped out from the shower, and dried off. It would be easier to get dressed if she was dry, even if she was planning on getting right back into the shower.
Sylvia pulled on her clothes and started going through the closet.
All of Papere’s clothes were still hanging there. That alone made Sylvia frown. The lack of dust on the clothes made her teeth grind.
She knew Mamere. Mamere hated cleaning more than anything else in the world. There was no way that Mamere would dust off Papere’s clothes for a whole year. She would’ve just tossed all of his stuff in a closet and left it there.
That meant that Papere hadn’t been “missing”, a.k.a. dead, for a whole year.
Sylvia wondered how long Papere had been out there, mounted to the post like a scarecrow, and her mouth fell open.
What she’d thought in the beginning wasn’t even close to the truth.
Papere hadn’t gotten trapped inside the greenhouse and he surely didn’t mount himself to the post and just wait for the carnivorous room to twist into life and devour him.
“No,” Sylvia said to herself. “No, someone strapped you to those posts. Someone put that mask on your face and that coat on your back. Someone...”
Sylvia was quiet for a moment. Thinking things over. Mamere was frail when Sylvia left home so there was no way that ten years later she would be strong enough to lift Papere against the posts long enough to mount him there.
So who would’ve helped Mamere?
Who would have a reason?
Sylvia didn’t have the faintest.
From the closet, Sylvia pulled out a long sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt, a light jacket, and a heavy jacket. She pulled out three pairs of pants and three pairs of socks. She also pulled out Papere’s steel toe boots. On the top shelf of the closet she found a heavy beanie, a Kangol, and a trucker hat made of mesh on the sides and back and foam on the forehead. There were also a pair of gloves. They’re were driving gloves though, fingerless and perforated.
Sylvia shrugged. “Better than nothing.”
Looking at all the clothing on the bed, she frowned. She was missing something to cover her face and protect her eyes.
She went back to the closet, searching for sunglasses or better, safety goggles. She found neither.
She didn’t find any sort of face covering either.
She pulled out a chambray work shirt and tossed that on the bed before heading back to the kitchen where she grabbed a pair of kitchen shears. She looked for duct tape, but couldn’t find any sort of tape at all.
“Oh well,” she mumbled.
She took the shears back to the bedroom and got to work cutting eye holes out of the back of the chambray shirt. She held it up to her face when she finished, making sure that the holes weren’t too close together or too far apart. They were a little close so she made them a tiny bit bigger. She tried out the holes again and decided that they would do the job.
The digital clock read six thirty AM and early morning light filtered in through the windows. Sylvia sighed and walked out of the bedroom. She went straight for the front door.
She pulled the door open and frowned.
The huge mound of flowers had moved. It still surrounded the house, but now the dusky black flowers covered the steps up to the porch as well as the entire porch. Three separate groups of the dusky flowers opened.
Sylvia stared at what looked like a giant black skull with red eyes and nose holes. She waited for a mouth of red close to her feet to open up and start talking.
Shaking her head no, Sylvia watched the flowers sway back and forth.
Looking past the porch and the huge mound of dusky flowers, Sylvia saw her car, sitting all alone, no flowers in sight.
Good.
Sylvia headed back towards the kitchen. She wanted to push the fridge out on the porch, but she knew it wouldn’t fit through the front door. Sylvia started to open the back door to see if there was any way she could get around to the side of the house and get at the hose. She only got the door open a crack before slamming it shut.
The back door was covered with dusky black blooms, one of them opening in her face. She heard the sharp pistil twack into the wood of the door jam before the door slammed. From the corner of her eye she saw several things before she slammed the door.
The backyard was a sea of black. Where there had originally been several mounds, now the whole yard was swarming in the black flowers.
Sylvia also saw something that made cold sweat poke out on her lower back: the door to the greenhouse was cracked open a whole foot.
Sylvia took several deep breaths, trying not to think about the black and white striped plant. Grey light angled in through the kitchen window.
“At least they aren’t covering the whole house,” Sylvia mumbled to herself. “Oh... OH!”
Sylvia sprinted the three steps it took to make it over to the kitchen window. There was a mound of the black flowers outside of the window, but when Sylvia crawled up onto the edge of the sink so she’d have a steeper angle to look down, she saw that there was a tiny semi-circle of mud right against the house.
Right under the dripping faucet that Papere never cared enough to fix. A green hose attached to the spigot and extended down into the flowers, but Sylvia couldn’t see where the coils of the green hose even were.
She didn’t think about what to do next. She grabbed all the pots from under the cabinet to the left of the stove and started filling them with water. When each was filled, she lifted it, grunting as water sloshed over the sides of the heavy pots as flashbacks of Mamere and the hot grease came to life again.
Sylvia pressed her face to the bottom part of the windowsill, looking up to check the underside of the eaves for the black flowers. She shivered when she realized that the black and white spider plant could just as easily be lurking up there. Sylvia grabbed the surprisingly light Yellow Pages from the top of the fridge and started wadding its pages into balls. When she had ten paper balls wadded up, she checked all the angles on the window again, searching for the spider plant.
When she was sure that it wasn’t lurking just outside the window, waiting to pounce, Sylvia pulled the window up and got to work. She threw one of the paper balls at the closest of the flowers. The wadded up paper hit several of the closed blooms and they opened along with all the other flowers in a one foot radius of the paper ball.
What was interesting was that the plants didn’t attack the paper ball. They didn’t seem to care about the ball at all. The blooms were all angled up at her face.
Not wasting any more time, Sylvia threw the remaining paper balls out at the flowers, opening the blooms of all of the plants closest to the spigot that she could. Sylvia stuck her head out and looked along the walls of the house. They were clear.
“Good,” Sylvia said. “Let’s get to work.”
Sylvia shifted the biggest pot to the windowsill along with several big cups. She looked out over the top of the water at all those red faces, staring up at her, lightly swaying in a nonexistent breeze, looking at what was hopefully their next meal.
“Wrong,” Sylvia said before dumping the huge pot of water on the closest flowers. When it was empty, she grabbed the
large cups, flinging water out in an arc to hit the flowers that were open farther back.
Some of the flowers closed their blooms before the water hit them, but most took the water full on in the red.
Sylvia cried out a yelp of victory as she watched all the smoking plants die.
Sylvia worked fast as the sun climbed higher in the sky, alternating tossing balls of paper at the plants and dousing them with water.
She quickly realized that they weren’t as intelligent as she’d made them out to be. They all seemed to work based on several survival mechanisms. They opened due to movement or vibration, maybe even sound, and they tracked their prey, paying little attention to things that weren’t alive. Whether that was heat or movement-based, Sylvia didn’t know.
These mechanisms ensured their survival in the wild, wherever that was, but also ensured their destruction at the hands of an intelligent species.
Once there was a huge muddy area surrounding the faucet and hose, Sylvia shut the window. She headed back to the bedroom and nodded to herself as she looked at the clothes she’d laid out. She checked the two coffee cans, happy to see that both bulbs were still submerged at the bottom of the can.
The hose was too far down the side of the house to reach without someone holding her legs, so she was going to go right out the kitchen window and get it herself. That was the plan.
Sylvia sat down on the bed and started pulling her feet through the pant legs and froze. Morning light filled the bedroom, a bright, skewed rectangle window of light outlined on the wall next to the bathroom.
At the center of that skewed rectangle was a large shadow that took up most of the window.
A shadow shaped like a starfish that had too many long, narrow legs.
13
Sylvia froze.
Had the shadow been there when she walked into the bedroom?
She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think it had.
Sylvia inched her head and shoulders around. What she saw chilled her more than a house surrounded by the dusky black flowers.
Darkness Blooms Page 4
