Sundew

Chapter 12

Every instinct told Sunny to get away from Gary. To let him die and not know if his suspicions at that moment were correct. Olivia ran in from the hallway behind Sunny, two other patients following closely behind her.

"Get away from him, Swanson! It-" But it was too late. Another primordial roar of pain choked itself out of Gary, and then a wet tearing sound, like paper being ripped in half while doused in red paint, became most audible, overpowering all other noises in the room. A lengthy, tube-like thing ruptured its way out of Gary's chest—ruptured like a hairworm bursting its way out of a mantis—spraying blood all about the floor. The worm-like creature moved its head all about randomly, as if scanning the environment for something. As Gary stilled, life leaving him, the most peculiar thing happened. Plants. Floras of many a kind and color blossomed out of Gary's body like a Nat. Geo. timelapse Sunny had once seen of a growing pitcher plant. Actually, pitcher plants and dionaeas were prevalent among the plants growing in Gary's remains. Sunny looked closer, and saw the plants were more than just that. If you looked close as sunny did in that moment, you would see the plants had little versions of Gary's head built into their very anatomy. The heads had tube-like appendages jammed up their noses and down their throats. The eyes of these heads darted about frantically and, for a moment, Sunny questioned just how dead Gary actually was. He also noted the flower petals were not petals at all, but baby hands molded together in the shapes of petals. All these features, the heads and the fetus-like hands, and yet they weren't made of human skin. They were made of the same waxy material you'd find on a flower stem.

The worm-like creature looked up to Olivia and the two remaining patients with her, then down toward Sunny, looking him down without eyes, but perhaps knowing Sunny could sense it was looking at him, Upon closer inspection, Sunny noticed the thing wasn't a worm at all—not like the tapeworms from that book he read, The Troop—instead it was the oversized leaf of a cape sundew, moving its alien, slimy red tentacles like a malformed hellslug with a million eyestocks. It lunged at Sunny, but he managed to evade it just as it got within a few feet of him, hitting the ground with a loud, chunky splat! Sunny looked down to his side. At first he thought the thing might've unintentionally killed itself due to the force of lunging at him and it's already-fragile body, but then another thought occurred to him.

It can't move. The adhesive it uses to stick flies must be gluing it to the floor.

That, however, wasn't the end of Sunny's horror. Another wet, sucking, ripping noise emanated from what used to be Gary's stomach. Dozens of bloody, phytoid fetuses began crawling from the plant abomination that was formerly a corpse. Each head was red as an apple and malformed to look like a Nepenthes Rajah. They wailed as all children do upon leaving the womb. The fetus-creatures had no eyes Sunny could see, but the wails escaping their head-mouths was hateful enough to inform Sunny that, for the few seconds they were now alive, they lived in perpetual agony. God's punishment for their crime of mere existence. The pained screaming and sight of the fetuses terrified Sunny, not simply because of the abominations, but that recurring sense of déjà vu—the terrible familiarity.

One of the things opened its head mouth, shooting a projectile of mucus toward Olivia. Olivia dodged, as did one other patient, but it landed on the second patient who'd been standing behind Olivia. Within seconds, Sunny observed, moss crept up the guy's foot on which the stuff had landed, then over his crotch, down his other leg, and up his torso, flowers growing up his body with the same rapidity. In place of a pistil, each flowering had a gaping, lipless human mouth. Yellowed teeth gnashed and bit at the air as the mouths expelled pink fog. Some of the mouths didn't even do that. Some of them just screamed and screamed like a disobedient child in the marketplace.

"Run, Olivia!" Said the patient who hadn't been struck with the acid, a girl who was shorter and far younger than Sunny—an enviable age where your body is yet to start failing you. "Run like hell!" Sunny, despite not being the intended recipient of the advice, felt his legs pistoning. They rocketed out beneath him as he followed behind Olivia and the patient, like a stampeding horse. Vines crept after them with surprising speed, reaching tropical, multicolored fingers to reach out and make him immortal, to stubbornly refuse his own mortality as they did Gary.

Wait! Please, Jonathan... We need you... come back... Come home and you will be nourished by us. Please, come home...

Sunny ran and ran and ran, not looking behind him, ignoring both the rotten sweet smell and loud sucking noise.