Darkness Blooms Read Free

her head.
    So much had changed.
    Were these even Papere’s plants? Or were they Mamere’s?
    Sylvia walked even deeper into the greenhouse and things only got stranger. Mounted to a large slab of bark was what looked like a moss covered rock. Right below that was a clay pot that had what looked like a two foot tall green spear planted at its center. The top of the stick was whittled into a wicked six inch point.
    Sylvia also noticed that here and there, scattered between the strange plants were empty slabs of bark and empty pots still filled with soil or peat moss.
    At the back of the greenhouse, Sylvia found a single Neofinetia Falcata mounted to a slab of bark. It wasn’t hers, but it made her think that Papere had kept her on his mind all these years. The Neofinetia had a single perfect bloom that was lavender.
    Beside the orchid was a black pot with one of those dusky black looking flowers perched on top: the same flower that covered all the mounds in the backyard.
    This was the only pot in the whole greenhouse that had a tag sticking up from the pot.
    Sylvia leaned in to read what the tag read. As she got closer, the bloom spread its petals wide, the inside a red so bright that Sylvia’s mouth fell open. She leaned back as the blossom seemed to lean forward. The formation of the pistil was interesting. Whereas most pistils in flowers were bulbous at the tip, this flower had five pistils that ended in sharp looking barbs.
    Sylvia let out her breath, and the greenhouse came to life.

4
    At first, Sylvia thought that the pistils of the black and red flower were moving because she’d let out her breath on them, causing the airflow to change.
    She realized that wasn’t the case when the pistil kept moving after she’d held her breath. Sylvia yelped and stepped back when one of the barbed pistils whipped out at her as if fired from a harpoon gun. The barbs came within a few centimeters of her eye before snapping back into the bloom as if attached by elastic.
    For a moment, Sylvia was in shock, thinking that she couldn’t have just witnessed what she thought she had. There weren’t any plants that shot elastic barbs at people. There were plants that closed on insects and plants that trapped them with liquids, but none that actively hunted food.
    When the plant shot another barb at her that fell short, she shook her head. What was this species? The plant quit firing barbs at her, its petals quivering in the still greenhouse.
    Then it did something that made Sylvia bring both hands up to her mouth to cover it.
    The black flower with the bright red center turned its blossom ninety degrees so that it was facing the little lavender Neofinetia.
    It shot all five of its barbs at the orchid. Four of them burst through the flower like it was nothing. The fifth wedged itself in the bark. Then the pistils slowly retracted toward the dusky black flower, the bark dragging against the table as the lavender flower was drawn ever closer to the red center of the black flower. When the lavender flower was mere inches away, the black flower lunged, its petals wrapping themselves around the Neofinetia’s bloom. The black flower contracted and twisted, wrenching the lavender bloom from its stem, before returning to its original upright position, bloom once again closed.
    Sylvia wasn’t sure how long she stared at the half eaten Neofinetia, the target of the black flower’s vicious attack. She just stared, not wanting a sudden movement to bring the black flower back to life, but something else was pushing this thought from her mind: the empty pots and slabs of bark throughout the greenhouse. Also, how Papere had only ever grown a single thing in this greenhouse.
    The knowledge dawned on Sylvia and she turned away from the carnivorous black plant to face a greenhouse full of what had to be other carnivorous plants.
    The jar that had once looked like it contained red confetti now looked like a jar of violently boiling blood. The little red