Darkness Blooms Read Free Page A

flowers spun and surged, hitting the side of the jar closest to Sylvia so hard that the jar would move toward her a millimeter at a time. If she stood where she was, the jar would make it to the edge of the table and fall to the ground where it would shatter, releasing the little red flowers spinning so violently inside.
    Sylvia did not want to be around when that happened. Sylvia’s mouth went dry when she realized that the jointed, black and white striped plant beside the jar of churning red flowers was gone, but it’s pot was still there.
    Sylvia yelped as something pinched her left arm hard, and then pinched again. When she looked down at the place, she saw green threads weaving in and out of her skin, right up her arm. The threads came from the pot that had originally held the sharpened green spear, only now it looked like the spear had been split into millions of threads with sharp points.
    Sylvia jerked her arm away from the table the pot sat on and the threads connecting her to the pot snapped. Above the plant with the reaching threads, the mossy rock opened like a rocky hand, at the center of which was an orb filmed over with dark green veins. From the edges of the orb, little legs reached out and began flexing, like the orb was trying to pop itself out of its socket and scuttle towards her.
    That didn’t happen though. Instead, the legs which were reaching out suddenly contracted towards the center of the orb and the air before the orb filled with dark green dust.
    Pollen, Sylvia thought.
    Some of the pollen settled on the leaves of the reaching thread plant and the threads immediately started to disintegrate. Sylvia saw why immediately.
    It wasn’t pollen at all.
    That dark green orb was an egg and millions of tiny, scuttling creatures were eating the thread plant alive.
    At the far end of the greenhouse, Sylvia saw that the inside of the front cover was the same symbol from the front, glowing in the shadows, only now that the cover was upside down, she saw that it was a rough drawing of a skull. The two X’s were eyes and the lines were a mouth and teeth.
    She started to run for the door, but something grabbed her foot. As she fell she saw the black and white jointed plant crouched beneath the table. On its back at the center was a large solid white bulbous pod.
    Sylvia screamed as she went down, knowing that after seeing the dark green orb erupt with tiny creatures, that the solid white pod on the back of the black and white plant could be nothing good.
    A thought came to her as she fell: if the black and white plant is under the table, what grabbed my foot?
    She hit the ground hard and rolled away from the table where the black and white plant waited for her. She banged her head into something hard and screamed again, more in terror that her vision was starting to black out from the head impact than from pain at the impact.
    She looked down at her foot as black dots pressed in on her vision. The roots of the venus fly trap were wrapped around her ankle. The roots wrapped tight and the mouth with the bright blue tendrils that terminated in sharp black points slammed itself into the rubber sole of her shoe. Through the rubber sole, she could feel the points although they didn’t press all the way through and pierce her skin.
    Thank God they aren’t long enough for that, she thought for a moment before feeling the points in the sole start squirming and the little bumps right against her foot getting larger. She screamed and scraped her foot against the floor of the greenhouse. The Venus flytrap tore apart on the concrete and Sylvia kicked back against the ground, trying to turn around and stand up.
    When she felt something caress her neck, she screamed again.
    The black and white plant under the table. How had she been so stupid?
    Sylvia reached back and grabbed at it, ripping it away from her neck.
    Something huge and black—the black coat from the scarecrow—flew across the greenhouse and Sylvia caught