I Am A Carnivorous Plant

So I wandered around for about two weeks.

 

Honestly I’m an unstoppable killing machine at this point. Deer, wolves, even bears? They’re nothing! Okay no, maybe I’m hyping myself up a little too much, bears are still a very dangerous fight, and admittedly I’ve only run into one other bear since that first one. I even managed to take it by surprise, which is shocking, I know, since that’s literally what I always do! I tested my newfound strength against it, and I’m happy to say I could keep it tied up a lot longer than last time! …But yeah not indefinitely, so I’m still sadly not bear levels of strong yet. I am plenty strong enough to kill it, though! So at least there’s that.

 

I actually found the bear I was just talking about only three days ago near a cute little stream. Seems like it was trying to fish there? It’s almost a river, so I can see what it was trying to do. However, it still wasn’t anything like a grizzly, just that weird sun bear-like black bear from before. Not going to lie, I’m actually a bit afraid of what would happen if I found a real grizzly in this weird wonky world. I can only imagine it’d be absolutely massive! I’m much too small and delicate of a plant to try and take on such a monster.

 

Ah yes, let me talk about how my small and delicate features have grown!

 

I have grown a ‘neck’! I figured it would happen at some point, since so far I’ve just had this eerie fake ‘head’ of mine sitting on top of a pile of petals. Seems a small row of petals had sprouted under the bigger ones without me noticing, and they quickly fused together to form the neck. It’s quite dainty and small, and a line just like the one coming down from the bottom half of my ‘head’ runs through it. They both open up together to give me better access to my mouth, so I can eat nice big chunks of prey quite easily. Pretty sure I could eat one of those big rabbits from all those weeks ago at the rabbit warren with ease now! Wouldn’t even have to break it down, I could just pop it in there whole! Really makes me wanna give it a try. Woe to the next rabbit that crosses my path!

 

Alright so, I bet you’re wondering why this silly little plant body of mine even decided to give me a neck. I mean, wouldn’t it have been easier to just keep the previous setup and not add that small odd complication? I totally thought so too, but then a few days later I grew some more, and it really started to make sense! See, I guess my plant body isn’t trying to half-ass this whole ‘try and look human’ thing. It’s actually seriously trying to make me look like one! The next row of petals down has grown to look like the abdomen of a prepubescent child (along with the upper arms), and the row after that is trying to form the waist to mid-thigh. Honestly, knowing what I look like, I feel a bit like I’m committing a crime. Like, what is this weird plant body of mine thinking? At the very least I’m flat like a doll down there, so I’m luckily not flashing anyone or anything, but still.

 

My legs and the bottom half of my arms are where it gets a bit more obvious that I’m, um, not so human. I can make my tentacles retract a bit and look like hands, much like how my roots do, but um… Yeah, they’re just a bit wrong. Same with my root legs. They just don’t really bend naturally. Maybe if I was standing still and you ignored all the mismatching green and tan, then you might be fooled. Hell, maybe from far away you’d just think that I’m a very interestingly clothed streaker. Maybe some kind of young S&M mistress with thigh high boots and above elbow length gloves. But yeah, get close enough and I’d be pretty obvious. If my ‘arms’ and ‘legs’ wouldn’t give it away, then the slight unnaturalness and occasional wrinkling of my ‘skin’ would make it a bit more obvious. I must look sooo uncanny valley right about now.

 

So this begs the question: If I look like this, does it mean my primary food is humans?

 

I’m carnivorous, and though I may have once been a human, I don’t think I have any inhibitions against eating one in particular right now. I mean, I’m not human anymore no matter how much this stupid plant body is trying to make me look like one, and I was even born from the corpse of a dead woman! Pretty sure I ate a good chunk of her when I was just growing, so like… When in Rome, right? I mean, I already kinda did it once, and I’m sure a bunch of those bones I ate when I first left also came from people, so… You know? Look, I’m not gonna fight nature. If I were, then I would have already had a fit over killing and eating all those cute animals. I might have a bit of an issue killing an innocent human that’s just minding its own business, though. Maybe that’s why this body looks like an innocent child; It’s probably trying to make some ‘opportunities’ for a few guilt free meals for me.

 

Then do I go on the lookout for some human communities?

Camp out in the woods and wait for drunks maybe?

Perhaps a not so nice adventurer wanders over my way?

 

Ah, we’ll cross that road when we get there.

 

~~~

 

Yup. You know what, this sure seems like a fantasy world. I’m certainly a magical plant, so I truly can’t complain, but um… Well maybe I’m complaining! If you’re gonna send me to a magical fantasy place, can’t the first magical fantasy thing I find be a hot elf or some beast-people something? Who said I wanted it to be some ugly dumb goblins?! And worse of all, they spotted me before I spotted them! Okay well that’s not totally true, it’s more that I knew they were coming and just let them spot me, but same difference, you know!

 

Okay so here’s how it happened.

 

I was roaming around like I always do these days, right? And I’m trying to stick to the ‘defenseless child’ look since it sometimes brings the wolves and panthers out much more easily than if I look like a scary bloodthirsty plant. Hell, even the coyotes start to get brave. Anyways, I can feel the vibrations of something coming through my roots, and I’m like ‘Woah, is it walking on two legs?’! It was something small, so part of me thought it could be like a chicken or something, you know? I was curious! So I let them come to me just like I let all the predators do. It’s like ordering delivery, it takes absolutely no work!

 

But yeah, disappointing goblins.

 

And these goblins weren’t even afraid of me! Which I guess makes sense, since, like, I look like a defenseless child. But they could clearly see my tentacles and roots, right? I may be coiling them up to look like arms and legs, but they still look clearly wrong! Idunno, maybe goblins don’t have good eyesight. Or maybe they’ve just never seen a real human before. …Or maybe the humans here look more messed up than I think. I really hope that last one’s not the case, though.

 

So a tussle ensues! These things plan to capture me and do lord knows what. I’m not a big fan of being touched by gross things, so clearly they have to die. They’re terribly small, maybe only the size of a toddler, so I’m not too worried at all. Oddly enough they actually had a few rusted weapons, and maybe that would have been scary if they were any good with them, but the weapons were so big in their teensy little hands that it was easy to just smack them out. And from there it was truly too easy of a fight! One might even say it was a slaughter, really. Just a strong whipping of a tentacle to the head was enough to club them out of existence. I killed four out of five of them and mercifully let the last one run away. Ah, I’m such a kind and benevolent plant!

 

Is what I want to say, but I don’t like these things roaming around in my forests.

Idunno why, but something about them just really irks me, you know?

So I followed that fleeing one home!

 

Alright, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go where the goblins live without a plan, though, hindsight being 20/20.

 

There were a lot of goblins in the little cave they’d holed up in. Luckily I didn’t run after the goblin that escaped guns a-blazing, so I didn’t just happily frolic right into trouble. I got to scope out what I could see from the tree-line and um, wow. Just wow. There must be at least about 30 goblins in there. The good news is I only saw goblins, but uh, I still think that’s too many to fight at once. So what’s a plant to do? I could keep snagging ‘em when they come out a bit too far, but that involves me waiting around here during the day, and this isn’t all that wonderful a spot for me to waste time in; The trees here are way too densely packed together for me to try and get any sun. I suppose I could go somewhere else to photosynthesize and come back at night? That’s honestly not such a bad plan at all, but then what’s my plan?

 

I guess… I just… kill them all?

Well ok no, that’s too obvious, but like how though?

 

There’s like 30 of them. This isn’t like the rabbit’s warren where I could just block them all in and kill ‘em with poison while they sleep, the cave entrance is way too big for anything like that. Do I think I’m deadly enough to go wherever it is that they all sleep and poison them before they can wake up and run away from it? I suppose my poison gas has grown stronger and can spread farther than when I first started out, but…

 

Eh, who says it has to be perfect?

This is their house, isn’t it?

Even if some of them escape, they’ll come back one day.

I’ll always get another try!

 

Sleep well and wait for me, little goblins!

 

~~~

 

The sun has gone down and my roots are coming up.

 

I managed to find a cute little clearing not too terribly far away with a small lazy river running next to it. How nice, it must be the forest being kind and blessing my plans for later tonight! Or something, I don’t know, but I’d like to believe it, you know? Something’s gotta be rooting for me; I feel like things have been going far too well for me as of late for that to not be the case. Haha… ‘rooting’. I never thought about that word too closely before, I think it might be made just for me! At the very least I think it’s very appropriate for me now, being the plant that I am.

 

Enough about that though, I’m nice and hungry now, and there’s ugly nasty goblins to get rid of!

 

Perimeter check!

No goblins at the mouth of the cave!

Permission to sneak in, granted!

 

For this neat little trick I actually used my tentacles to move me around. My root feet can be a little clumsy at times, and although it’s not like my tentacles can’t also be clumsy, they’re at least a bit quieter if I maneuver them right. Honestly I kind of feel like a spider when I move along with them. I suppose spiders are pretty quiet, right? I’m probably doing well at sneaking around, then. Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to climb up walls with them if I try hard enough. That’d make me even sneakier, wouldn’t it? Although, my appearance is pretty eye-catching recently, so I don’t know how actually sneaky I could be if anyone could see me…

 

Oh well, at least I’m pretty!

Ah, my pretty-ness isn’t important right now, focus!

It’s goblin killing time!