Plants (Short Story by Vanessa Wu and Jeffrey Hsu)

This was a short story I co-wrote with one of my best friends/big brother, Jeffrey Hsu [: We submitted it to our school's literary magazine, but it didn't make it. So here it is for anybody who wants to read it! [: WARNING: This is not for the faint of heart.

Oxford Academy

Wednesday May 4^th, 2011

22:14

Dormancy is vicious; it’s ceaselessly waiting, always teetering on the sky-scraping edge of the world, eternally heralding life, and infinitely craving the painfully tranquil sleep. Dormancy is overpowering, undeserving, and a relentless murderer.

And thus, the night laid forever dormant, breathlessly escaping the sun and worshipping the crystalline structure of night. And on this night, that night itself plunged into a drowning dormancy, leaving the world unwatched and uninhibited; the world was free. As a chill, just a gentle silken chill, glided across the surface, the school was sleeping. It had shut down for the evening — but, this was fleeting, a brief encounter with rest. Startled into consciousness, the school howled salaciously, seething in earsplitting pain, as a pulse tiptoed on its unsuspecting spine. And here, on this night when everything was dormant, evil rose into freedom. Unlatched and released, its power is, ironically, finite — how long can it last before being ferociously quelled into dormancy? For that brief nanosecond, the evil crawled on its stomach and slithered into the school.

And, seeking a devilish medium to cultivate its venom, the chill cracked the northern windows of Room 206, leaving the southern hemisphere untouched. Blistered with glass residue, the wind took over the plants. Suddenly, the night flung out of its dormancy, and the evil was sealed again for immeasurable time, furrowed into the depths of its new hosts.

Oxford Academy – Outside Room 206

Thursday May 5^th, 2011

07:37

Spring sunshine slithers in through the slashed shards, but nobody has discovered it yet. The clock cries out for help – TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK. Tiring of the pointless protest that ultimately drones on beneath the clamor and chaos on the other side of the remnants, it stops resisting, falling into its routine, melancholy step.

More steps join in, breaking away from the cacophony so familiar, into what used to be familiar. She hears the yelp of the clock, but it is cut off by the screeching of the PA system. She shakes off the foreboding feeling and goes to spritz some water on the house plants decorating her room. Finally she notices the jagged pieces of glittering glass dispersed sporadically across the floor. Not wanting to be blamed unjustly yet again, she quickly sweeps up the hazard and dumps it in the designated gray bucket before she trudged downstairs into the main office to report the unusual happenings.

“My windows are broken,” she bluntly informs.

“WHAT!? How did that happen?” they question furiously.

“I don’t know. They were like that when I walked into my room this morning.”

“The ones on the doors? Maybe somebody was trying to get in…”

“No, ALL of the ones except the ones on the doors…” she trails off pondering for the first time how the f**k all of the second story windows, which practically touch the ceiling, had managed to detrimentally implode into a supernova of glass specks.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the shrill cry of the bell, oddly similar to the yelp she heard from her classroom clock earlier. She turns her attention back to them and pushes the déjà vu away. They are regarding her with the same disapproving looks they always bestowed on her: the eccentric pariah and mischievous hassle in their eyes.

“Why the f**k did I even bother?” she thought to herself, “They never believe me anyway; screw it, I’ll be out of here in a year anyway. I have to get to my class. They’re probably crowding in the hallway.”

And waiting they were, completely oblivious to the situation, completely accustomed to waiting. The sinister aural energy lurking behind the door was waiting itself, stockpiling a massive pool of dark power. For now, safety abounds. Later, however, is indeterminate.

Oxford Academy – Room 206

Wednesday, May 11^th 2011

23:51

As the wind bared its razor fangs and howled, room 206 was quiet. The students had all cheerily departed, she left the room at the appropriate time, and the night janitors systematically cleaned the rooms and returned home. It was night once again. The voluptuous curls of the brisk night swept the county, relieving the air of daytime tension. It was, admittedly, peaceful. That peace, however, aggravated the poisonous evil, pushing it to escalate faster and faster.

An eerie blush of purple-tinged evil subtly bordered the string of recently repaired windows in room 206, spilling through the glass and mystifying the peace.

And its power grew; at this point, it’s time is approaching. Like a drop of Russian Roulette, the tension sifts into the room as the gun lays dormant, waiting to strike. And strike it will, with the veracity of a gun to the head, loaded with a bullet.

Oxford Academy – The Science Building

Thursday, May 26^th 2011

11:04

“Finally! The announcements are done,” praised Jeffrey in Mr. Steven’s cluster class, jeering at the fundamentally tireless quality of the video announcements.

Barely paying mind to the announcements, Vanessa cheerfully chatters with her peers in the light of room 206 and its newly furnished windows: “Ohmahgod. My birthday is actually tomorrow! Wow. I can’t believe I’m already going to be seventeen…”

The utility of the evil is massive. Now, dreadfully close to the climax of evil, the sunlight dances in the room and, though translucent, layers a transparent sensation over the room. It’s a sign of happiness that is, with asserted surety, going to fade soon.

The plants radiated a masked darkness. It was threatening, a slicing chill. At 11:15, the bell shrieked its customary cry and the students laughingly filed out of the classrooms. In room 206, she was sitting at her desk while Vanessa quietly collected her array of paintings and art supplies.

“How am I going to carry these? Okay, let’s see, I can hold this in one hand, this in another, that I can pile on top… I’ll stick this into my backpack, and…wow, this is heavy,” thought Vanessa. Unknowingly, she dropped a prime piece of her artwork. Sadly, the due date was today for the statewide competition, and this piece was her competition submission.

She, watching Vanessa scurry out of the room with her multitude of bundles, stared dazedly into the light. Sauntering to the back of the classroom to recover the forgotten painting, she placed it carefully on a neighboring table. As she walked back to her desk, the afternoon delirium set in and she continued munching on her lunch, slightly bitter.

Sooner than later, the bell that ended sixth period chimed with an oddly peaceful reverberation. The shriek had died.

As Jeffrey exited sixth period Viramontes, Vanessa arrived frantically crazed. She had lost the painting and it was due right then. Urgently pulling on his messily draped jacket, she dragged Jeffrey around. The bell suddenly rang, signaling the introduction of eighth period. There was a cadence to its twinge that was sinister, frightening.

The two climbed the stairs in a chipper mood. Entering room 206, they spotted the forlorn painting and visibly calmed down, collectively unaware. Vanessa ran towards it.

But, she never made it. The plants, overtaken by the mysterious wind, the evil force of darkness, had sprouted monstrous vines, veins of toned muscle. Tripping Vanessa, they silently, but with precise dexterity, captured the three.

Worried phone calls were exchanged between families, but by the next morning it was obvious that the tremor and uneasiness of the three’s disappearance would take a back seat to the impending events.

Oxford Academy – Room 404

Thursday, May 26^th 2011

23:58

The three are trapped in this room. The vines had dug sneakily into the underground of the school and surfaced here. In the biting cold of the vortex night, the three have a solemn future, surely. The evil is festering and its peak has nearly arrived. As the shrill clock walks to midnight—TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK—an odd wail fills the bowels of the school. The unscheduled shriek was a foreboding symbol. Watch out.

Oxford Academy – Room 404

Friday, May 27^th 2011

00:01

Happy birthday. But there’s not much to be happy about. Time is persistent yet, with its TICK.TOCK.TICK.TOCK. But for how much longer will time run before there is no longer any place to hide?

Oxford Academy – Just at school, in general

Friday, May 27^th 2011

07:23

The atmosphere is tense as car doors swing open and backpack straps pad heavy shoulders. The students aimlessly step out and towards the school campus. Silence seems to engulf every millimeter of their numb bodies, but there seems to be chatter coming from within. They question how people could continue on like nothing happened when three were so unexpectedly missing.

As soon as they reach the edge of the threshold between the anguish and the anonymous, they come face to face with the cause of the clamor. The entire quad is flooded in flora – vines dangling from the trees, stairs, and roofs of buildings; leaves sprouting every which way with their faces gargantuan and moments from slapping bystanders in the face; eerily blooming buds that beckoned others closer without a single thought.

The inexplicable moment passes though and they shake their heads, trying to make sense of the new décor that seemed to bathe the school in an endless net of green. Could it be the senior prank? But how in the world could they have pulled off something so wild, so untamable – almost beastly? Where could they have gotten the time?

Time? It’s 7:50. And right on cue the shrill shriek of the bell bellows across the campus. The figures in the quad stir. It’s time for yet another tedious day. Less than five minutes to another lecture and mass of notes. Less than five minutes to an hour and a half to catch up on the sleep missed because of that late-night webcam session. Daytime: where all seems absolutely safe. The perfect time to get some sleep – but is it a sleep that nobody will awaken from?

Let the nightmare begin. The second shout of the bell echoes ominously as the second hand of the clock tremors and reluctantly hits 7:55 with its last murmured TICK TOCK-SMASH. All the windows across campus shattered, punched through by the greenery that had adorned and bordered the panes. The embroidered foliage gains speed, feeding off of the horror, shock, and confusion so dense that the air is choking with it.

The reaction catalyzes exponentially and the vines gain more rigidity, popping like veins of overworked arms on steroids. The razor-edged shards explode through the air. They launch themselves into students’ eyes, gauging them out, leaving endless, gaping wormholes of blood. They slice the flesh and skin with piercing gashes deep to the bone and stinging surface cuts, grazing and nipping to expose yelps of pain. The scent from the buds drug and daze the daydreamers, drawing them in while reducing awareness like anesthesia. Once within grasp, the evil takes hold. One vine entwines itself to a leg while another snakes around the other. With a single flip and a pull, the victim dangles upside-down from the ceiling, blood rushing to his face, reddening then purpling. The opposite sides tug and yank, pulling his legs further apart in excruciating splits. They drag and twist further and harder until there is a rip, tear, and pop – the legs unevenly dismantled and torso colliding to the floor, writhing in pain. His eyes begin to glaze over, catching his life’s last sight: the sly vines have slithered themselves into a loop of a lasso, knotted and ready for the toss, danced in the air with a soft hum, and tightened around the bare throat exposed over the cut of the polo as a noose with utmost precision. She gasps and sputters for breath as she is lifted higher up until the back of her skull clashes violently into the ceiling. Before she can react at all, the chord drops reconfiguring the bone and cartilage of her face. Suspended midway again, her face turns an icy blue and white. With her last gasps of breath, she tries to warn the only living person in sight. Her head hangs loose, limp and crashed at an angle as if snapped across the bony slate. From the depths of the underground trail emerges the drilling vines which burrow from the lower back through the abdomen, spilling intestinal fluids and organs, before swerving back to plunge into the chest, spurting blood from the beating heart across the room in a ruby red shower. It worms its way up the esophagus before skewering the eyeballs and squirming out the cavities like parasitic medusa. Within the esophagus’ passage the vine is branching rapidly and working its way past the uvula, pounding the miniscule punching bag before erupting as split tongues from the dragon-like mouth. She gags on her newfound tongues slithering as the twisting turns cause the body to convulse prior to sliding as a corpse across the tiles. The final BADUM-badum of the body’s internal clock hurtles to a complete halt, screeching a scream of silence that matches its sister once upon the wall, now face flat upon the floor shattered. The monstrosity falls dormant again, finished with its sadistic task, satiating its blood-thirsty hunger. And amongst the school strewn with guttural overspill, life-size doll fragments, and silenced cries, dormancy creeps inexorably.