The Earth is a Carnivore
Short Story
At first, we sat and watched the flowers laughing for 7 hours. It was a new phenomenon. They had sprouted teeth and tongues and lips and filled fields with sound from sunrise to sunset. Of course, some of them cackled. It was unsettling, so we avoided forests as ferns and vines cackled more than daffodils or roses. The best of them would sing, their songs carried onto the wind and through smog-filled cities, making us shut up and listen.
Of course, flowers themselves were a new phenomenon. They had begun sprouting naturally again last spring. This threw the scientific world into a frenzy. That was around the time I met Xanver. It was at a rally for saving the ocean, and saving the world, or maybe just really about saving humanity from itself. Some scientists tried but, scientists can not create things that are naturally occurring. No matter how good their science it is never exact and there are always distorted outcomes. But that was a fact and we had long passed the point of facts being undebatable. They had morphed into a debatable entity.
Fact: I am 24 and was born when the sky was still blue, not the horrid ghastly green it is now.
Opinion: The sunsets look prettier with no ozone layer to protect us.
Xanver held a picket sign; "Earth's needs over your greed!" He was chanting loudly as if his words could single-handedly shake sense into the .5%. They didn't, but I wondered if the seeds were listening. Was his voice the catalyst they needed?
At first, we were happy. In an excited frenzy, people rushed in droves to capture views of the Floral Renaissance. They recorded and played it on their Streams, analyzed, and reanalyzed. By the end of spring, we realized that these flowers were different. The petals were darker, not the vibrant colors from old textbooks and pictures on the Stream. We were still thankful. I remember the first report. It was looped over and over on the Main Stream; a shaky video by a man in his late 40s titled "The plants are singing". It was-- well, it changed the game.
Fact: Xanver is 5'11 with deep brown eyes and hair like burnt wool.
Opinion: He tastes the way I imagine strawberries tasted before they were made in Petri dishes.
I poked Xanver in his rib, "Xan! Xan! Wake the fuck up, you have to see this! You have to--"
So we did, streamed it on an infinite loop with just about 5 billion other people. People rushed again to the fields, hoping to catch a song or two. What they got instead were screams, a shrieking that left you no choice but to double over and cover your ears. People had no choice but to maintain a ten feet radius. No plucking flowers apart, no stomping on roots, or sniffing aggressively. We were forced to observe.
On the dark side of the Stream, the Outliers had started chatting. They were saying the world was ending. As if the world hadn't ended twice before. As if we had not managed to survive a 15-year drought, 3 major famines, freak tornadoes, and tsunamis. We were the dregs of a civilization that killed itself and lied about it (unpopular opinion).
Xan and I debated the finer points of our demise for the first week of our friendship before we turned carnal. We turned carnal because we were always expecting to die, and we didn't know if we'd be eaten by the flowers the way streamer TalkingCadaver suggested. It was our debate on the specifics of being consumed by singing flowers that somehow led to his lips on mine and his fingers in my thick hair, on my collarbone, pressing against my chest, between my legs.
Fact: Plants have no opposable thumbs.
Opinion: They are better that way.
Lions, when they existed, didn't have opposable thumbs either. I wonder if a lion will sprout asexually and with opposable thumbs. I forget the thought as Xanver takes me in his mouth. I can't help but think of the flowers shrieking as I start to do a weak imitation.
Fact: It is spring again, and there are whispers of flowers with opposable thumbs.
Opinion: They are better that way.
Xanver and I lay in bed. We are on the Stream. I am making little curls in his coarse hair with my fingers. He hums with pleasure and makes little vibrations in the air. He uses his opposable thumbs to massage my chest. I start to hum too.
Fact, Breaking News: Child bitten by flower has been rushed to hospital.
Opinion: Her parents must have been stupid. She must have been stupid, too.
News from all over the Stream floods in. Some extremists warn that this is the first step in mankind's demise.
"We knew they didn't need thumbs!"
"This is an act of terrorism!"
"We need to bomb the flowers!"
No one says the little girl is a terrorist too for shoving her hands into the face of a young flower and attempting to pluck away its beauty. Portions of the dark Stream start to shift with tension. Echoes of the word “rally” are thrown about. Xan and I get off our asses and find materials for writing signs.
"If the plants are terrorists what are we? We killed whole species that ain't killed we!"
"Bomb yourself!"
"If the world had teeth it would bite us too!"
Xan and I walk through the crowd chanting, "If the plants are terrorists what are you!"
At first, it sounds like singing. A hypnotic sound that expands and shakes the air, but then it is interrupted by the sound of a shrill whistle, then a loud bang. Six gunshots. Then thirty. Then the singing turns into shrieking. We are running. Xan can't keep up, his bones are too weak. I turn to look back at him and his dark skin reminds me of the color of the sky before dawn. At first, his face is set with determination, and he smirks at me. Then, it shifts. We never hear the bullet, but he feels it immediately. I can tell by the deep lines in between his thick eyebrows. He looks to me for help, and I stand transfixed, watching the blood spread across his yellow shirt. He wore it ‘cause he said it reminded him of the sunflowers from yesterday.
"I'd be a sunflower too, you know. They're all flamboyant and tall with their yellow petals and deep brown center," we chuckled.
We aren't chuckling now. I have started shrieking too, rooted in the same spot, watching his slumped body dying. We are all shrieking like the field of flowers on the Stream. I wonder if they will dehumanize us and say that we were hooligans or unnecessarily aggressive. No one fights for the world anymore, that’s so 2000.
I wish flowers had opposable thumbs the way I wish we had guns and bombs, too. I wonder if the flowers would have shot the little girl. I wonder and start running because I don't want to be shot and Xan and I had discussed this in passing over fake bread and the new funny-tasting water.
Fact: 89 people shot and killed today.
Fact, Streamnews: 89 rebels shot and killed today during flower riot.
Opinion, Streamnews: Flowers are useless, reality is useless. I wish the world grew teeth too and swallowed them whole since they love it so much.
She and her co-anchor chuckle with their much too-big teeth. They don't talk about how their faces are splotchy and patches of their skin have started to peel. That is why we protest. They could afford better doctors so they don’t care. I want to embed myself in a field of flowers and shriek at them. I want to make them care. She wishes the world had teeth so it could swallow us? The earth shouldn’t because us “rioters” don't go sticking our fingers into its face, ripping open its ozone, emptying its belly of oil. But they do. They do and I think the earth would swallow them whole if she could. I think that Xan would’ve have rather be swallowed than shot. I cry harder knowing that the Earth would swallow them.
I hope secretly that the Earth grows teeth and swallows me too.
I wrote and submitted this piece in 2017. I can’t believe it’ll be 10 years soon! I submitted it to several competitions many of which rejected it. It eventually found a home at The Ponder Review.
If you couldn’t tell by now I really do enjoy using science fiction and fantasy to explore broader themes like technology, relationships, and socio-political issues. I was and still am really proud of this one. I’ve found that sometimes pieces don’t age well but this one still holds up to my scrutiny.
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Loves this. Hate to admit that it was the thumbnail that got me to read this (people do, in fact, judge a book by its cover), but I am happy it did. I love narrative interjections like “fact” or “opinion” and the surreal horror of screaming flowers as the world dies is chef’s kiss good
This is so fresh, was shocked to learn at the end it is nearly 10 years old! I was taken by the juxtaposition of extreme violence alongside the reemergence of flowers. What a piece....bravo!