Ugly Little Things

by Todd Keisling

  Jim watched them leave the room and disappear into the dim hallway. He turned back to his date. “So . . . did you grow up around here?”

  She ran her fingers through the back of his hair, sending chills marching all the way down to his groin. “You could say that,” she said. “Most of us grew up here, but some are transplants from the old country. Some of us are hybrids.”

  The orchestral music swelled to a crescendo as the couples on the sofa explored each other with ravenous desperation, their hands and lips venturing into forbidden territories. Wide-eyed, Jim watched as one of Cora’s sisters lifted up her skirt and forced her date’s face between her legs. She closed her eyes and cooed.

  Beside them, one of the sorority girls pulled away from her date—his eyes were narrow slits, one corner of his lips turned up in a half-cocked grin, cheeks flushed—and kept eye contact as she lowered herself to the floor and slid her hands down the front of his pants.

  Jim stared in awe. Holy shit. Is this really happening?

  “Let’s give them some privacy,” Cora whispered. “Want to see the house?”

  He didn’t have a chance to respond before she took him by the hand and pulled him from the study. She led him through the house, wandering from room to room, seemingly at ease and at other times incredibly giddy as she gave him the tour.

  Jim didn’t care. His head was still reeling from all he’d seen. These girls were unlike the others he’d dated, and that fact simultaneously terrified and excited him. The red flags of alarm still flew in the back of his mind, but the more he listened to Cora’s voice, the less he cared. He thought she was beautiful and the realest girl he’d seen all evening, lightyears beyond the likes of Megan Whitfield and far less fake than Nick’s conquest.

  Cora’s syllables seeped into his bloodstream and brain like a fine gin, and by the time they reached the sitting room, he was drunk on her words and captivated by every breath.

  “—and this is our wonderful mother, Iris.”

  He followed her gaze to the portrait over the fireplace. The painting depicted a large, blossoming flower, its purple petals interwoven with a series of prickly needles protruding from within while a number of vines faded into the earth.

  Jim stepped closer, inspecting the painting’s finer details. Several dark hands were trapped in the vines, their fingers clawing at the roots, trying to free themselves from their prison. Small, gray tendrils were threaded between the fingers, pulling them back down into the earth.

  He remembered the insignia on the gate and turned back to Cora. She smiled with pride, and although Jim found her warmth disarming, he also found her ease with the macabre scene equally unsettling.

  “So . . . Nick mentioned you’re part of a sorority, but he couldn’t remember the name. What Greek organization is this?”

  “We are the House of Nettle and Thorn, true daughters of Demeter.”

  Jim paused for a moment, waiting for her expression to crack and reveal the big joke, but her smile never faltered, her eyes never narrowing to betray a con. “Right,” he said, forcing a smile. “That sounds like a great organization.”

  “It truly is,” Cora went on. “Our seeds are scattered across the world, but here, our roots run deepest. So they have since the last reconciliation, and so they shall until the next.”

  Jim kept smiling while idly checking his watch, wondering where the hell Nick ran off to. You know where he went, Jim scolded himself. He’s probably upstairs somewhere, suffocating himself between Krystal’s enormous tits.

  Cora laced her fingers with his. “Would you like to see our garden? It’s in the backyard.”

  She looked up at him with dark violet eyes and a smile that made his stomach flutter. Crazy never looked so beautiful, and it smelled like the sweetest of flowers.

  Flowers. Yes, that’s what he couldn’t place earlier in the hallway, the floral smell of a greenhouse—or funeral home.

  That familiar cold serpent coiled tighter around his gut, but he couldn’t place why. His senses were dulled and his mind clouded by the experience. This mysterious girl both excited and terrified him. Finally, after chasing Megan for more than half a semester, he’d found a girl who was willing to show him the attention he craved, the attention he deserved. A girl who wanted him for a change.

  He forgot about Megan and the uncertainty swelling up in his chest, giving himself over to this beautiful woman and letting her lead him by the hand down the hallway, through the kitchen, and out the back door.

  ***

  The cold night air took his breath away. He hadn’t realized how warm it was inside the house. Cora let go of his hand and floated down the steps to the patio; at the edge was a large flowerbed that stretched the entire length of the backyard. Jim knew little of horticulture, but he could spot a rose anywhere, and she was dancing between the rows, her body moving in time with the muffled tune coming from within. He took a seat on the steps, watching her odd dance and wondering if this night could get any stranger.

  Cora danced halfway across the garden before pirouetting between two rows of flowers. She fanned her fingers across the leaves and petals, communing with the flora as she made her way back to the patio. When she returned to him, her dress was dampened by the evening dew and stained with fresh soil, but she didn’t seem to care. Her eyes glistened in the moonlight, and when she fixed her gaze upon him, Jim found he could not look away.

  “Do you like me, Jim?” Her lips parted into an innocent smile. She walked over to the edge of the flowerbed, lifted her soiled dress, and stepped out of her slippers. She curled her toes in the dark earth.

  Confused, eager, frightened, intrigued—these were but a taste of emotions that set his heart afire. He’d had so many false starts with Megan, so many promising nights that ended in disappointment and masturbation, that when the opportunity finally presented itself, he found he didn’t know how to react.

  “Yes,” he whispered, his mouth suddenly dry. Even the tip of his tongue throbbed, aching to taste her skin.

  “I like you,” she said, kneeling before him, her eyes never leaving his while her hands worked independently, first unclasping his belt before unzipping his jeans. She held his gaze a moment longer, her mouth upturned in a playful smirk, her lips full and glistening. “I want you.”

  Cora took hold of him, and he almost came right there. He bit his lip to hold back the wave, groaning as he throbbed in her hand. The last thing he saw before losing himself in a blizzard of mental static was the clarity of her gaze and the shimmer of violet in her eyes.

  She closed her mouth around him, lapping her tongue against the underside of his shaft before taking him deeper into her throat. Jim felt the pleasure of her full lips for only a moment before the pain shot through him like a bullet, white hot and searing, every nerve standing at attention and screeching in agony.

  Needles. Thousands of tiny, hot needles jabbed into his sensitive flesh. Cora moaned softly as he struggled to push her away, mistaking his discomfort for pleasure, and the more he resisted, the deeper she sucked him into her throat.

  Tears filled his eyes as he writhed in agony, squirming to free himself from the vise of her mouth, and in a moment of desperation, he did the only thing he could: He gripped a handful of her hair and yanked. She moaned once more, tightening her grip and sending a new wave of blinding pain shooting into his gut. The pressure spread through his groin and down his thighs. Splotches of color danced before his eyes, and a single, calm thought occurred to him as the darkness came to claim him: She’s going to swallow me alive.

  The absurdity was what saved him. He blinked away tears, closed his fingers around the flower in her hair, and tugged.

  Cora cried out in pain, shooting backward in surprise and releasing his bloody member. Jim rolled onto his side, his hands drawn instinctively to his crotch, curled up as if that might hold back the burning and throbbing.

  “Why would you do that?” she cried, cradling the flower in her hair. He looked over at her
through a wall of tears. The purple blossom hung limp to one side. He’d cracked the stem in two.

  “Why would you do this?” he rasped, lifting one leg to examine his wounds. He was flaccid and bloody and bruised. Dark beads of scarlet oozed from a thousand pin-pricks in his pruning flesh.

  Cora climbed to her feet, and when he looked up at her, his blood went cold. Pale green veins bulged beneath her forehead and cheeks, accented by two thick streams of green tears oozing from her eyes. She cradled her head, nursing the flower as if it were attached—

  Oh God.

  The painting over the fireplace flashed before him, sending his heart down into the pit of his gut where it continued its frantic pace. The green drinks (good for the roots), the floral smell, even the gritty, metallic taste of Cora’s tongue that he now realized was dirt—the pieces were there, jabbing into his brain, completing a grotesque portrait of horror that made his heart plunge.

  Jim met her stare. “What the fuck are you?”

  Cora’s face screwed up as she began to sob. She looked away, her tears dripping into the earth. Small tendrils snaked out of the dirt and blossomed around the droplets, drinking in her sadness. She turned back to the stalks of foliage in the garden with her face buried in her hands, her cries echoing into the night. Jim wanted to feel bad, but the sharp, prickling pain in his groin told him he shouldn’t.

  “Y-You didn’t have to hurt me,” she stammered. “We could be part of something greater forever. You could join our harvest, be part of our next reconciliation.”

  She turned back to him as a clump of tendrils rose from the soil. They curled up her legs and around her waist, blossoming into full, purple flowers.

  Jim scrambled to pull up his pants and fasten his belt.

  “Where are you going?” she asked. Jim wanted to respond, but his words failed him. His mind raced with more urgent matters. He hoped his wounds were superficial, but even that wouldn’t rule out a hospital visit—never mind how the hell he was going to explain this to a doctor. As soon as he found Nick, he’d—

  His stomach lurched. Where the hell was Nick?

  “Please don’t leave me,” Cora cried, but Jim didn’t listen. He scrambled back across the patio, leaving his date rooted in the garden.

  ***

  “We haven’t seen him. Have a drink.” The brunette with violet eyes offered him a plastic cup full of green liquid.

  Jim waved her away, frowning. “He was just here half an hour ago. With your friend Krystal.”

  “Oh.” Violet Eyes gave him a vacant look before downing her own cup of the green punch. “Maybe he left.”

  He reached into his pocket for Nick’s keys. They jangled against his fingers. “No, he’s still here.”

  Violet Eyes shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  No, he thought, I guess you don’t.

  “I think I like you,” Violet Eyes said. “Have you been claimed?” Her cheeks darkened, glaring up at him with a mischievous smile. Jim glimpsed faint green lines sprouting out from her eyes. He offered her a weak smile in return as he edged his way out of the room, wincing with every step as the prickling, burning pain shot through his groin. Nick first, he thought, and then the hospital.

  Jim avoided the study, wandering instead down the hall toward the staircase.

  “Nick?” His voice echoed in the empty foyer. A grandfather clock ticked idly from the sitting room. Jim stood at the bottom step and called up into the dark. “Nick? Hello?”

  Silence from above. He waited, and when Nick didn’t respond, he turned for the door.

  A low, abrasive hum gave him a start, forcing the hairs on his neck to stand at attention.

  “What the hell?”

  The short hum paused before starting up again. Jim stepped away from the staircase and toward the hallway. A cabinet sat in the corner recess where the hall met the foyer, its surface adorned with a number of trinkets, including a collection of shiny silver baubles. As he drew near to the source of the hum, he realized it wasn’t a hum at all, but a rough vibration. Something was vibrating in short, regular bursts.

  He pulled open the cabinet drawer.

  There were at least two dozen phones in the drawer of varying sizes and ages, the oldest of which was a huge Motorola the size of a brick. There were others, including several dead smartphones, some scuffed, some engraved, and some with rubber cases. One case with blue and white trim caught his eye. He flipped it over and found the initials N.E. imprinted on the back.

  That cold, uneasy feeling rose up once again in his gut, forcing the pain of his groin out of his mind for just a few precious seconds as he held Nick’s phone in his hand.

  “You wouldn’t leave without this,” Jim whispered. He turned on the phone and read the display. Two missed calls, one of which was from less than a minute ago.

  Jim chewed his lip and tried to ignore the pounding in his chest as he thumbed through the menus. In some ways, he felt ashamed to be invading his friend’s privacy, but the situation, he decided, necessitated drastic action. He opened the social media app and navigated to his roommate’s direct messages, scrolling through a number of conversations until he found what he was looking for: Krystal Demeter.

  He scrolled past a number of nude images she’d sent Nick, as well as several perverse chats until reaching the end of their chat history—and the beginning of their conversation. Krystal was the one to initiate contact, casting her line across that great expanse of the Internet in the hopes that someone would bite—and bite they did:

  Hey I saw u at school and I think ur cute. Want 2 B Friends?

  Jim sighed, frowning at his roommate’s stupidity. The conversation went downhill from there. Defeated, Jim put the phone in his pocket.

  He was about to turn away when something else caught his attention: the other phones.

  Most of them wouldn’t turn on, their batteries long dead and corroded, but there was one that flickered to life. There were over a hundred missed calls and even more unopened text messages.

  He wasn’t sure what led him to open up the phone’s social app. Curiosity, maybe, or perhaps it was the evening’s turn of events lending credence to all the personal alarms firing within his mind. Maybe it was almost having his penis ripped off by a mutant plant-girl, or maybe it had to do with the drawer full of abandoned cell phones. Either way, Jim’s curiosity got the better of him, and when he flipped through the private messages, his blood stopped cold in his veins:

  Hey I saw u at school and I think ur cute. Want 2 B Friends?

  No, he thought. Please no. He thumbed down through the messages, pausing on the same dimly lit photo of Krystal’s naked breasts. Shaking, he pulled Nick’s phone from his pocket and compared the messages. His heart sank. They were identical except for the time stamps. The other phone’s messages were dated almost a year ago.

  A loud shriek startled him so badly he dropped both phones. They clattered on the floor, and he waited foolishly like a rodent caught in the open, waiting for one of the sisters to find him rifling through their things.

  Except these phones didn’t belong to them. They belonged to the dozens of other young men who’d fallen prey to . . . whatever the hell they were. An uncomfortable sting rose up in Jim’s groin, and he pressed his hand there to hold back the pain. Something squished in his pants, and he knew if he didn’t find Nick soon, he could forget about ever getting laid.

  Another scream filled the hallway, followed by another. Jim’s heart surged, thumping in his chest to the beat of what he thought was the ‘Blue Danube’ waltz. Adrenaline took hold of him, and against his better judgment—

  What the fuck are you doing? Get the hell out of there! Take Nick’s car and go get the cops!

  —he pushed aside the heavy curtain and walked softly down the hallway.

  “Take their seed, sisters. Take it all.”

  Violet Eyes stood at the study’s threshold and clapped her hands softly as more screams overpowered the classical waltz
. A lump manifested in Jim’s throat, filling his airway like a ball of cotton. Violet Eyes smiled at him as he approached before turning her attention back to her sisters.

  Jim thought he was ready for what lay beyond the threshold. He was wrong.

  The men in the room were entangled in a series of vines protruding from the arms of the sisters, thick ropy tendrils squirming and digging their way into their victims’ exposed flesh. One of the guys turned toward him and moaned in agony, his arms twisted at impossible angles while his date took him relentlessly in her mouth. His eyes rolled up into his head as his cheeks sank inward, his body cavity imploding at the will of his attacker. A moment later, the bro with the half-cocked smile collapsed into himself like a deflated sex doll.

  Violet Eyes turned to Jim, smiling proudly. “They learn so fast,” she said. “This harvest will be the best yet!”

  Jim tried to speak, but words failed him. His mouth was suddenly dry, and any attempt to find his voice was met with a dull ache shooting through his groin. The other girls were sucking their guests dry, and for a moment, all that raced through Jim’s mind was that it could’ve been him.

  Violet Eyes traced her fingers along his arm. She smiled and licked her lips. “My name’s Holly, by the way.”

  “He’s mine, Holly.” Cora shuffled into the hallway, the hem of her dress caked in soil and her cheeks streaked with an atlas of green tears. The broken stalk of her flower hung limp to one side. She avoided Jim’s gaze, focusing her stare on Holly. “Krystal paired us.”

  “But I haven’t claimed anyone tonight—”

  Cora struck her with the back of her hand. The slap echoed down the hall but did nothing to interrupt the deathly orgy in the adjacent room.

  “He’s mine,” Cora growled. “Now leave us be.”

  Holly stepped back, speechless and nursing her cheek. She retreated through the kitchen, and just before she exited to the garden, Jim saw a hint of dark green ooze dribbling down her chin. He looked back at Cora. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to kiss her or run away.

  “Where’s Nick?”