Monday, September 04, 2006

Sirenflower

If you are out in the woods late at night and you have your senses about you, you may just wish you didn't. Should you catch but the faintest scent of the Unt'kini (some call it "Sirenflower") you will be lost. Not lost as in "I can't find my way home", but lost as in "never seen again and mourned by friends and family". It calls you. Gets inside your head and pulls you towards it. You'll crawl naked through the thickest thickets without slowing down to get to the source of that terribly captivating fragrance. You'd rather die than not have that perfume fill every breath as if it were your last. But that's the thing... you're so captivated by the smell that you don't think of anything else. You don't eat, drink, or sleep. You just breathe and sigh contentedly as you wither and die. Your body becomes food for the damned flower. Your corpse just lies there grinning like a slack-jawed idiot as it rots and gets digested. Soon, but not soon enough, your body is gone. But that's not the worst part. The plant doesn't just get into your head and eat your flesh. Oh no! Your spirit is trapped as well. The call is so strong that it holds you for eternity, tormented by the memory of the scent with no means to recapture it! The spirits that dwell near the flower howl and wail. Not as a warning, but in despair. Their cries of anguish would scare normal folks away, but anyone close enough to hear their cries is already caught in the spell of that damnable plant. I've cried enough because of it over the years. Or is it decades now? Centuries? I don't even know why I'm telling you this. I've seen that expression countless times before. You can't hear me. You're trapped, and there's no hope. For either of us.

6 comments:

Dzeni said...

Great story, brilliant fractal. It certainly had me "trapped".

Anonymous said...

Good lord, Wontar! That's a compelling piece of writing! Way to get me Googling first thing in the morning.

Wontar said...

Dzeni - Thank you! Glad you enjoyed them.

Sam - Thanks, Sam! Googling in the morning? Isn't that a Harry Chapin song? The "scientific" name for the flower came from a random name generator, though. Doesn't mean a thing. The rest of it came out of my head.

Anonymous said...

I was for sure that that was a real photo of a flower! I can't believe it's a fractal. :) It certainly lured me in and then I read your writing. Now I want some of those flowers. To be trapped by the beauty of nature - what a way to go. :)

Wontar said...

Intergalactic Stacey - I was rather surprised at the fractal, too! Glad you liked it as well as the story. :)

Trée said...

Excellent story to go with an excellent image. The two together really come alive.