Monster in the Flowerbed

One day, a woman was watering her plants. The garden appeared normal, until the flowers started to shake. She could also see the dirt forming what looked like a whirlpool. When she looked at the strange whirlpool, she noticed something coming out of it. It looked like a strange monster made out of plants. The monster let out a loud roar, and then it shuddered so violently that Sarah could feel it through her boots. Loose dirt and loam fell away from the creature's craggy surface. It rose, a green and twisting vase half a foot wide, out of her flowerbed. Sarah stared at it. She thought, distantly, that it reminded her of a conifer sapling—all green sprays around a tough central trunk. As she watched, spring-green shoots spiraled away from the central mass. They began to spin like feeler vines stretching for a point of contact. The shoots windmilled out into Sarah's flowers. One of them touched the stem of a daylily. It wound around the flower stem, tightened, and then ripped the plant out of the ground. The shoot pulled the broken flower into the central mass and within seconds sprang back out again, searching for more. Within the whirling mass of leaves and crushed petals and mulch the creature continued to roar. Sarah couldn't see eyes or mouth or arms; it had nothing animalia about it. The humid air seemed to pulse along to the thing's scream. Rage. The creature knew rage. Sarah didn't realize she'd backed up until her back hit the porch support. She released her breath with a gasp. The plant monster managed to fully extricate itself from her backyard flowerbed. It stood—or sat, she couldn't tell—knee-high, and it was now, after absorbing most of the surrounding vegetation, slightly taller than wide. Sarah though she could see an open aperture near the top with a sheet of foliage flapping above it. Like a pitcher plant, she thought. The creature, for all its frenetic energy, appeared blind. The whirling tendrils had cleared a circle a foot wide around it, and now they twisted this way and that, unable to catch hold of anything. Sarah eased a step backward onto her patio. She hoped the thing would stay rooted. The ground trembled and caused Sarah to stumble. She caught herself on the porch support. When she looked up she didn't see the creature, only her desecrated flowerbed, empty. A few dirt clods fell down the sides of the hole from which the creature had emerged, and a smattering of shredded leaves settled to the ground. No creature. Maybe, Sarah thought, it went under the fence to Bob's yard. Bob Prohaska threw his yard trimmings over the fence into her yard every other week. They didn't get along. But again the ground shuddered and Sarah heard a hoarse coughing whoop from her left side. She turned in time to see the creature about eight feet away, behind her tree. The redbud tree quivered once. A green shoot wrapped along the length of the trunk, and the green shoot flexed. The trunk splintered into four pieces. Another creeper snagged the toppling crown before it could hit the ground and the tree disappeared into a cloud of deep-pink buds and mulch. It had such strength! Sarah dropped the watering can in shock. The creature shivered and leaned forward at the noise of the can. Although it had no head, Sarah could feel it fixate on her. For the first time since emerging, the creature had noticed her. Its roar made her wince. It sounded like a falling oak. The monster, gorged on Sarah's favorite tree, howled louder and louder. Upon its surface vines and leaves rippled red and purple. The sound of that bellow bored into Sarah's skull. Her head, just above the ears, ached. She could feel its rage again, but more. Terror, not her own, gripped her; she stiffened and found herself rooted to the spot while this many-limbed creature advanced on her. Bile, bitter and caustic, rose in her throat. Her enemy shivered closer and closer and she couldn't move, couldn't scream, could only watch. Hatred. Sarah hated it for making her afraid. She hated it for its destruction. She hated it for existing. One of the green shoots—perhaps the one that had crushed her tree—touched her wrist. It twisted snugly around her forearm and tightened. Any moment that vice would flex, her wrist would splinter, and the cold creature would rip her apart. Sarah breathed in deep. The thing smelled like a stale cave. No, she screamed in her head. She wanted to warn her neighbors, to warn the police, the CDC, the Missouri State Conservation Society. Above all, she wanted to live. From behind her, out of her field of vision, Sarah heard a shout. She couldn't understand the words. It sounded like someone yelling at a dangerous dog. Liquid splashed past her and doused the creature. Then, of all people, Bob Prohaska stepped up beside her with a lit match pinched between his thumb and forefinger. He held it sideways until the match wood caught, and then tossed it onto the growling monster. White heat. It melted Sarah's mascara and fused her eyelashes together. The creeper encircling her arm briefly tightened and Sarah felt fear like an ice pick rammed into her belly. But then the vine relaxed and dropped away. The creature went up into a white column of crackling fire. Sarah trembled and found she could move again. Bob squinted into the blaze. He looked mesmerized, like Sarah had been when the creature perceived her. He lifted a hand toward the conflagration. With a yell, Sarah seized him by the shoulders and hauled him backward away from the fire. The creature collapsed in on itself. Bob and Sarah stared at its white, flaking hull. An updraft from the heat lofted ashes into the air and the lower half of the body split apart. The pieces rolled, smoking, into the grass. Sarah dashed over and stomped on the smoking embers. “Help me,” she called to Bob. “The grass is too dry for this!” Bob shook himself and looked like a man falling into a dream, but he joined her. Together they stamped out the smoking chips. Then, panting, they stared at each other with wide eyes. Bob's face was sweaty and soot-streaked. Ashes peppered his curly black hair. Sarah knew she didn't look any better. “What—” Bob began. He closed his mouth with a grimace and spat at his feet. For once Sarah didn't mind his manners. She could taste soot every time she breathed out. Grit covered her tongue. Bob tried again. “What in all that is holy are you planting back here, La?” He saw her expression and scowled. “Don't call me an ass,” he added. Sarah shrugged. She felt too tired to care. “I didn't plant that—that thing, you… Anyway, get inside and have some lemonade.” She owed him a glass of lemonade, or whatever she could find stronger. The man didn't move. He looked past the ash piles and trampled grass at the trees and bushes that dotted their suburb. “It hated us,” he whispered. “Hated us, because we can move.” Sara nodded. She had felt it, too. “Why?” she asked, louder than she meant. “Maybe—and I don't know why it tore up your garden—but maybe, because we can run. We can run if something comes at us.” “I couldn't run when it saw me. Neither could you.” Bob fixed her with a stare. “And how did that feel?” he asked. Sarah looked away. She stared at a Chinese tallow tree that she had wanted to cut down because the species was invasive. “I wanted to kill,” she answered.