Topic started on 20-9-2005 @ 09:14 PM by Voidmaster
Blood Rose
By Voidmaster
Tim stood alone in an alien building. He was probably the only person for 300 kilometers in all directions. A choking vine climbed over the walls, the
floors, the escalators, over elevator doors, and even through windows. It looked as if this place had been abandoned for years. It had only been 2
weeks.
2 weeks ago the human race made first contact with intelligent life. They were supposed to be 7 feet tall, slender limbed, and gray in color. Tim had
never seen them, and he never wanted to. We had welcomed them; we had given them a place to live, food to eat, and water to drink. They slept, they
ate, and they drank. Then they planted a flower. Just one medium sized flower, with a bright green center, surrounded by a beautiful silver coloring.
Crowd’s marveled at the flower’s alien beauty. Three days after the flower was planted, it rained. The rain scared the aliens, and as soon as it
ended, they jumped into their ship and took off. After 3 days it was clear why.
The flower had grown; its vines were popping up entire countries away. Its vines choked, and crushed buildings. Flowers popped up all over the walls,
numbering in the thousands. The flowers gave off spores that were highly corrosive. The spores would use their corrosive properties to burrow into the
skin of creatures, reach the heart, and incubate. The creature that was burrowed into wouldn’t die, but it would be in extreme pain for the duration
of the incubation, which was 3 days. People who were infected, would kill themselves, attempt to rip their heart out, torture themselves just to make
the pain in their chest seem less. This plague stretched across the world, throttling nation after nation in its cold, bloody grasp. People tried to
run from it but the flower would spread as if it were a general conquering the world. People would run to a country, only to have that country fall to
a flowery death 2 days afterward. Animals weren’t the only ones effected either.
The planet died, slowly. Every plant and crop, aside from the Flower, were choked to death. Trees, corn, even seaweed choked to death, strangled by
this monster of a plant. Death was obviously inevitable at this point. Government officials abandoned their countries; people looted whatever they
could get their hands on. No one was safe. Death came quickly when unwanted and life lingered when death was wished. Whoever didn’t die from the
flower’s spores, either died of starvation or were shot without provocation.
“I am the last effort to save the human race.” Tim spoke aloud to himself. Tim slipped a worn vial from his ragged pocket. He started to jog at
first but by the time he reached the escalators he had broken into a run. There, in the middle of a field of flowers, stood a massive flower. The
massive flower shone beautifully in the sunlight, it was obviously the first one. Tim, determined, charged through the field. With each burning touch
of a flower, Tim’s skin steamed and dissolved away. Tim screamed in torturous pain as he reached the flower. Tim fell to the ground, face deep in
flowers. Tim held out the vial, popped out the stopper and emptied the content on the big flower. Tim’s face fell away before the vial was empty.
What was left of Tim’s carcass fell to the floor steaming.
At first nothing happened. Then the giant flower gave a sickly shudder. The vines, all over the world, inflated. The giant flower shuddered again, and
exploded, blood flying everywhere. Blood from every victim, every person, flowed through the building. The windows and the doors burst open as blood
covered the land like a flash flood. The entire Earth shuddered as a framework that had filled it out collapsed. The Earth shook, chasms opened,
canyons closed. Mountains fell down, while more mountains rose up. Oceans fell away from the shoreline, just as waves flowed over cities. Volcanoes
exploded with such force, the ground for 3 miles around burst upward and fell back. Then, as soon as it had started, the Earth was quiet.
35 million years later, a flower bloomed…
Moral: All flowers have their thorns.
So, what did you think?
For some reason, the thought of plants taking over the world and growing unchecked has always filled me with a mild sense
of revulsion. Books such as The War of the Worlds and The Day of the Triffids just terrified me with their deadly alien plants and your story chilled
me. 
I also liked how the story ends with the
birth of another flower.(Although I havent figured out how I feel about the flower yet. 
