I Am A Carnivorous Plant

AN: Happy Halloween!

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I ate the men in the order of age. I’d like to say ‘Oh the old ones were chewy and the younger ones were soft!’, but no. Once again, I’m reminded that I don’t have any sense of taste or texture. I guess they even had a similar mass to them too, because they all fizzled down at about the same speed inside of my stomach. But what I can say is that they were all crazy nutritious! Oh man were they chocked full of nutrients! I only ate one and a half, and I felt like I was amazingly full! If my digestive sack could have foamed over from the richness then it totally would have!

 

…This is only solidifying the idea in my mind that this odd little plant body was made to eat humans.

Oh no...

Why does it feel like I’ve opened some kind of forbidden door?

It’s like sneaking into the kitchen at midnight to eat ice cream.

Maybe… Maybe I shouldn’t do this too much?

I feel like I’d somehow get fat.

…What would a fat plant even look like?

 

Ahhh, I better hurry and regrow so I’m not so full of nutrients anymore!

 

~~~

 

I decided to spend a few days here photosynthesizing until I managed to finish off the rest of my humans, and then I would continue on with my journey. I’m using this time as an experiment to see if I really am able to use up my nutrients faster trying to grow, or if it’s just that I suddenly don’t need to eat as much as before. And the conclusion iiiis~! Turns out it’s true, if I focus on growing then my body works through the nutrients faster! How crazy is that? My fast growing speed all this time really was due to me trying my best! It’s really nice to know that if I don’t want to grow then I don’t have to hunt as much, although I do love eating… What a dilemma.

 

I did a little bit of growing, but it’s not too terribly obvious. A few of the unnatural looking wrinkles and creases on my ‘skin’ smoothed out just a tad, so that’s nice. Maybe it looks a little less creepy now, who knows. The only other real change I noticed is that my roots have suddenly grown a few small, white leafy things on the ends of some of them. Wonder what that’s about. Maybe my legs are getting stronger or something?

 

The boy came back to see me a few times. I got worried that he might not know how to get back home after I saw him peeking at me the first time, but it turns out that that wasn’t it. I followed him when he left and actually saw him walk an hour back to his town. Turns out they really do just build their towns right up against the forest like I’d guessed! That’s so weird, it’s like they’re just asking to get attacked by the woodland creatures. Or maybe it just makes it really easy to go logging and foraging? Eh, I guess they must think it’s worth it. Anyways, every day the kid would walk back out to the cabin to check if I was still there. He’d even ‘hide’ behind a tree and watch me while he kept holding my precious camellia flower. It still looked like it hadn’t wilted very much, so I think he’s been keeping it in some water in his home… How sweet.

 

I approve of you, tiny boy!

If the people in your town ever anger me, I’ll take you somewhere safe before I eat them all, okay?

 

On the day that I’d finally eaten all of the kidnappers, I stopped pretending that I couldn’t see him. I turned and slowly made my way over to him, but the boy stayed put behind his tree like he truly thought I couldn’t see him. When I poked my ‘head’ around the tree he even let out a little scream. This boy is super cute~! I made my tentacles into a ‘hand’ and gave him a few (hopefully) soft pats. I even gave my departed flower a little tickle and willed my magic to ‘regrow’ it to perfection. I felt the tingle of magic flow out of my seed, and surprisingly enough it actually did make the flower look fresher. Didn’t see that coming, I just thought it was worth a try! The boy gasped in surprise when he felt a small tingle from the flower regrowing, and he accidentally let it fall out of his hands and onto the ground.

 

What happened next was the most surprising thing of all.

 

A small shrub suddenly began to sprout underneath the flower, and on that shrub even more camellia flowers blossomed! How crazy! Amazing! So I can grow other things besides just myself? Or is it because it’s a part of me that I can grow it? How wild! How awesome! I have to test out more of this! Thank you small child for helping me make this discovery! You can keep these flowers as my thanks!

 

I made a bunch of little gestures between the boy and the bush with my tendrils, but I’m not completely sure that he understood what I was saying.

Ugh, I really really need to work on being able to talk!

So annoying!

 

~~~

 

I left that little boy behind with hopes and dreams that he’ll take care of that little camellia bush. I really wanted to do a bunch of tests, but to do that kind of thing I’d need lots of nutrition, and since I’d eaten all the bodies in the cabin, well… I don’t want to get so hungry that the kid starts looking especially tasty, haha. I searched around until I found a nice juicy pack of deer and caught about twenty of them. It helps that the things like to sleep all huddled up together, makes them really easy to gas all at once. How nice. I ate five of them to get myself topped up, and once the sun came back out I decided it was time to get experimenting!

 

For my first test, I decided to see if I was able to use my flower’s attraction power even if I cut it off. I rooted myself to prepare for the flood of animals and put a tendril up against it so that I could pluck it once the time came. Yes, that was the plan, and that’s all well and good, but… The problem is, I never actually figured out what word it was to trigger the damn thing! Ahhhh~, I’m such an idiot! How stupid of you, plant!

 

I’m ashamed to say it took me half an hour before I finally figured out that I had to think ‘come see’ for it to do the thing. I probably shouldn’t be so hard on myself since it’s been so long since the time I accidentally did it, but… Yeah no, I’m pretty upset with myself. Well, whatever, anyways I activated the flower, and once the pretty sparkling mist started swirling around, I immediately cut it off and put it on the ground. It didn’t start growing into a bush, which… yeah, I should have expected since I didn’t tell it to ‘grow’ or anything. However it did keep pumping out the mist while sucking away my nutrition.

 

I won’t lie, for a second there I panicked that I wouldn’t be able to make the thing stop, and that it would just end up sucking me dry.

Only for a second, though.

 

When I use magic, the tingling doesn’t stop until the magic ends; That means I can feel the tingle coming out of my seed and flowing out towards wherever it’s going. When I first did the ‘come see’ magic, it flowed up from my seed, and up through my body until it reached my flower. However, after I plucked, put down the flower, and stopped touching it, suddenly the flow of magic changed. Now it was going down from my seed, out through my roots, and somehow reaching up into the flower.

 

…I guess this isn’t so different? If I want to cut off the flow of magic, then it’s pretty much the same as last time. That’s pretty nifty, actually! So if I want to, I can make a magical lure whenever I want and not have to have the damn thing attached to me. Quick! Before the animals come, let’s see how far away I can move from it! Let’s pick up my roots, and-

 

Oh.

So just like my poisonous gas, it stops when I uproot myself.

…Huh.

 

…The animals didn’t even get to come over yet...

 

~~~

 

Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, a lot of experimenting and waste happened and I ate through all of the deer before the day even finished. But! My experiments have taught me so much! Listen! I discovered I can grow things through my roots! You see, my roots are actually pretty darn long by now when they're fully unraveled, and so long as it’s within around root-length from me, I can grow something! I can grow a camellia flower and activate it without even touching it so long as it’s within range! I can even grow vines up from the ground and wiggle them around as I please, so long as I use magic on them. The more vines, the more nutritional cost of course, so I have to be pretty careful on that, but at least it doesn’t seem to eat through it too fast, so it should be alright.

 

You might be wondering, ‘But plant, why did you try to grow vines?’!

Well you see, I didn’t!

I tried to grow my tendrils!

 

I was so confused when I tried to grow my sleek, stem-like tendrils and an actual leafy vine came out. I did it a few times, but it still always comes out as a vine. What the heck is that about? My tentacles are smooth, they don’t have a single leaf about them, so what’s with this leafy version? They even control and move the same as my tentacles do! Are… Are my tentacles supposed to be growing leaves? Did I do something wrong to them somehow? I’m getting kind of insecure about it now...

 

Um, well… I suppose it doesn’t matter!

I like my tendrils whether they’re leafy or sleek! Hmph!

 

Anyways I’m super hungry now that I’ve run out of deer, and I have to go take these new powers of mine for a test drive, so let’s go see how much deadlier I am now! First let’s make sure to plant my roots super spread out, let’s grow a camellia flower in-between the edge of them and me, and let’s start bringing in the prey!

 

~~~

 

It took a few minutes before the first of my foolish prey showed up. My mouth was open wide, and the poisonous fumes were spraying out from it, but the enchantment of my flower was definitely still going, and it was just a bit too strong for any of them to care about anything else. One after the other, small creatures would flock into my deathtrap with their eyes stuck onto my flower, only to twitch and die mere seconds later. If they were 'large rabbit' sized or smaller, they were immediately tossed whole into my digestive sac. It takes a lot of nutrition to keep the magic going, and I’m not going to waste any time not eating! Plus, if anything bigger comes along then I’m going to need to be ready! My poison was killing most things with ease, but my tentacles were a bit too busy scooping up prey for me to try using them for anything else. If something big somehow came along, then-

 

Well speak of the devil!

I managed to lure in a nice pack of boars.