by Charlie Fabre
A piece written by our editor-in-chief to illustrate how the theme flora might be interpreted in our issue 04 submissions.
Pitcher
The conservatory was his idea. She had imagined that their holiday would consist of lazy days by the beach and letting their skin sizzle under the sun, maybe a cocktail or two, and then dinner under the moon. Not this: walking through a glass dome overgrown with exotic shrubbery. The outing felt cruel, what was he punishing her for?
He climbed on up the slight incline of the path in search of something specific and she lulled behind. A tour group ahead of them stopped and started at each different species and he stopped with them, a few paces behind, listening to the facts the guide had to offer and repeating them back to her. She knew his game, she rolled her eyes, but smiled for him, to make him happy.
Eventually she became tired and stopped and sat on a rocky ledge. There was a cluster of plants at her back, odd things. Bright green with a pattern of red veins and capillaries tracing down the length of them. Length, because they were long and hollow, like sleek champagne flutes. The plants were unusual and as she tossed her hair over her shoulder, they caught her eye; they were unlike anything she had ever seen.
Nepenthes, the card beside them read, also known as pitcher plants. A carnivorous species that fills with liquid in order to both drown and digest its prey. Capable of eating a variety of insects and rodents depending on their size.
Pitcher plants, she hummed to herself as she rose. There was a dip in the crowd, she was alone on the path and blocked from view above and below, ferns and other big-leafed species getting in the way of this small alcove. He was long gone as well.
She stepped over the rope and into a soft bed of dirt and wood chips. The pitcher plants did not grow upwards from the ground, but instead were suspended from vines, swooping downwards then lifting their heads up. She was impressed at the strength of their necks. Engorged pink lips made up the rim of the plant, some speckled with darker violet as well. A lid that would shut the moment a meal had made its way inside. Paper thin, she thought she could pierce the body of it with nothing but her finger-nail.
She peered past the mouth of one. It was empty, a shallow pool of thick liquid – perhaps nectar – lying stagnant inside. It was crazy but she had the sudden urge to fit her hand, her whole arm even, inside and before she could stop herself, she already was. The plant’s lid fluttered so as to close when her fingertips brushed the fluid at the bottom, but it could not. A jaw with a broken hinge.
This was enough to tell her that what she had already done in those five seconds needed to stop. It was vile and cruel. It was grotesque, truly, and she tore her arm out quickly just as another tour group was rounding the corner. She scrambled over the rope back to the path and stood, pretending to admire the cluster, like everyone else.
The plant bobbed up and down, it seemed to sag on its stem. She watched it swinging as the tour guide spoke to the group loudly. The other pitcher plants were unaffected, and something pinched in her chest. How humiliating, how utterly humiliating and violating. She couldn’t look at it anymore, at what she had done.
She sniffed and turned to find him, somewhere in this infinite greenery. Deep in the conservatory’s belly.
swim press 