Peculiar Plants: Two Drabbles

Ayahuasca Cured My Fear of Throwing Up

Ari’s checking his watch, so I redouble my efforts. “Ever golfed with Financial Doug? Dude hooked us up. Remote village, traditional ceremony, tiny candles, bitter tea. Authentic spirit-guides. Emetophobia totally vanished afterwards.”

“But isn’t it all barfing?”

“Nah,” I lie. “I remember swimming through spaghetti, laughing, nuzzling into a comforting red nest.”

Then waking up to a nightmare: abandoned, curled inside a cooling chest cavity, wrapped in Doug’s entrails, clutching vomit-spattered instructions I must follow if I’m to avoid Spanish authorities receiving some incriminating footage.

“Take my referral,” I urge Ari. “Exclusive resort. It’ll change you forever.”

And it does.

No Christmas Tree

Father just had to cut down the oldest pine in the forest so we could sledge it home. Its boughs, laden with ancestral ornaments and gilded star, scraped the ceiling. A wonderful tree, we all agreed, despite the strange shadows cast on the wall. 

But where was yappy pup Snowball?

The pine was dying, humiliated in the killer’s hall, dry needles collecting beneath its severed trunk. From darkness oozed crimson droplets. Finger-like branches clung to the tiny canine, its yowls smothered by jingling bells.

Sapping strength; a beginning.

The wizened tree would die. But first, it would root its revenge.