Close Encounters: Garden Variety Ch. 02

Letting go of Irwin's damaged vine, Darci sat back on the couch and crossed her legs. "Before I let you act on that. I wanted to ask you more about the image Irwin gave you a while back in the kitchen."

Mary raised a questioning eyebrow, her eyes flicking momentarily to the plant. "What of it?"

"Tell me what you remember of it, in as much as you can."

"I dunno, Dar. That was a couple weeks ago," she said, her reluctance evident in her tone

"Try, please?"

"Fine, let me think for a second." Mary stared off into the distance while swirling the wine in her glass for a few moments. "Okay, here's what I can tell you...."

Mary spent the next few minutes recalling everything she could of the brief, but memorable moment with the plant, getting more and more aroused as she focused on the details.

"Wait, stop there," said Darci. Smirking, she put her arms up and out to her sides while moving her legs apart.

Darci slowly moved into what seemed to be a very specific pose on the couch as Mary watched in confusion. The brunette pulled her legs up and out to the side, then pushed the hem of her sundress up, exposing her naked sex.

Mary gasped as her eyes widened in surprise. "What the fuck?" she breathed. It was the same pose as the Darci in her vision. Her eyes shifted between Darci and Irwin. "But... how?"

Darci relaxed and pulled her dress back down. "A few days, maybe a week, before he showed you that, I was in the kitchen having a little alone time. Since somebody," she glared up at Mary while taking a sip of wine, "got the idea of a viney, tentacled boyfriend in my head, I went looking to see if this was a thing on the internet, and it sure as hell is. Long story short, I ended up playing with myself out in the kitchen, and what you described came directly from the fantasy I was enjoying at the time."

"But... my ass. He had one in my ass, and it felt good."

"Hon, he doesn't know about your injury or that you can't take anything bigger than a finger back there. I'm guessing he took the feelings from my experience in the fantasy and projected them onto you."

"So you're suggesting Irwin is a sentient, psychic plant. Why are we not running and telling the cops or the government? And what does he want?"

"I don't know about sentient and psychic--"

"He took a fantasy from your head, rearranged it so I felt what you did, and projected it into my head. I think that counts as sentient and psychic."

"Fair point. But I can tell you I got a sense of appreciation when I repotted him. He trusted me to take care of him and didn't lash out like he did at Shadow."

"You probably weren't treating his vines like a snack either."

Darci smiled, "True. But I think he trusts me, and I don't want to betray that." She looked up at Mary with a sheepish grin. "I've loved and taken care of plants for so long that it's nice to know what I do is appreciated."

"I can see where you are coming from there, and you are the only person I know where that actually makes sense and isn't creepy as fuck. But I have so many questions. Like, where did he come from? Some genetics lab? Outer space? Did he fall through a rift in spacetime? Has his kind always been here, and you were just the first to discover them? But most importantly, is he safe, and what does he want? I'm not going show up one day to find your dress laying in front of him, and you've disappeared, am I?"

Darci set her wine down and looked over at the plant. "What do you think, Irwin? Can you answer some of Mary's questions?" she asked, lifting up one of his vines with her finger. "You too, Mary," she said, waving her down.

"Damn thing is probably going to poison us to keep its existence secret, and we're fucking holding hands with it," she grumbled while reaching down and lifting a vine like Darci.

Seconds passed, and nothing happened.

"Well, now I feel foolish," said Mary, withdrawing her hand.

"Wait, wait, wait," said Darci grasping Mary's wrist and pulling it back toward Irwin. "Think about it. If he's a sentient, psychic plant, he's taking a huge risk revealing himself to us."

"Hasn't he already done that, though?" she asked, lifting the vine again.

"It's one thing to guess. It's another thing to know."

"True."

A minute passed, then two. Mary sighed and pulled her hand away again. "I think we're out of luck. Maybe it was all some weird, shared hallucination," she said. She brought the wineglass to her lips but stopped before taking a sip. "Dar?"

The brunette's face lit up like she had won a prize at the county fair. Her eyes widened, and her mouth fell open in amazement as she stared off into the distance.

"Darci? Are you alright?" Mary asked.

Darci's expression shifted from happy excitement to appalled. When she finally looked up at Mary, there was anger in the woman's eyes Mary had only seen a few times before.

"You threatened to JUICE him!"

The color drained from Mary's face. "Awww, shit," she mumbled before downing the rest of her wine.

"I. cannot. fucking. Believe you right now! You... you... you don't even own a juicer!"

"No, but you do. Wrong thing to say. Listen, Dar, that day was really fucking weird, and you have been known for being a little too trusting. I was just trying to look out for you, and... well... what I said was mean, but it was also true, and not just for Irwin. After Derrik served you the divorce papers, I would have done the same thing to him if it were legal. I love you, Dar, and anyone who hurts you needs to know there will be hell to pay, as your ex-husband found out."

"You're making it very hard to stay mad at you," Darci growled.

"Just making sure your house doesn't turn into the next Little Shop of Horrors."

"Carla already made that joke. Scared the hell out of me doing it too--" Darci blinked a few times. "Uhh... Mary, I don't think that will be a worry." She looked at Irwin, "You should probably be the one to tell her that."

Mary sighed and looked at the plant. "I promise I won't throw you in the juicer, and I can't believe I'm talking to a plant again."

"So, he's not just a shared hallucination?"

Mary looked at her wineglass. "Unless you spiked the wine with LSD. No. You were in the bedroom getting undressed when I said that. There's no way you could have heard me." The vine lifted as she reached down to hold it again. Mary froze for a moment, then placed her finger beneath it.

What would it be like to touch the mind of another being? To communicate telepathically? Mary had a lot of ideas in her head from movies and books. Would it be an echoing, hollow voice? Would it even know English? Actually, that was a silly question. Irwin clearly understood what they were saying.

What actually happened made it very difficult not to laugh.

Instead of words, a picture formed in her mind, but more than a picture, it was like a single-page comic on parchment. The first image was of a soft, cartoony version of Darci looking behind her at a piece of glass sticking out of her leg. That was followed by Carla helping Darci walk away. Out of a gap between what Mary thought were two boxes, but Darci later explained were stacks of the plastic flats her plants arrived in at work, a green vine poked out and touched the pool of blood left behind. Next, the puddle had disappeared, and a cartoon version of Irwin in a black square pot looked brown and sickly.

At the very bottom of the page was a representation of Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors with the cartoon Darci beside it. In the next frame, it picks Darci up and tosses her into its mouth, and is followed by a significantly bigger Audrey II.

Below it, the first two scenes repeat but with Irwin instead. In the last 'drawing,' a shriveled, brown Irwin lay in the ground, his pot tipped over, dirt spilling out, and two X's on his bulb.

"Blood is poisonous to you?" Mary asked.

A red circle appeared around the image of him dead.

"How do you know about Little Shop of Horrors?" asked Darci

The page went blank for a moment before a bust of cartoon Darci appeared. From it, a thought bubble extended from her head with a storefront, Audrey II, and a man in glasses representing Seymore. The drawing of Irwin appeared with a vine on Darci's shoulder, two big goofy-looking eyes, and a faint yellow cone beginning at his eyes and stretching toward the thought bubble.

"So, you can see our thoughts?"

The scene changed to a side view of a shoreline with Irwin on it. He continued to stare at the thought bubble from a moment ago bobbing on the surface of a body of water. Another image appeared below. The thought bubble was submerged, and Irwin's big-eyed depiction looked around for it with a question mark over his head.

"But why should we trust you won't hurt us, and what do you want from us?" asked Mary.

The page went blank again before two Irwins with sharp red triangles for eyes appeared, one below the other. In front of the top one, Mary's cartoon joined Darci's. Both looked bruised and battered as Evil Irwin beat them with his vines. The second scene proved even more disturbing since both women were laying on the floor with Xs over their eyes. Red arrows pointed from each scenario to the next in the sequence, a police car beside Irwin with his vines up in the air. Pictures of Irwin behind bars, then in a clear acrylic box with air holes in it followed. At the page's bottom, a dead Irwin lay on a metal table as an evil-looking man in a labcoat sliced him open with a scalpel.

"I'll admit, that's a pretty good reason," said Mary. "But what do you want from us?"

An image of an insectoid creature appeared. The insect carried a stick in its hand and appeared to be hitting a rock with it. Beside it stood Irwin planted in the ground but with his head bitten off and a part cow/part gorilla creature standing nearby with his stalk hanging out of its mouth.

Below this scene was another insect-creature next to Irwin's cartoon with a plus sign between them. On the other side, an equal sign appeared, followed by a city straight from a sci-fi movie, with flying cars and all.

Further down the page were the creature and Irwin again, but the creature had a thought bubble this time. The bottom half of the bubble was a drab gray and the top white, but otherwise, there was nothing remarkable about it, and the Irwin beside the insectoid looked bored. The scene repeated itself but with Darci instead of the alien creature, and the thought bubble was filled with explosions of primary colors.

"He thinks I have a very colorful mind," Darci said haughtily, then giggled before turning her attention back to Irwin's images.

The scene at the bottom of the page copied the equation from above but had Darci plus Irwin, and on the other side of the equals sign stood a large question mark. It then shifted to include many more Darcis with some Marys and a few random male cartoon figures, while the number of Irwins also increased, but not by nearly as much.

"So you aren't here to become our chlorophyllic alien overlords?" asked Mary.

A red circle appeared at the top of the page where the ape-cow-thing bit his head off.

"Fair enough. But it feels like there's more to it."

Most of the page went blank, leaving only the circled image. Below it, rows of pictures emerged. The first was a small Irwin plus a picture of a bunch of springy, squiggly lines equaling a larger and stronger version of himself. Darci and Mary giggled at how he made his vines into human arms flexing to show their muscles while his bulb wore sunglasses. The next row began with a tear in the corner of an eye with one of Irwin's vines hovering nearby, immediately followed by the vine touching the tear and absorbing it, turning the tip of the vine darker.

The scene repeated with milk from a naked breast, a bit of drool coming from the side of Darci's mouth, which she did not appreciate being the model for, a penis with a drop of cum at the tip, but with a question mark next to it, and finally a puddle of clear liquid.

"What's with the puddle?" Mary asked. A second later, she pulled her hand away from Irwin's vine. " Oooooohhh I was... notexcpectingthat," she blurted out, her face turning bright red in embarrassment. Darci, meanwhile, nearly fell off the couch laughing her ass off.

The last image to appear had been cartoon Darci naked and leaning against the counter as an equally naked Mary knelt in front of her. Mary's knees were spread wide, and the motion of her fingers between them shed droplets of her fluids, which formed into the puddle between her legs.

"Okay, but what are the swirly lines up top?" Darci asked once she calmed herself and took hold of Irwin's vine again."

"They're proteins," said Mary, using the question to get over her momentary embarrassment.

"He's saying that he will grow a little bigger then stop without those proteins, but he can grow much larger with them," said Darci.

"Isn't he a little young to be thinking about stuff like that? You've only had him for what, a month?"

Darci stared into the distance for a moment, then shook her head. "I think he's saying that when he absorbs the last nutrients in his seed, he gets all the memories from previous generations and is considered mature after that. He says he can produce a seed now, but it wouldn't contain his memories. Like a baby, it would need to learn everything over again. But once he reaches a certain size, he passes on his memories to the seed."

"He can produce seeds? Wouldn't that make him a 'her'?"

"Apparently, he's both but thinks his personality more closely resembles human males." Darci's eyes went wide for a moment before her cheeks turned red. "Yep, he's definitely male. Irwin is a bit jealous of his larger version in my fantasy."

Mary pulled Darci's finger away from the plant. "Darci, you need to seriously think about this. You have an alien plant--"

"He never said he was an alien."

"Dar, those creatures he showed us don't exist here on Earth, nor do those cities. He's either an alien or from a different dimension, which technically makes him an alien. So you have an alien plant, probably the biggest thing to happen on Earth since Roswell, sitting in your living room. What are you going to do? Raise him into your own personal sex toy?"

"Roswell was a weather balloon."

"I know, but that's not the point. I'm asking, what next?"

Darci looked between Irwin and Mary, "I... I don't know. Irwin, what are your plans?" she asked, picking up a vine again. A few seconds later, she leaned back again, "His plan, for now, is to stay where he is and grow bigger. What do you think, Mary?"

"It's your decision, Dar, and I promise I'll back whatever you decide."

"That's a pretty big decision to be dumping on one person."

"Somebody has to decide, whether it's your boss, a government scientist, or a military general. Personally, I trust your judgment more than most of theirs."

"I get that, but I was really asking for your opinion. Mary, you're easily the smartest person I know, and you're going to see things that I won't or can't."

Mary sighed and looked down at her empty wineglass. "And here I showed up looking for a cuddle and some lovemaking."

"I'll get you some more wine while you're thinking," said Darci, getting up from the couch and taking her wineglass.

"Bring the bottle. We might need it."

---

Irwin watched the two women sleeping on the couch in one another's arms. His existence caused them both a great deal of stress. He envied them. Touching human minds exhausted him, and he wished he could achieve this state of sleep humans experienced. The quadrupeds had periodic times of stillness, but the stillness extended to their minds as well. They essentially shut down completely for a while.

Human bodies shut down similarly, but their minds enter a chaotic and sometimes frightening dream state. At the same time, a strange beauty emerged from the chaos. People, incidents, and situations from their day flickered in and out of existence, each time handled or interacted with in a slightly different manner. Placing a vine lightly on each woman's ankle, Irwin quickly saw he was a large part of those thoughts.

Darci appeared to have made her mind up about him. She only worried about the consequences, thinking people would riot in the streets and burn the cities down if they knew about him. The riots weren't because of him specifically, but rather a human reaction to proof of alien life coming to Earth.

As expected, Mary's hesitated to accept him. She worried about his ulterior motives and that he secretly wanted to subjugate the humans on this planet. Or worse, hand the planet over to the quadrupeds.

Irwin found Mary's idea worrisome. If he sent back a message that the planet was habitable, it would have to be seen by the quadrupeds first before they passed it on to his people. Would they see this planet as a place they could also colonize instead of just sending more of his kind to form a similar symbiotic relationship with the humans? Probably, and the quadruped's linear thinking and advanced technology meant there would be no talk of co-habitation, and humans wouldn't stand a chance in a war.

All of that would only be possible if he managed to get a signal back to his origin planet. He knew its exact coordinates, and a signal using Earth tech would take twenty or more of the planet's solar cycles to reach his kind. But once the message reached them, a colony ship filled with quadruped troops could make the return trip in a few months.

"What's wrong, Irwin?" asked Mary.

Irwin jerked his vines back. He'd been so lost in his thoughts he hadn't noticed she woke up. Darci stirred beside her, awakened by Mary's voice.

He rested his vines on the women's ankles again and sent them a series of pictures.

In the artistic style he used earlier, he showed a picture of himself holding Darci's tablet but with a satellite dish poking out the back transmitting a message to his home planet, then of his kind riding spaceships back to Earth. It was followed by a line of humans and his kind standing in rows, hand in vine, which made the women giggle for some reason. A thought bubble outlined the sequence and connected to a larger version of himself looking happy.

The next picture was of just him with no thought bubble. The cartoon face was still there, but his body became sharper, more realistic, and the smile disappeared. The last image began with an empty thought bubble and him looking horrified. The thought bubble filled in with the same first image of the transmission, but in the second, the quadrupeds came from his home planet, standing in rows and carrying guns. The last image in the bubble was of a war zone. Humans fired ineffective weapons at energy-shielded quadrupeds while the invaders' guns vaporized the defending humans.

The entire page shrank to the side of a poster being held by a very sad version of himself. In the next image, he ripped the poster in half. The last image was of him turned away from them and slumped over as the halves lay on the floor.

"Am I understanding this correctly? You aren't going to contact your planet because those creatures might come and wipe us out?" Mary asked.

Irwin formed a vine in the last image into a hand and gave her a thumbs-up without turning around.

Darci closed her eyes, and a second later, he received an image from her of her cartoony self hugging him as tears poured from her eyes in her sadness for him.

Irwin mirrored the scene but made it shift as though he were stroking Darci's hair as he had seen Mary do a few times when the woman was upset. "Do not worry. My kind has ways to restart as long as one of us lives. I will not remain alone," he told her. Irwin could immediately tell that while they understood him, they found his 'voice' unpleasant.