Flytrap
by Ezra Carmichael
The young man looks grim, determined. A hero, probably, not lured here by my siren song (which in any case I haven’t been singing) but by the glory of defeating the monster, defeating me. How to approach him? There are rumors that I can read the minds of the men and women who come here, but it’s not true. I have to rely on intuition and guesswork. And with a hero? The wrong guess can mean death.
I stop myself. I don’t know that he’s a hero. Is he equipped to kill me? He’s holding a torch, but it’s night, so that might not mean anything. Is his ax silvered? From this angle I can’t tell. He’s looking around—is he searching for me? I’m surrounding him on all signs and he seems blissfully unaware of that, but that could be a ruse. He draws his ax; I think it is silvered. Fire and silver can kill me if he knows what he’s doing. Mostly they don’t.
I decide to make my first move. I release pollen into the air. The fool isn’t covering his face, so he’ll breathe it in. And then… then he’ll feel disoriented, lost. He’ll forget where he is. I watch, expectant, as his face grows puzzled, then afraid.
I wish I could read his mind, could feel the fear and doubt coursing through his veins. He starts to swing the ax around blindly.
I have many voices, taken from prior victims, absorbed from them into my essence. With the voice of an older man, taken decades ago, I speak. “Why have you come here, child?”
He spins around, trying to work out where the voice came from, but it came from all around him because I am all around him. “Who’s there? Show yourself!”
Illusions are tricky, but this is always easier with a face. Carefully, I craft an image of the hero himself. That always unnerves them. Sometimes I think part of what unnerves them is that I can never get the image quite right.
This time I use a young woman’s voice, one of the first I took. “I am here.”
In the same moment I release a different pollen, one meant to arouse.
The man turns to face my illusion. He blanches when he sees his own face.
“What do you want?” This time I ask with the voice of another young man, the closest to the hero’s voice that I have.
“Get away from me!” he shouts. He raises the ax threateningly.
Time for some more pollen. This time I’m blatant and spray it directly in his face so that he knows he’s breathing me in.
“But you don’t want to do that,” I say with the same voice. “You came such a long way and now what you want is to lie down, to sleep.”
He yawns halfway, then stops himself, slaps himself in the face. “No!”
“But aren’t you tired, little one?” Now I’m using a much, much older voice, both in terms of age when I absorbed her and in how long ago that was.
He lifts the ax again and charges at me, but the image is only an illusion and the ax passes through it harmlessly.
Time to scare him. I laugh with all my voices, the chuckle reverberates through the copse. His face turns pale. But he is not so easily swayed from his quest. His eyes lock onto one of my trunks and he steps forward, ax raised, ready to chop.
It hurts when the ax hits me, but not much. The pollen has weakened him and there’s no force to the blow. The touch of silver is unpleasant, but not harmful. And while I don’t want it to happen again, my pollen, voices, and illusions are my only weapons.
He raises the ax again and I decide to take a gamble. I think I know who this hero is, and if I’m right…. A voice screams. “No, don’t, it hurts!” The voice is my most recent victim, the image I project is of that same person. “I’m not dead, don’t kill me!”
The hero stops, confused. “You, but… you’re dead.”
The image shakes its head. “No, I’m still here, still alive. You can free me but… if you cut down the trunk I’ll die. I can’t get out, I can only--”
“Liar!” He cuts me off and swings the ax again, but I’ve been releasing more and more pollen; the ax barely rises before it drops from his hands. “I know you’re not him! You’re, you’re… using his voice. It’s sick!”
I am using his voice, but he is still here, still alive. They’re all here, all still alive. But he wouldn’t believe that, won’t believe it until he’s mine; until I take his voice and his body and his soul and make them my own.
“Who else knows we kissed under the cherry trees on the hill?” the image asks, still using the voice of his lover. “Who else knows I swore to be yours the night your mother died? Who else knows why I left the town, hoping you’d follow? Who else knows why you did?
“I am here,” the image says. “I found an escape, a place where we’re free to be together, where no one will hurt us!”
“But the plant…”
“Didn’t kill me, it took me in. It doesn’t eat people, it takes them into itself and gives them a home. Here, I can be yours and no one will stop us. It’ll be forever.” Partially a lie, partially true. I do eat people, but I don’t kill them; I make them a part of me and I am forever. Unless some hero kills me.
The hero shakes his head. “This a trick, it’s a trap!” He sinks to his knees, too weak to stand.
I open the tree to reveal a hollow just the right size for the hero and his lover. The lover steps in. “Come, join me.”
He crawls forward, I suspect barely even realizing he’s doing it. The pollen has him bewildered and scared, his emotions have him desperate and longing. He doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he’s inside me and I close.
“Mine,” I say, still using the voice of his lover.
“Yours,” he says, his voice shaking.
“I will make you feel so good,” I tell him. “I’ll make you part of me.”
In here I have power. I make his clothes melt away and tendrils begin to twine around him.
“What, what are you…” but he’s too far gone to speak properly, to know what’s happening.
The tendrils crawl over his body, caressing it, stroking it, probing it. He gasps and shudders. Then I begin to do the same thing to his mind, pulling up memories and fantasies of pleasure, desire, and lust. His cock hardens and I wrap around it as well.
“Please,” but he doesn’t say what he wants. He doesn’t need to, I know.
A tendril that has been circling his anus enters while the tendril around his cock begins to stroke. In his mind I pull apart his memories, devouring his history as I pleasure his body. He will be mine. Utterly, entirely mine.
The tendril at his mouth enters and begins to fuck his throat. I’ve already suppressed his gag reflex, so he takes it, letting me take over his breathing. I fill his lungs with the air he no longer has access to and soon won’t need.
The tendrils crawling across his body begin to sink into him. It doesn’t hurt, I never want them to feel pain. I want them to feel penetrated, possessed, mine.
I take him, break him, and make him cum. And I feel his pleasure as my own, feel the force of his orgasm, of the joy of being utterly, entirely known. His body breaks apart as his mind falls into mine. We are one. He will live forever. He is mine.