The Danger of The Moonlight

“Yank that one, that one, and especially THAT one,” ordered Annalie. THAT one referred to a gnarled, curled bud that stubbornly hugged the ground in a bald patch of land. It truly was an eyesore, something that looked as if it had been on the earth since God banished Adam and Eve. Its gray-green leaves stiffly circled the bud. The bud itself was almost black, like it had rotted in place and simply refused to disintegrate. The ground around the plant was bare. No weeds flourished, no tiny plants began their lifetime, nor even a blade of grass was to be found. It was, to say the least, strange.
Corabelle sighed. She so hated pulling living things out of the ground. She felt that she was robbing the plants of their already short time there, and that there would be some cosmic consequence for taking life. Nevertheless, she got to work removing the offending leaves, flowers and roots from the earth. Annalie was something of a perfectionist, who wanted her landscaping to be flawless. Corabelle suspected that Annalie was attempting to instill something in the land that she yearned for herself.  Annalie was not far from perfect, but she claimed to be getting closer every day. Vain, slender and neat, Annalie never had a loose thread on her designer clothes or a heavily colored hair out of place. Every once in awhile, she would raid the bank account, purchasing MAC, Sephora, D&G, 7 For All Mankind, and many other brand names that made Corabelle’s head spin. A visit to the salon rendered Annalie as barely recognizable. She actually SMILED, then. Corabelle didn’t understand her sister’s penchant for material things, but Annalie didn’t understand Corabelle’s love for the outdoors.
Every morning at promptly 6:00a.m. Corabelle rose from her warm bed and ventured outside. She adored the morning dew, and the way that the whole world seemed to still be asleep. Corabelle felt special at that early time. When she felt close to the earth, she felt uplifted. The rest of the day would pass in a happy blur. Corabelle’s head was in a dreamy haze, remembering that morning when she had seen a doe and her fawn drinking from the stream that ran near their house.
“Earth to Corri! Hello! Stop zoning out, start weeding!” Annalie screeched. Her piercing voice was what Corabelle imagined a harpy sounded like. She shuddered. She absolutely hated the nickname her sister insisted on bestowing on her. Corri sounded like a spice, or like some bubbly, airheaded girl who hated even the idea of dirt. Much like her sister, actually. Not that Corabelle HATED her sister, but sometimes she did resent the fact that…
Annalie marched over to Corabelle and kicked dirt on her shoes. “WORK! John Llenos is coming over at 2 and I need to be ready! And so does the house! If I’m going to model for anyone then I have to look the part! By the way, I’ve laid out the Manolo stilettos with your outfit. Remember, the Guess jeans and the Ed Hardy top. If you don’t change into it I am certainly allowed to throttle you. Anyway, ta-ta, I’m going to prep.” She sashayed to the glass-paneled back door, stepping delicately over mounds of dirt and her own unused gardening gloves.
Picking uselessly at the weeds, Corabelle fumed. Annalie tried so hard to force ‘Corri’ to be everything that she wasn’t. Resentful and angry, Corabelle whipped her hand spade at the ever-growing pile of decaying weeds. Wiping her palms on her old blue jeans, she stood and, with a cautionary glance towards the back window, she stalked off into the tangle of bushes that was her backyard.
She darted and dodged, pushing branches out of her face and disentangling leaves from her longish red hair. She found her special ‘alone’ place. It was a dim clearing in the miniature forest, with a mossy log sheltered underneath a pine tree. The pointy pine needles deadened the sound of her feet as she headed towards it. Sitting with a groan, she turned to look at the rose bush that she had smuggled out there long ago. Being as young as she was, she didn’t realize that the roses probably wouldn’t grow without care and plenty of sunlight. But every once in awhile, a magical bloom would appear, lending its beauty to the spot that only Corabelle knew of. She put out her pale hand to stroke the gorgeous crimson rose that had fought to live. She winced as a thorn caught her wrist, tearing the soft skin wide open. She examined the wrist to see how serious the slice was. Blood was pouring down her forearm, and a lot of it, too. Strange, for such a little cut, there was so much blood. Grunting in pain, Corabelle growled and turned to go back to her yard.
The journey back to her yard was much easier than the way there. The plants seemed to pull back at the sight of her alabaster skin streaked with crimson blood. The patterns in the flow almost looked like many roses, growing on the vine of her forearm. Corabelle looked down at her wrist, at her waterproof watch that announced smugly that it was TWO O’CLOCK! She gasped and broke into a light jog. Ducking the branches that mysteriously reappeared, Corabelle failed to notice the upraised root right at the opening into her yard.
Tripping comically over the root, arms flailing, Corabelle landed heavily in the dirt of a strangely bare patch of ground. Her injured wrist scored a direct hit on the curiously crumpled bud. Corabelle lay there for a minute, gasping, to catch her lost breath. She swore colorfully. The blood from her wrist dripped quickly down, off of her lily-white skin, and onto the bud. The bud began to shudder a little, began to twist and move minutely. Corabelle, not noticing, got to her knees and then her feet and jogged into her house to be reprimanded by Annalie.
Inside that odd bud, seemingly devoid of life, a change began. A drop of blood found its way inside the opening of the plant, traced its way down into a structure that looked uncannily like a mouth. That mouth-like object opened up wide, straining to catch every last drop of the blood that had given the bud life.
The next morning, Corabelle arose nice and early to greet the day. She kicked off her blanket and headed to her bathroom to throw on a threadbare t-shirt and a pair of stained shorts. As she unrolled her meticulously bleached socks, Corabelle noticed the small scab from yesterday’s adventuring.  Shrugging off the nagging memory, she continued getting ready.
Once outside, she bid good morning to the sunrise and bent down to see how the hated weeds were growing. Yep, they were still defying her sister’s wishes by living. Her eye strayed to the solitary bud in the ground. Was it her imagination or had the bud swelled? She poked it with a twig. It was still as rocklike and curled up as ever. Very strange.
Corabelle woke with the sunrise yet again. She felt a little…odd. She felt weak, like she had forgotten to eat. She shook off the chills and began getting ready for the day. While washing her face, she noticed a little bit of dried blood that must have come from her scab. She rinsed it with a bit of water, and went outside.
That night, Corabelle couldn’t sleep. She paced her room, staring out the window at the waxing moon. It looked so appealing. She found herself reaching for her doorknob, then snapped awake as if she had been sleepwalking. She smacked a palm against her forehead. What was wrong with her lately? Corabelle turned and crawled into bed.
The next night, around midnight, Corabelle suddenly found herself kneeling in the dirt in her backyard. Her scab was ripped open and bleeding, and she had her wrist pressed against that strange little bud. The bud wasn’t really a bud anymore, but had burst into full bloom. The flower that resulted was beautiful, almost ghostly. It was as pale as Corabelle herself, and looked as delicate as a spiderweb. Corabelle cautiously stretched her hand out to it. It was an intoxicating, gorgeous thing-she couldn’t help herself. The flower twisted towards her outstretched fingertips, waiting until they touched it. Then, with a flip of its petals, it had somehow latched onto Corabelle’s open wound and was feeding furiously. Corabelle’s eyes glazed over, and she was almost completely paralyzed until the thing had had its fill of her blood. The flower broke contact with a gentle caress of her skin, and Corabelle stumbled back to her bedroom and her waiting bed.
When her alarm rang the next morning, Corabelle didn’t respond to it. She couldn’t even muster the energy to turn it off. She watched the numbers glow with fevered eyes. Annalie threw open the heavy wooden door and smacked the top of the alarm clock, effectively shutting off the wailing alarm.
“Jesus, Corri, what’s wrong with you? You just woke me up from an amazing dream and now my beauty sleep is ruined. Are you dying or something?” Annalie said. She peered closely at Corabelle’s quiet countenance and paler-than-usual face. “Okay, you look like you caught something. Probably from standing out in the cold every morning. I’ll be back with some soup and crackers in a few.” She walked briskly out of the room, leaving Corabelle shivering. God, when had it gotten so chilly in the house? Corabelle remembered being too hot at some point during the night, but now she was way too cold. She pulled her blanket up over her shoulders and drifted back to sleep.
Later that night, Corabelle found herself yet again outside with the weird living-dead flower. The full moon illuminated the fragile, filmy flower. Corabelle again reached out a hand to it, and it fed from her life source. Corabelle began feeling weaker and colder, and finally collapsed into the soil. The once-translucent flower waved its petals happily. At the tip of each petal a glow of pink appeared, then spread down to the rest of the plant. The petals finished, the glow spread down to the leaves and even the stem, all the way down to the roots. Finally, the beautiful flower was completely crimson.
Annalie appeared in Corabelle’s room, the aggravated slap of her slippers announcing her anger at being woken up yet again. She leaned over Corabelle’s bunched-up blanket and pounded the top of the alarm clock. Only then did she realize that Corabelle was missing. She searched the house and yard, and when that proved futile, she called the police. A search party spread over the premises, checking behind every tree trunk and under every bush. No one noticed the gnarled and curled bud in the bald patch of ground. If they had, they would have seen the tips of a human hand protruding from the soil directly beside the strangely rotted plant.