Choke: 2 (Pillage Trilogy (Pillogy)) (3 page)

“What the . . . ?”

I tried to drag the blanket up, but my position was bad, and I fell off the end of the bed and down onto the tiled floor. The tube popped out of my arm, and my right shoulder hit part of the blanket. I attempted to roll over so that I could get on my feet and run away. My attempt was thwarted by something heavy and hard smacking me directly in the forehead. I was snapped down flat, the back of my head hitting the floor. I looked up as I lay on the floor, and I could see that the potted plant Millie had sent me was sitting on my forehead. My breathing was labored, and the pot felt heavy. I really didn’t know what to do. I had been a Boy Scout briefly when I lived in Chicago, so I had learned a few knots and how to whittle before I caused some trouble and was asked to join another troop. But in those two months, I never learned what to do if a houseplant had just head-butted you.

I rolled my eyes back and looked up at the pot. The plant leaned forward. It was wriggling and lowering itself closer to my face. If I weren’t a rational human being, I would have sworn that the three bloodred flowers were grinning sinisterly at me.

The largest bloom cocked its head, pulled back a few inches, and then lunged at my nose. It clamped on and dug its thistlelike leaves into my skin.

I tried to scream, but the second flower jammed itself into my mouth and grabbed hold of my tongue.

I chomped down, hoping to bite the bloom off and free my tongue but I was too slow. All I did was bite down hard on my tongue.

“Owwhaaahaaaah!”

I thrashed violently, rolling over onto my side and bucking the plant and its pot away from my head. I got on my hands and knees and looked toward where the plant had been. It was lying on its side and rolling back and forth. It rocked and then flipped itself up. I stayed on all fours, watching in disbelief as it hopped closer.

Click, click.

The biggest flower bent down and chomped on the card Millie had written—grinding its petals together as if they were teeth and tearing the card into shreds. As it was chewing, the second flower wrapped itself around the plastic pitchfork that had held the card and yanked it out of the dirt. It whipped back and let it fly straight at me. The tiny tines jabbed my arm, drawing blood. The plant clicked closer.

I scrambled to stand as fast as I could. I’m not proud of what happened next, but I started to run. I ran from that houseplant like a small child running from a huge tiger. I also sounded like one—a small child, not a tiger.

“Heeeeeeeeeeellllllp!”

The plant whipped its clay pot around like a tail and threw itself into my legs. I tripped and went flying in between an empty bed and a tall counter. I crabwalked myself against the wall while trying to catch my breath. The plant righted itself and turned to look at me. All three flowers were bristling and moving. They clicked the thorns on their stems together and lurched forward balancing on the bottom front base of the pot. The pot rolled a couple of inches to the right and then rolled toward the left. Back and forth, back and forth—slowly getting closer.

“Stop!” I tried to command it, knowing that, in the past, growing things had obeyed me. “Freeze.”

It rolled nearer.

“Nurse!”

Lightning struck, illuminating the grey room. The rabid plant looked like some sort of foliage zombie under strobe lights as it moved even closer—back and forth, back and forth.

I could see a tall bottle on the counter next to me. I picked up the bottle and waved it in the direction of the plant.

“Get away!”

The plant stopped and rocked back, resting on the entire base of its pot.

“I’m serious,” I yelled.

Apparently it didn’t believe me.

Click, click, click.

I didn’t know what to do; it was now only about ten feet away. I slammed the bottle down against the counter, breaking the bottom off and giving me a jagged weapon. Small bits of glass chimed down against the floor.

“Get back!”

The plant stopped, and all three flowers cocked their heads as if to get a better look at the broken bottle in my hand.

“Yeah,” I said breathing hard. “And I’ll use it.”

The storm exploded all over the room. “Now,” I panted. “Go back.”

The plant shivered and bent forward so that all of the flowers were touching the floor in front of it. It sort of looked like it was bowing. I thought maybe I had subdued it. Instead, it whipped its potted end and slammed it down against the side of the bed. The pot shattered into a number of pieces while the dirt around the roots kept its shape. The plant quickly picked up the largest pieces with its branches and began waving them in my direction. The clay pieces were jagged and sharp, and the way the plant was acting made me feel like I was in some sort of horticultural Western.

I just stood there in shock.

Freed from the weight of its pot, the plant sprang forward, hitting me in the stomach and slicing away at my hospital gown with its sharp, pottery shards. I tried to fight it off with my broken bottle, but it simply slammed three pieces of the cracked pot against my weapon and shattered it completely.

“Nurse Agatha!”

The plant was going at me like a tiger trying to claw its way into a bag of meat. I pushed it away and received three long scratches on my right arm. The wounds burned like fire and caused my body to react like a maniac. I kicked and screamed, my left foot punting the plant onto the bed. All the soil at the base of the plant exploded into the air. I could now see
the plant’s thin roots dangling like cooked ramen noodles. I scrambled up and tried to run again toward the door.

The plant leapt from the bed and wrapped itself around my legs.

I didn’t know whether to scream, “Ahhhh,” or “Agatha.”

I went with, “Aaaaaagaaaathhhha!”

I wriggled forward on the floor, futilely clawing and grabbing at the slick tile. I could see the bell against the wall and above the desk. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to push it and have the entire staff run in and rescue me.

I kicked my legs in a desperate attempt to shake the plant off. All it did, however, was cause the plant to leap from my legs onto my back. I could feel the clay shards cutting through my gown and slicing my skin. I got onto my knees and tried to reach behind me and pull it off. As I reached out, the plant swung its noodlelike roots around and mashed them into my face. My eyes and nose were suddenly filled with dirt. I couldn’t see clearly, and I could feel the plant now ripping up my shoulders.

It took everything I had to get to my feet and stumble toward the desk.

The plant pulled itself around my right side and began going at my face, its thorns digging in wherever they could. I fell to the desk and threw my hands against the wall searching for the call button. My left hand hit the button, and I pushed it. Even through the rain I could hear the muffled bell ringing somewhere down some faraway hall.

I pushed it again.

The flowers bit down on my hair and violently pulled my head backward. It felt like my neck was going to snap as I fell behind the desk.

“Heeeelll . . . !”

The smallest flower shoved itself into my mouth to silence me. I bit down and tore the bloom completely off.

The plant got angrier. It tore at me with a newfound aggression and anger. I felt a chunk of my hair being pulled out and the roots of the plant were frantically trying to wrap themselves around my neck.

“Helllp!”

Apparently nobody was coming. My whole body now burned from the deep slashes, and blood was dripping and smeared all over. I huddled under the desk as the plant continued to slice me up. I was just about to accept my fate when my elbow hit the large trash can under the desk. I tried to open my eyes to see if it was big enough to crawl into. I managed to get my left eye open enough to see that it wasn’t just a trash can; it was an industrial-strength paper shredder.

My mind instantly came up with a plan.

I threw my head back against the top of the shredder, hitting the on button. The machine whirled to life as I grabbed the roots that were currently trying to strangle me. I yanked them back as hard as I could and shoved the plant’s roots down over the long, thin opening of the shredder. Before the plant could react, I mashed the roots into the slot, hoping that at least one of them would catch.

It was better than that, the shredder got hold of a large wad of the noodly roots and quickly began to pull the rest of the plant in. The flowers and branches all dropped their clay pieces and began to writhe and wriggle in pain. The small, thin branches were frantically trying to grab hold of me to keep from being pulled in and shredded up. Some pulled my hair, and one of the flowers bit down on my left ear. But the machine was too powerful.

I pulled myself away and watched as the shredder chewed up all of the roots and began pulling in the base of the plant. The machine struggled for a few moments on the thickest parts of the plant but then got up to speed and sucked in the rest of it. The last part to be pulled in and ground up were the two remaining flowers. I think the biggest one was screaming. I tried to think of some cool comment to say, but all I could think of was, “Plant that.”

I waited a few seconds to make sure it was really all finished, and then I reached over and turned the shredder off. I collapsed, lying down on the floor with my legs sticking out from under the desk. My entire body was cut up, and there was blood all over me and on the floor where I had dragged myself. I slowly caught my breath wondering why nobody had come when I rang.

The doors pushed open. “What, what?” Nurse Agatha said stomping in. “There’s no need to ring the bell more than once. I’m not a cow, you can just . . .”

She stopped talking and looked around. She gazed at my empty bed and then down at the floor. I watched her eyes follow the trail of blood to where I was.

I think it’s kind of weird to hear old people swear.

I lifted my head up more and tried to smile as she ran up to me. I thought she was going to fuss and worry and attempt to help me. Instead she pulled my right arm up and yanked me into sitting position. She then stood up and pushed the call button four times.

Grown-ups are always contradicting themselves.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“Bleeding,” I answered honestly.

Two big male nurses burst through the door. They picked me up and carried me back over to my bed. As they were setting me down, Nurse Agatha was still carrying on.

“He’s done it for attention,” she ranted. “He’s more trouble than a bus full of apes.”

“It wasn’t me,” I said as one of the nurses began to wipe off my wounds and look me over. “It was the plant.”

All three of them looked at each other.

“What plant?” Nurse Agatha asked.

“The one I thought you stole.”

Now she really went off. I just closed my eyes and lay there in pain as they cleaned me up. It took almost two hours to get me bandaged and into clean clothes and sheets. In the end I had lost a couple of chunks of hair, had a nice-sized gash on my right leg, and hundreds of scratches varying in depth and length. According to Nurse Agatha I was “probably going to live.”

They hooked my IV back up and gave me more medicine. The next couple of days were nothing but a blur.

Illustration from page 3 of
The Grim Knot

CHAPTER 3

I can’t understand why people don’t believe me, but for some reason nobody did. I tried to point out how stupid it would be for me to scrape myself up. But, as usual, not a single grown-up took the time to try and understand that. To make matters worse, I now had to stay an extra few days for observation. Of course, “observation” meant leaving me all alone in the large hospital hall. Someone brought me food three times a day and someone picked up my tray when I was finished, but that was about it.

There was one day when they brought a young kid in and put him in a bed three beds down from me. But the kid only stayed a few hours and he coughed the whole time so we never really had a meaningful conversation.

According to Nurse Agatha, Thomas had come by to visit me, but I was sleeping and they had decided not to wake me up. I was pretty mad about that, seeing how I could have really used the company.

By my eleventh day in the hospital, I was so stir crazy I began having conversations with the squirrels that occasionally ran across the glass roof and played in the large pine trees that were surrounding the hospital.

I was way too bored.

I read one of the magazines Nurse Agatha had given me for the third time and tossed it down. The hospital didn’t have any good magazines. I mean, me reading
Woman’s World
once was embarrassing enough, reading it three times was just plain sad. Besides the lighting in the hospital wing was so bad it was hard to read. The glass ceiling let in almost no light, thanks to the thick gray clouds resting on it. I lay back in bed, sighed, and closed my eyes. When I opened them next, a man was sitting next to me on my right side. I screamed in a way that was unbecoming of any boy no matter how old he was.