dly buried body groans and shifts, as if turning over. It's horrifying undead form reaching out, a disgusting twig arm branching from the dirt and green. Oh my god the dead body is alive, no no no that's not what dead things are supposed to do?! AAAHHHHH!!!!

Being unfortunately well versed in many forms of horror, from big-screen movies to no sleep-inducing podcasts, even scarily 'fun' parks, all which I can blame on the Parks, I know exactly what not to do if I don't want to die right here and now.

I stand my ground.

Turning my back on it is just asking to be chased down and attacked. I refuse to die a scream queen!

Carefully, I reach into my sense defying bag. Not for my most dangerous or lethal weapon, but the one I'm most comfortable with.

The staff!

With its long-distance reach, I strike first. Intending to damage the ghoul and incapacitate it before making my escape.

Around the 16th violent smack without any repercussions back, I suspect the ghoul isn't as bad as I thought. Especially when it starts going "ow, ow, ow?" in a very recognizable little voice, soft as it is.

"Amar?!"

"Owww."

"Oh no. What are you doing buried in grampa's garden- oh nevermind. Ahh shit, er are you alright?!"

"...Owie."

Obviously I take that as a no, hopping through the stalks to where apparently someone tried burying Amar. It's impossible but he looks as if he's been here for days with the way greenery has grown all over him, from twisting vines to tiny mossy clover petals. When he rubs a hand over his face and closed teary eyes, lumps of dirt crumble and fall away but the green and flowering clovers remain. Especially on the top of his sleep messy head.

It's a kodoma? I've hit a kiddy korok spirit?! Oh no I've committed a grave sin in harming the cute!

Amar half yawns and half groans in pain as I try clearing off the plants. After all we're right next to a carnivorous flesh eating row of them! But the vines are strangely tough and stubborn, having wrapped their way around his neck and limbs.

"Why are you always in weird trouble all the time?!" I wipe away at what I could, revealing more human children underneath all this dirt and plants.

"....so loud...too bright."

"It's not sleepy time. Come on and help me get you out of this, ack! This is dangerous?!"

My feet sink into the oddly soft dirt, the feeling comparable to a gelatinous quicksand. If I don't hop around to change spots often I might as well get buried myself. What the hell?

The green covered child, who I thought was a corpse, blinks even greener eye slowly. Squinting at the sudden daylight, he tilts his head in questioning.

"Rosalia? Where is this?"

"I should be asking you that! Why are you buried here!? Where did you go last time?! Why are these things so hard to get off?!"

"Oh okay. ...They don't feel all that bad?"

"Ah. It's too late for your brain. You're going to die. You're going to get eaten by a stupid plant if you don't move and, just, grampa! Grrrraaaaampa! Get over here and do some saving!?!"

"...It doesn't hurt?"

"That's what all people say when they're dying. Now get up and start cutting, you're stronger than i am! Grampa! Hurry up already- Oh just...here!"

I pull out blade and work at the vines. The skin tough and gnarled. The action however causes Amar to yelp and back away in pain, much more so than when I was whacking down with blunt force.

"Okay. That one hurt?"

"Oh no, it's fused with your senses. Oh no."

"Rosa? Rosalia it really doesn't hurt like this, I think it's a good plant? Rosa, you should put down that knife. Rosa?"

What a horrifying houseplant the crazy old man has planted in our good home. It has infested itself into Amar, a mere child. Unable to think or fend for himself. Somehow it has brainwashed him into defending it. The parasitic weeds must be rid off at once if I wish to save my minion trainee.

A minion who seems to be trying to be burying himself further away from me. Trapped with no other way to go.

"It's for your own good, Amar." I promise, steadying the awkwardly too large weapon in my hands.

There's no time for hesitation, even if the ground is sinking slippery and I have mud and vine guts splattered all over me. It really is for his own good that we get this damned thing off, especially at the neck.

Now stop squirming and stop making this even more difficult for me to aim!

Unfortunately, the knife drops uselessly as I'm lifted into the air.

"Now now pumpkin, your stance still isn't good enough. Nor is it a worthy battle! He's not back to full health yet."

"Grampa?! What took you so long?"

"Ah of all the places you go poking your nose and knife in, I should have known. As expected from my grandchild! Ahahaha!"

"Grampa put me down! Put me down and get Amar the hell out of there before he turns into bug juice!"

I yell in the memory of an innocent butterfly that started it all. One that went crunch and is probably digested down to nothing recognizable at this point.

But grampa simply laughs at me. He either clearly does not understand or this sinking mud hole does not contain the same species of carnivorous plant. They're just neighbors and not anywhere near as bad, judging from how Amar still dazedly blinks up.

"That would be bad." the old man agrees finally, nodding to me. Then down to the brain dead brat. Clovers and fresh baby vines blooming evergreen, threatening to bury him whole once again.

"You wouldn't want to die that way? Not like that. There's a lot more to see you know."

"...Is there?"

When I stop struggling long enough, I see that young green eyes are actually rather red. Red and puffy. Like a bad case of allergies. Like the aftermath of ugly wet tears I've never seen.

"There's only one way to find out kiddo." Grampa pats his head, clovers and all, and makes to stand.

"Wait wait wait, we can't just leave like that. Are you insane?" I wave wildly, pointing to the kiddy garden plant. But all grampa does it make a show of turning and walking away.

"Can't help those that aren't ready Rosa girl."

"That's not how it works?! That's literally not how it works. You need help when you need it, not when you're ready for it!"

"Even those that can't help themselves?"

I feel that too close to my host's memories. I feel that in the scores of helpless weeds, worms, sucking out the life of our lands. Blaming, begging, pointing their filthy fingers at me in condemnation while lifting up another.

I feel it in how it drains me. Scares me silly like a knife to the throat, my blood burning anxiously inside.

"That's different! It's not even comparable. Crying for miracles ruins everything and everyone. They'll never come and you'll die like that. You'll die or worse."

It's not all inside me. It's spilling out, but from where?

My tireless mouth? My painfully numb legs as I run? The cut bleeding out from across my throat?

Who is even talking here?

The look he gives me is darker than sinking dirt. It echoes of lucid nightmares that have no right bothering me. It feels as if it would bury me alive just as easily.

After all that even, under the light of day, it feels....dull. No where near the threat that pulsed under my skin. Nowhere do I feel the fear I should for who this man really is. It just feels.... sad. Achingly sad.

Clovers and more bloom on where dirt streaks against this man. Climbing from fingertip up, green like overgrowth in the old cracks on a broken statue. The scars already there, like trodden land, following a forged path. They bloom as they crawl and I wonder if they would form a crown when they reach up top. Past broad shoulders and a strong cut jaw underneath that dark shade of that 5 o'clock shadow.

But they don't. With a flex tenseness of his arm, the vines electrify, turning golden and crisp. I fear the weight if there really was a foliage thick crown of gold resting on his head.

"Careful there Rosalia."

When he lifts his scarred burly hand, the gold leaf flutters and falls away. Ashes to the wind. When he brushes it through my awful curls for hair, gold dust swarms my vision. A blowing rain of it, brighter and heavier than a pile of autumn leaves. My head feels at once both drunk and heavily hungover.

"Careful not to let it eat you alive love."

I think that's what the sudden headache says, grainy in the blowing wind. It sounds like grampa's voice. But a lot of things do. I don't ever know what to trust in this world, not even myself.

How do I let something eat me up, destroy me eve, if I don't even exist?

I feel myself drop limp against grampa's chest the same moment I hear an outside voice.

"Ouch-."

There's a hiss, the low groan of a struggle. Tiredly opening my eyes, I look down to see grampa reapproaching the source of the muffled pain. My head pounding with just the simple act of processing what I see.

Vines oozing sap like blood. A little boy with grit teeth and bitten lips pulling himself out with every cut. Some parts looking too much like human veins when it should just be roots. Some of the sap actually bleeds where bloody green meets the surface of skin.

I knew it wasn't a good plant. Dumbass.

I feel my head roll, eyes forced shut, at the sudden movement, grampa leaning back down. I can't keep my eyes open, nor my consciousness going. It's as bad as any heavy hangover I've faced as an adult. Multiplied in the sensitivity I feel as a small child.

"It feels like cutting away a part of yourself and it is. Sometimes that's what you must do in order to move on. After you're ready. Maybe you'll never be ready and that's where you'll stay. But it never gets easier, not at the core. It's in too deep. I'm sorry. "

Grampa, stop talking. My head hurts too much for this.

Stop crying.

Stop that painful noise, wherever it's coming from. Why is there such crying?

Make it stop.

"I'm sorry."

Why won't it stop? Why won't grampa make it stop?! Why does it hurt? It's just an awful ringing sound and yet it hits as if bruises bloomed all inside of me.

This stupid plant.

Stupid everything.

I fade in and out, my head heavy and stuffed full of cotton as the stupid old man goes on his merry way. The last thing I truly register is how the air changed.

From something that smelled like too much cut grass mixed with home, to cool oak, deep and dark. The floor solid, echoing with each heavy step he takes. Passing by in a blur are barrels upon barrels of wood, larger than the balloon floats another world away.

There's a limp child sleeping next to me. Definitely not my sibling, the lucky child. No, this little boy is too tiredly tear-stained and uncomfortably thin to be anyone else in this situation. I would think all of this horribly messed up, but my head hurts too much to think about anything.

I do however curse myself for not properly following all the warnings, even grampas. Be good. Go straight through and don't ever touch anything. Something incredibly bad might happen, who knows?

All those crazy rumors exist for a reason.