Eco-Brutalism Is A Very Popular Aesthetic!

"A Botanist creates a potion that gives plants the ability to communicate with humans, leading to a revolution."


Yvonne didn't really like plants.

She thought they were pretty, and she knew how to take care of them properly, but she didn't awfully like them either, and this often left her in an odd limbo of where she fit in, especially since she worked at a relatively large and well-known flower shop, where most of her colleagues were flora and fauna enthusiasts.

Yvonne was good at taking care of plants and remembering the properties and needs of the plants she took care of. This was enough for a place like this, apparently.

She wasnst complaining, though. The place paid well.

The crappy chair she had been sitting on for the past few minutes creaked horrendously as she moved to get up.

Break was over, so it was time to get to work. She had to go check on the samples the shop owner had been breeding, and note down their development.

She stretched lazily before exiting the break room and heading to the back of the shop. It was where the shop would have usually kept its plants, but the shop owner- her boss- has slowly claimed the space as his own personal lab, and would often experiment with new flower breeds.

It was the entire reason the store was so popular, after all.

The room was insulated, and the temperature was always kept in a certain range depending on the plants that were being worked on. Today, the temperature was slightly on the colder side, and the lights were aimed a bit away from the table that the plants were located on.

There were a few shelves, all with different plants that adapted to this environment, but her current focus was somewhere to the left of the room.

A variant of the winter honeysuckle plant that her boss had given a 'special plant juice' to. What this juice was supposed to do, she was never told. But she also couldn't care less.

Taking a notepad and pencil from the front pocket of her branded work apron, she approached the planter.

They seemed healthy enough. Their leaves seemed much fuller and healthier than they had been since her shift last week, and the faint fragrance it gave off seemed to have become a bit more powerful. It also seemed to have grown a few more inches, too. Other than that, there seemed to be no peculiarities of note.

Nodding to herself, she wrote down some menial observations and pocketed the notebook, intending to head back so that she could sneak in more break time. This action was stopped short, however, when she heard a small sound.

It sounded so quiet, that she almost thought she imagined it, but she instinctively looked back anyways.

The white flowers on the winter honeysuckle were all facing her.

She shivered, and looked around, certain that her coworkers were pranking her.

All the plants in the room were looking at her.

Plants couldn't look, they didn't have eyes, but she could feel their attention on her. It made her skin crawl, a sense of fear and dread had started to build up in her gut, telling her to run.

And she had always trusted her instincts.

Before she could take another step, however, the plant lunged. She wasn't able to move fast enough, and ended up falling to the floor in a tangled mess.

The other plants in the room extended their branches much farther than they should have been able to, and wrapped around her, squeezing painfully.

She flopped on the floor, desperately clawing at the vines, trying to get them off her face so that she could breath, but was unable to.

Tears streamed down her face as her strength left her, and her vision started to be taken over by black spots. Her vision swam and-

“Oh, my.”

A voice, elegant and smooth like velvet, reached her ears.

From the corner of her eye, she was able to spot her boss standing at the doorway, a placid smile on his face.

“I wasnst expecting my babies to grow so fast,” He smoothly walked over to her, undeterred by the killer plants. “Quite sorry for the trouble, dear.”

She let out a choked sob, pleading, begging to be freed so she could breath, she can't breath, let her breath-

The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was her boss laughing to himself in amusement.

Yvonne really hated plants.

The cover image was created in Canva!