Night of the Living Cruciferous Vegetable 6 (End)

Lynda and Dr. Cress boarded the elevator and they descended together to the basement. They passed a white, sterile lab and entered a dull meeting space with a traditional clock on its beige wall, a long wooden table, and stackable chairs with burgundy fabric seats. Dr. Cress told Lynda to have a sit down and she would be back in just a moment. There was a funny-looking air freshener in a wall outlet, but its odor was unusual and more reminiscent of chemicals than the more common lavender and vanilla.

Many minutes passed, but Lynda had stopped watching the clock. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt something akin to homesickness. She crossed her arms on the table, rested her head between them, and fell asleep.

Unwilling to stray while Lynda was still inside, Clyde and Carol sat on the curb under a birch tree in the parking lot. Carol occasionally broke the silence with chatter about feral budgerigar while Clyde picked at and uncurled an immature ostrich fern’s leaf stalk. After fifteen minutes of this Clyde went back up to the building, but was alarmed to find the door locked. He knocked, but nobody heard. Carol went around back and tried going in through the bathroom window, but it couldn’t be opened more than a crack.

They heard the front door open and close and went to investigate. It was the secretary leaving for home. She noticed the two hadn’t left and approached them, a concerned expression on her face, “You’re still waiting out here?”
“Um, yeah,” said Clyde as he scratched the back of his head.
“Do you know what’s going on in there?” Carol asked while shuffling a foot over a small tuft of grass that was growing out of the cement.
“Penny took the young lady down to see the lab, I think. You two are her friends?”
“Yeah, Carol is. I’m her brother. Why is she showing her the lab?”
“I was told she had been writing to Dr. Cress expressing her interest in a similar field. She was so impressed with her enthusiasm that she permitted her a tour. If you would like, I’ll let you into the lobby so you don’t have to wait outside.”

Clyde and Carol thanked the woman for her help as she let them back inside. As she drove away they stood quietly together, looking to each other in utter confusion. “I don’t think everyone here is being told the same story,” Says Carol as she folds her arms.

Without wasting time the two of them got into the elevator and descended to the basement. No lights were on but the one in the room where Lynda was left. Clyde was first to go in and shook his sister awake. “What’s going on?” he asked in a worried tone.
“I dunno. She said she’d be back soon.”
“What? You were just abandoned?” Carol asked while helping Lynda up.
Lynda looked around the dark rooms, her mind clearing as she got up to look around. “She left?!”

Sure enough, no cars were left in the parking lot. Lynda groaned, “What did we even come here for?”

On the next day Dr. Penny Cress and her investors sat in the very meeting space where Lynda fell asleep. “Was the formula successful?” Asked a pasty, balding man in an expensive suit.
“I took a sample from the subject after treating her with the application. From that sample I can tell you the process has absolutely sped. She will return to a full vegetative state in days.”
“How are the first waves of our unique crops faring?” Asked a man with a fluffy brown beard, himself wearing a suit expensive as the balding man’s.
“They are growing exceptionally fast, large, and strong. Exactly like the specimens in the lab. Once the new formula is on the market as an “herbicide” we won’t be having any more advanced specimens.”
“Indeed. It wouldn’t exactly be good for business if word got out that the brussels sprouts on their tables were once thinking, sentient beings,” said the balding investor.
“Parents have enough trouble getting their children to eat their vegetables!” laughed the bearded investor.
“Of course, you only have to slap the phrase ‘farm fresh’ on a carton of milk or eggs for people to forget about veal and battery cages, but we will try not to let things come to that.”
“I’m uncertain if those tactics would work if consumers knew their cabbage could grow into a full human being, but that’s assuming anyone in their right mind would believe such a thing.”
“Well, let us have a toast to my late father,” Dr. Cress says while uncorking a bottle of champagne, “and his brilliant discovery!”

Night of the Living Cruciferous Vegetable 5

Lynda scratched where a new bud was growing, but stops herself before picking it off. She sat down on Clyde’s futon. “What if this Cress woman is my real mom or something?” Clyde took out his cellphone, offering it to her, “Want to use this?”
“You know what? I do have some questions.”

Maybe she could find something out about her condition. Carol cheered her friend on as she took the phone from her brother and began to dial. She was saying something Lynda was only partially able to hear about finches but she didn’t think was probably that important.

The phone rang just a few times before going to voicemail. Lynda put it on speaker anyway.

“Thank you for calling the Erysimum Corporation Laboratory of Plant Breeding and Genetics…”

“Oi. This is some company or something,” Carol says with a snort. Lynda and Clyde shush her and barely catch the main facility address at the end of the message.

It took little effort on Lynda’s part to convince her brother and Carol to go with her to the plant genetics lab. They were curious why this mysterious Cress woman would include it’s phone number in the letter and, quite frankly, were bored and with nothing important to do.

The trio went in Clyde’s nineteen-eighties wood panel station wagon with the girls riding in back. At about the halfway point Carol brought up Lynda’s recent break up and the two friends stayed on that subject for what Clyde considered to be an uncomfortable amount of time.

In total it took them about forty-five minutes to reach the mystery location. It was situated close to where the city became the country, just a distance from a scattering of small businesses. They all got out of the car and went up to the unremarkable brown building with immaculate hedges.

Inside the building was a front desk stationed by a slightly grey haired middle-aged lady. Behind her a door was open to a room of filing cabinets. Lynda guessed the labs must be upstairs. When Lynda asked for Penny Cress the lady smiled and went off to get her personally rather than calling. That seemed a little unusual. They waited in silence for her to return and exchanged somewhat uncomfortable looks.

A minute passed before an elevator bell was heard in the distance. Shortly after a curvaceous woman with loosely curled, raven dyed hair, and a dark gaze sharpened with liquid eyeliner was seen walking down the hall, the sound of her heels striking the floor tile echoing off the walls. Her blazer and pencil skirt were carefully pressed and her lips are painted as vibrant a red as her stilettos. “I certainly hope she’s not my mother,” Lynda thought with the corner of her lips curling mischievously. She wiped the look from her face as the woman approached.

“Hello. I’m Dr. Penny Cress. Are you Lynda?” She addressed Carol.

“No, I’m the abominable snowman. I know you’re probably thinking it’s pretty warm around here for a monster like m-”

“Hi, I’m Lydia. This is my friend and my brother.”

Dr. Cress frowned a little, her expression thoughtful as she looked from Carol, to Clyde, and finally at Lydia. She brushed whatever she was thinking off and offered Lydia her hand, “It’s very nice to meet you,” she says with a bleached smile. Lydia shook the doctor’s hand, awkwardly returning her smile.

“Would you please come with me. I would like to talk a to you about something in private.”

“Um, sure?”

“What about us?” Clyde asked while gesturing to Carol and himself, “What’s so secret that her brother can’t know? What about our parents?”

Dr. Cress’s expression soured, but turned genial again in the blink of an eye. “Why don’t you two go somewhere else? You’re all obviously close, but you didn’t really need to tag along. Why don’t you come back in an hour or two?”

Clyde and Carol looked to Lynda, who shrugged, looked at each other, then finally gave Dr. Cress the stink eye in unison. They obviously weren’t fans. “We’ll be back,” says Clyde while Carol backs him up with a firm nod of the head.

Out the front door went Clyde and Carol, but together they were giving Lynda a look she knew meant they wouldn’t go far. Dr. Cress drew in a breath as the door shut behind them. “Shall we?” she asks, ready to lead the way.

Night of the Living Cruciferous Vegetable 4

Lynda and Carol bussed to meet Clyde back at the house. Neither had a clue what the news could be. Carol happened to be staying over that night and tagged along.

Clyde didn’t at first respond when the girls barged into his room. He handed Lynda a letter in a torn envelope. “I opened it by mistake,” he says unconvincingly. Lynda read her letter silently and Carol fidgeted impatiently. Clyde also seemed fidgety, which was uncharacteristic of him.

The letter was written on simple office paper and read,

Hello. You don’t know me. I’m writing to give you an opportunity to know more about yourself and your past.

It was signed by a Ms. Penny Cress and had some contact information, but that was all. Lynda scratched her head. “What?”
“What?” Repeated Carol.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” Asked Clyde.
“I don’t know… right now.”
“Whaaaat?” Carol repeated herself more profusely and Lynda handed her the letter, “Oh. So, let’s go see her! Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Right?”

Night of the Living Cruciferous Vegetable 3

October that Same Year

In the past day Lynda had reluctantly split up with her on-again, off-again girlfriend. She spent the following Saturday looking for distractions and went to the ice cream parlor with her best friend, Carol Mendez A.K.A. Carol the Brain. Carol’s “advice” mostly was her comparing Lynda’s relationship to the exploits of a wild turkey flock that she had been observing on bird watches.

With only four bites of hot fudge sundae left Lynda gets a strange call from Clyde telling her to come home. He had something to tell her in person.

Night of the Living Cruciferous Vegetable 2

Seventeen Years Later

Today as Lynda Jones hopped down the steps of her home on Spring Beauty Lane she notices a looper caterpillar was inching up her ankle with a slightest tickling sensation. Although people chalk it up to the fact animals simply like her, Lynda had a condition where she was like a magnet to insects. She did not consider this to be a bad thing thanks to the influence of her brother and naturally tomboyish nature.

Lynda was adopted into a lower middle class African-American family as an infant. Her family are father Sam, a medical attendant, mother Audrey, a high school teacher, and older brother Clyde, a student at the local community college. Lynda loved everything about her adopted family, but had some secrets kept from them. One thing she didn’t feel ready to share was that she was “definitely bisexual”.

The bigger issue in Lynda’s mind, though, was that she has been suffering from some unusual physical anomaly since age eleven that she has been too shy to ask a medical professional about. Every time the year gets cold strange growths would pop up along Lynda’s torso. These small protuberances that reminded her of flower buds could easily be broken off. (When this first began she would secretly collect them into an envelope before ultimately deciding that might be a bad idea.)

Night of the Living Cruciferous Vegetable 1

In an attempt to create a sentient cabbage Dr. Walter Cress unintentionally designs a strange disease that effects plants in the Brassicaceae family. After realizing his mistake, and for fear of what would come if he were to release this toxic chemical into the world, Dr. Cress burns down his entire lab and flees the country.

However he did not anticipate that his creation would survive on the flames and transmit to the large patches of shepherd’s purse growing in the surrounding fields.