Malice

"You're sure this isn't just, like, an overenthusiastic groundskeeper?" Oki's voice, usually a playful rumble, was thinned by the oppressive quiet. He kicked at a patch of clover, unnaturally dark, that had pushed through a crack in the pavement. It felt wrong, even through the sole of his boot, like kicking something too alive. "Because I've seen some serious gardeners in my time, but this… this is dedication."

Liisa didn't answer right away. Her gaze was fixed on the glasshouse, its panes opaque with grime and thick, virulent green. The ivy wasn't just *on* the brick; it was becoming the brick, dissolving the mortar into a fine, grey powder that dusted the path. A chill, despite the day's humidity, snaked up her spine.

"It started a week ago," she said, her voice barely a breath. "Just patches. Like moss, but… not. And the flowers, the ones by the library? They're all blooming too fast. Too many petals. The wrong colour. Like they're trying to scream."

Oki tried a laugh, a short, forced puff of air. "Okay, 'screaming flowers' is a bit dramatic, even for you, Liisa. You've been cooped up too long. It's spring! Everything's just, you know, spring-ing."

But even as he spoke, the hum intensified, a deeper thrum that now seemed to resonate in their chests. It wasn't in the air, not exactly, but *through* the ground, a bone-deep vibration. He took a step back, his usual swagger dimming. The vibrant green of the new growth seemed to pulse, a sickly, incandescent sheen under the filtered light.

"The gardener quit last Tuesday," Liisa countered, turning to him, her eyes wide, reflecting the distorted green. "Said his tools were getting rusty overnight. Said the soil felt… hungry. I thought he was just another city weirdo, but…"

A branch, thick and gnarled, scraped against a distant glass pane, a sound like fingernails on a blackboard. Oki flinched. "Alright, alright, fine. No enthusiastic gardeners. Just… very, very aggressive weeds. And a very, very old building with a bad case of the creaks."

They pushed through a gate, rusted almost solid, that gave with a grating shriek. The path inside was swallowed by a riot of unfamiliar foliage. Plants Liisa had never seen in any textbook, their leaves a dark, bruised emerald, their stems like sinewy ropes. The air here was even heavier, thicker, tasting of damp earth and something else—something metallic and sweet, like old blood mixed with syrup.

Oki stumbled, catching himself on a thorny vine. "Ow! What the blazes *is* this stuff? It looks like a garden threw up a science experiment. And smells like… a forgotten compost pile in hell."

Liisa knelt, pulling back a cluster of glossy, heart-shaped leaves. Beneath them, the soil wasn't soil at all, but a tangled network of roots, pale and glistening like segmented worms. They writhed, slow and almost imperceptible, as if breathing. She pulled her hand back as if burned. The ground pulsed rhythmically beneath her knees.

"It's absorbing everything," she whispered, a grim certainty settling over her. "The campus water table, the nutrients, the very earth. It's not just growing; it's… consuming."

The Unnatural Canopy

They moved deeper, towards the largest glasshouse, a behemoth whose skeletal frame was now almost entirely obscured by the rampant growth. Sunlight, what little penetrated the urban canopy, struggled through the verdant ceiling, painting shifting patterns of sickly green and bruised purple on the ground.

Oki pulled out his phone, holding it up. "No signal, of course. Figures. When you need to tweet about impending botanical apocalypse, the service dies." He tried a flashlight, its beam a weak yellow against the aggressive green. "So, what's the plan? We find the head weed and tell it to chill?"

"We find out what's causing this," Liisa corrected, her voice resolute, despite the tremors in her hands. She couldn't shake the feeling that they were walking into something far older than the university itself. This wasn't just aggressive plant life; it felt… intentional. Malevolent.

A sudden, sharp cracking sound echoed from within the glasshouse, like timber snapping under immense pressure. It was followed by a wet, gurgling sigh. Oki froze, his eyes wide. "Okay, that was not the wind. Unless the wind's developed a serious lung infection."

They exchanged a glance, a silent argument passing between them. The urban campus they knew, the one of noisy cafeterias and lecture halls, felt impossibly far away. This place, just a few hundred metres from their dorm, had become another world entirely. A primal, horrifying world.

Liisa gripped a loose brick she'd found, its surface rough and cold. It felt absurd, a futile weapon against the encroaching vegetal mass. But it was something to hold onto. "Stay close," she muttered, pushing aside a curtain of thick, fibrous vines that clung to the glasshouse entrance.

Inside, the air was hot and impossibly still, heavy with a cloying perfume that made their eyes water. The hum was deafening now, vibrating in their bones, blurring their vision at the edges. The glasshouse was a cathedral of grotesque life. Gigantic, fleshy blossoms, like morbid orchids, pulsed with internal light, their petals slowly unfurling to reveal deep, black centres that seemed to absorb all surrounding light. Vines, thick as anaconda, writhed across the floor, up the walls, forming an intricate, terrifying web.

In the centre, where a fountain once stood, was the source. A colossal mass of intertwined roots and fleshy, bulbous plant matter, it pulsed with a slow, sickening rhythm. It was roughly spherical, almost reaching the domed ceiling, and iridescent green liquid wept from its fissures, pooling on the cracked tiles. The liquid steamed faintly, carrying the cloying, metallic scent that was now overwhelmingly present.

"Oh, that's… that's just gross," Oki managed, his voice strained. He pointed a trembling finger. "Look at it. It's like… the heart of a giant, evil artichoke. A very, very *awake* artichoke."

Liisa felt a wave of nausea. The thing was alive. Horrifically, actively alive. And it was growing. As they watched, a new shoot, thick as a human arm, burst from its side, unfurling a glistening, razor-edged leaf that slowly curled towards them. The hum intensified to a painful shriek.

"We need to get out of here," she said, her voice shaking. This was beyond botany, beyond any natural explanation. This was an ancient horror, stirring from a long, forgotten sleep beneath the concrete and campus lawns. The spring, the season of rebirth, was being twisted into something monstrous.

As if in response, a chorus of smaller, vine-like tendrils shot out from the central mass, whipping through the humid air. They moved with a disturbing speed, coiling around defunct metal frames, shattering glass panes with a series of sharp reports. One of them snaked towards Oki, its tip a barbed, crimson point.

He yelped, leaping back just as it struck the ground where he'd been standing, leaving a deep gouge in the tile. "Okay, 'chill' is definitely not in its vocabulary! This thing wants to play! And I don't like its game!"

More tendrils followed, faster now, a furious ballet of destruction. They were trapped. The entrance was choked off by new, thorny growth, sealing them inside the pulsing, verdant tomb. The air grew thicker, heavier, pressing down on them, stealing their breath. The iridescent liquid from the central mass began to seep across the floor, bubbling slightly, reaching for their feet.

Liisa saw the horror in Oki's eyes, mirroring her own. They were from the quiet north, used to vast, cold spaces, to a nature that was harsh but predictable. This city, this campus, had swallowed them whole, and now, something even older and hungrier was rising to consume them entirely. One of the tendrils, thicker than the rest, shot out, wrapping itself around Oki's ankle with brutal speed, pulling him off his feet with a sickening crack that echoed in the humid air. He screamed, a sharp, raw sound, as the thorny surface dug into his skin, dragging him towards the pulsing, monstrous heart of the glasshouse.

"Liisa!" he choked out, struggling uselessly against the vine, his face contorted in pain and terror. She lunged forward, brick in hand, but another tendril whipped around her wrist, its barbs tearing at her flesh, lifting her clean off the ground. The glasshouse, the heart of the entity, pulsed faster, its black centres seeming to open wider, pulling them into its suffocating, green embrace. The last thing she saw before being dragged into the choking darkness was Oki, still fighting, still screaming, as the monstrous plant leaned closer, its fleshy blossoms blooming open in a silent, hungry roar.