A bizarre staple of modern offices. These "plants," if you'll call them that, are still put in dirt as if they needed it to survive, but are made entirely out of plastic. Strong plastic, no less. This is a source of endless frustration for me as it's always been a habit of mine to pull off the leaves of plants as I walk by, hoping to fiddle with them for a few minutes, but these damn plastic plants just won't surrender their leaves.
I'm at work right now, and I just went to the bathroom a few minutes ago. On my way out, I noticed the plant and my uncontrollable plant-vandalism urges took hold of me. I started tugging at the smallest leaf I could find, but it wouldn't give. "Must be made of plastic," I thought to myself, unable to admit that this feat would be beyond my ability for any reason so small. I continued tugging at the plant. The entire 3' diameter pot started to tilt, so I planted my foot on it and pulled at the leaf with all my might. I swear to god, they must have reinforced fiberglass in those plants or something; the stem of the leaf was no more than a quarter of an inch thick. Maybe I'm just astonishingly weak. Something like that. Anyway, a mother and her five year old boy walked by, the mother leading him by the hand. He stopped walking and looked at me. "Mommy," he whined, "what is that man doing?" His mother stared at me, unable to answer. I opened my mouth to speak: I thought of explaining myself but saw no purpose in it; I closed my mouth again and looked back at the plant. They walked away silently and I continued tugging.
It puzzles me that somebody bothered to invent these god-awful things. I can't seem to find any information about the origin of this calamity, so I'll just lie about it.
"John," Alyssa says, patting her stomach, pregnant, "I'm hungry. I need food."
"Shut up, woman," the inventor shouts, laughing maniacally, wearing his favorite "I hate you" t-shirt. The swinging lightbulb in his basement, the only light, casts shadows all over his face, every horrible wrinkle outlined. "I'm trying to invent! To pioneer! To make money to feed you and that stupid baby of yours!"
Alyssa stares at her hand, twisting her ring around her finger. "He's your baby too, John," she says, looking away.
His head whips around to her, his eyes obscured by shadow. "Don't tell me whose baby it is, I know whose baby it is. Leave me, woman!"
He grabs the electrodes hanging from the ceiling and plunges them into his work. Sparks fly and the basement is momentarily illuminated, then dark again.
"By god," he says, "I've finally done it! Not only does this plant never grow or bloom, it also produces no oxygen and the plastic in it is harmful to the atmosphere to manufacture AND it's unattractive!
He put the specifications for the manufacture of the plant in his outbox and went upstairs to sleep in his own room, across the house from his wife, of course.
In the morning the sun breaks through his window; he stretches his arms, climbs out of bed and puts on his next favorite t-shirt, the "I hate everyone except for Stalin" t-shirt. He walks down the stairs to his basement. "Ah," he thinks, "I can't believe how amazing I am. This invention is pure genius."
He reaches inside his outbox for the specifications to bring them to the mailbox. The box is empty.
"No," he shouts to himself, "NO, IT CAN'T BE!" He sprints up the stairs and looks around the house, and then rushes to his wife's room. Her bed is empty and her drawers are all hanging open, cleared out.
"Alyssa! How could you?!?" he screams, running out of the front door. He looks down the street, seeing no cars and no trace of his wife.
Alyssa clutches her suitcase to her stomach, crying softly into it. She feels the train humming beneath her.
The plans for the plants will be her livelihood from now on. Enough facility managers with poor taste will buy them, she reassures herself. She has nothing to worry about. The hitman will have reached John by the afternoon. Her baby will finally be safe.
Anyway, I never got to pull the leaf off of that plant. |
