Inktober 2022

Betty walked through the desolate field leading to the small abandoned cottage on the hill. Exploring this place had been on her bucket list for years, ever since she had first passed it as a kid on a car ride in 2002. Now 20 years later, here she finally was.

She walked up the graved hill, her boots slipping every once in a while with pebbles rolling down the slope, and took out her trusty exploration notebook from the bag she was carrying. Looking back at some of the information she had gotten on the place beforehand, mainly from interviews in the form of light hearted questions with some of the (very far) neighbours.

As it turned out, the previous and only owner of this place was a strange Dr. Placuli, a retired botanist or biologist who came to the countryside to rest after retirement. According to the grannies living a mile away, he was good-looking, although seemed drained most of the time. He was also quite nice, though he stayed away from people. He had a little garden and a little farm with some chickens and ducks, and had all kinds of exotic flowers in patches of gardens or even greenhouses.

When Betty finally stepped onto the empty driveway before the house, all of that was gone. Dr. Placuli was said to have left one day and never came back, giving the chickens and ducks to nearby people, but abandoned all his plants. And this was around 25 years ago.

Betty stepped into the garden, opting to visit the exterior first before entering the house. (Although it was already abandoned, she always felt a little strange entering a place someone once called ‘home’.) After making a tour around the cottage, she didn’t find much; a small abandoned greenhouse with some shattered tiles, an empty garden overgrown by weeds, some old and musty boxes and planks and a construction kit. Nothing out of the ordinary.

She also looked over the house from the outside; it was pretty simply structured, some windows all around it with a small porch in the back. She did realize that there was a basement since there were long windows near the ground. She took a few pictures to document her adventure, and she finally stepped into the house.

Which was just a normal house, although extremely dusty and damp thanks to the broken windows and doors. There was a large bookshelf and piles upon piles of documents, as expected of a scientist, and a room off to the side of the hallway. Everything seemed plain and unexciting, since it was just a house after all, but Betty was intrigued by the basement door, which had a heavy although rusted lock on it.

She made her way over, easily broke open the lock and entered what seemed to be a laboratory of sorts. There were counters, microscopes, screens, and all kinds of science equipments she couldn’t name. The was a turn at the side of the room which she approached slowly, eyes going wide.

There were those large cylindrical containers you’d see in sci-fi movies, with incredibly large plant specimens inside, rather than people or some monsters. Betty looked over them slowly, taking pictures. There were 4 in this space, each filled with a murky liquid that had visibly deteriorated form over 20 years of neglect. Inside were huge plants that resembled sunflowers, although there was a large round bump where the seeds would be, and peculiar, razor sharp leaves rather than petals. Well, whatever those are, they’re clearly dead.

Suddenly, she heard a crunch beneath her feet and saw that she had stepped on a glass shard. The shard was part of a trail coming from another fold at the end of this hall. Betty walked over slowly, the glass shattered under her steps. As she turned over and saw illuminated this last space hidden away with her flashlight, she stared at the sight.

There was one more of those big tubes, but it was destroyed from the inside. A chill went over her and she turned around and came face to face with another one of those plants. There was a huge bloodshot eye peering at her while rotating sideways a little, batting its supposed ‘eyelids’ at her.