Out of Drought

The sun was striking down — again — on the white shingles of my home when I awoke. I peeled aside the drapes of my bedroom window and could practically feel the heat radiating through the glass. The mornings should never be this hot.

Knowing I’d probably be baking my feet if I put my slippers on, I shuffled into the living room in my robe and checked the thermostat. I had the temperature set to 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and the air conditioner still wasn’t pulling its weight. “Thought I had the repairman fix this unit last week,” I muttered, and bumped the number down another three degrees.

I tipped myself back into my recliner and switched on the TV to the local news. The male and female anchors at the desk were beginning to plead to the meteorologist to surprise them with today’s weather report. The young, slick-haired forecaster waggled his finger towards them from his place in front of the camera.

“Ha ha, you’d think that, Cindy and Mike, but the news I’ve got isn’t so hot…!”

“Fuck off,” I said to the screen. I was starting to hate how giddy this guy was to repeat the same bad omens to every viewer day after day.

“Folks, look at these highs,” he said, spreading his arms casually at the map of the local counties. Bright, burning red covered the area and dizzyingly-high temps were in the proximity of every major town. “You know it, I know it: the heat wave is going to continue. Upper 90s from west to east in our region. Our weather team is going to be watching for any shift in the atmosphere’s patterns for the coming days, but until then…” He took a moment to switch the display. “You can see that combined with these huge rainfall departures over the past month, we are in a baaa-aad stretch of weather. So, today six counties have renewed their reminders to the public to conserve water, keep the air conditioning steady, check on your elderly neighbors, you know the drill by now.” After finishing the count on his fingers, he spread his arms nonchalantly again. “But hey, just don’t blame it all on me, you know…?! Ha—“

I turned off the power and planted the remote down on the armrest, getting up to take a grim glance out the window to the backyard. My lawn was dying; it was a carpet of dry straw at this point, thousands of yellowing spindly grass blades crying out for nourishment. And further back, in the space up against the perimeter of the wooden fence, was what remained of the garden.

A single man living alone needs a fulfilling hobby when chasing romance or success at work aren’t enough. To me, that hobby was flexing my green thumb. In the few years I’ve been living in this small condo, I spruced up its appearance with store-bought flowers and the odd vegetable sprout here and there. To see it all withered away was kind of sickening. I stood outside in the sweltering afternoons sweeping the hose over everything until my home’s supply for the day ran dry, and yet I’d still have plants coughing up dust.

The only thing that never seemed to suffer was that orange bulb.

I opened the porch door and stepped out into the lawn, wincing at the feeling of parched grass under my bare feet as if I was going for a stroll on some steel wool. Each step sounded like the ground was a bed of dry leaves, impossible considering there wasn’t a tree to be found on my property. I paused and scanned the floor beneath my toes, saddened to find some glimpses of dirt showing as the knots of grass were now wearing away. Only a month ago I had this lawn looking lush, green and perfectly-trimmed, with healthy soil in the rectangular plot at the far end.

I sighed, and at that instant the orange bulb in the empty garden started to stir. It seemed to lazily roll over as it was resting on its side. It let out a feminine hum from amongst the cocoon of golden petals as it lifted up. Then the plant gracefully bloomed and unfurled before my eyes, and from the center of the giant flower, out rose Liliace.

The alraune yawned dramatically as she stretched her body to full-height. She had all the supple curves of a snake, her frame a forest green color save for the several long, vibrant orange petals for hair that bounced as she shook the sleepiness from herself. A single, winding vine of ivy came down from amongst her locks, weaving between her featureless breasts and traveling loosely around her torso. Her legs were stuck together all the way down to her shins, which then disappeared into the base of the broad flower she lived within. Thicker, leafy sleeves covered her forearms and created a pair of curved sepals at her elbows. Liliace was a pretty, lively plant, but a terrible faker; so when she glimpsed me and her expression jumped in surprise, I only wilted in annoyance.

“Oh! Good morning!” she beamed at me. “And what a lovely day it is…!”

“…It’s awful, Liliace.”

“True. I guess your yard still looks a little dry, but me?” She paused to stretch her arms and gleefully soak up the morning sun. “I feel great.”

I resumed looking for dirt patches, wandering around the lawn. Liliace continued on. “You know, some water would feel even better.” I glanced up at her swaying gently with her arms tucked behind her back, wearing an unchanging sunny smile.

“I can easily refuse,” I told her. “Let you finally dry up in this heat.”

“Oh, please, you and your daily empty threats,” she replied smugly. “You always take care of me like I’m your favorite, favorite plant.”

I crossed my arms. “But I never chose to plant an alraune.” Once the drought had set in, Liliace’s flower had seemed to show up in my garden out of nowhere. Perhaps she drifted in as a seed on the winds, or creatures like her could crawl with their roots and she burrowed underneath my fence. The abode of hers matured from gumdrop-size to as big as a traffic cone in a matter of days; I should have pruned it before it was too late, but I was fascinated by what it might bloom into at the time. On the morning I came outside to a fully-fledged woman standing in its place, I knew I was going to get into quite a mess.

“You said yourself that you were fine with me living in your yard,” Liliace reminded me. “And in return, I tried giving you all my best advice to help you save the garden when it was still… you know, fighting.” She had a disarming grin for being the lone survivor in the wasteland all around her. “Now come on, watering time, please?”

It was routine at this point to give in to her wishes. I sighed and went to retrieve the hose. “Fine, just let me try giving the grass some attention first.”

Liliace had no objections as I came back with the green coil of tubes. I frowned at the low pressure coming out of the end and figured there wasn’t much time. Liliace stood patiently and watched as I did my rounds throughout the lawn, shaking the hose to try to fan the water about evenly.

Perhaps my effort was all for nothing. I had the slight suspicion that the alraune was capable of seeping up all of the moisture in the entire yard that I put down, so that she could stay in such good health. I didn’t know enough about this plant species to really know for sure. I paused a little distance in front of Liliace and glanced at her eyes, a pair of dark-red irises showing through a semi-transparent membrane for sclera. She was practically begging with her gaze. Wordlessly I arced the gentle stream towards her and she gladly opened her mouth.

She drank for a time without even the need to swallow, then leaned up and let the water cascade down her body. “Ooh, that is sooo nice and cool…” she sighed blissfully. She ducked her head at one point to get a splash between the six stamens that sprouted from her scalp. Liliace was running her hands over her ribs and abdomen as I looked on, and I noticed the same change occurring to her body as I often did when watering her like this.

Ever so gradually her body was bloating up all over, seeming to store up all the liquid she came in contact with. Her flat stomach gained a tiny bulge as it bubbled up on the inside. As she smoothed her hands over her middle, slowly her breasts sagged into her upper arms. Naturally her hips followed suit, creeping outwards and accentuating her figure even further. Liliace bent her back and cradled her swollen stomach as it ripened into a sizable pot belly, the water keeping her skin soft and flexible between her fingers.

Since I had seen this process many times before, I guess I was clueless to how she could always appear so delighted at her figure growing plump and flabby. She would just be back to normal after about a day passed, anyways. As even her thighs were beginning to bulge together, the hose finally spluttered.

“Aww, that’s it?” she asked, watching the last of the water deposit some final precious droplets on the tips of the flower petals beneath her. She twisted around to inspect herself. “It was good while it lasted. Thanks anyways!”

“Liliace, what’s even the point of you staying here?” I had to ask, holding the dripping hose at my side. “You’re just a talking flower, and you end up using so much water that I could really use…”

“I can be very useful,” she said proudly in reply. “If you get a nice, big pot, you can keep me inside as a house plant. Wouldn’t I be a good decoration?” Liliace posed with a hand on one of her broadened hips, swaying side to side. I made a face at her belly and breasts wobbling a bit.

“Not a chance,” I said disinterested.

“In that case, what about my harvesting my sap…?” She suddenly lurched and spat up some nectar, a thin honeylike trickle forming from the corner of her sheepish smile.

“Gross!” I turned away in disgust and quickly gathered up the hose. She laughed as I retreated to the side of the house to close the valve.

“See you tomorrow!” she called after me, and I knew she was right. I firmly closed the porch door once I was inside, and I glared at her from the back window for a moment. She raised and folded her arms above her head and slunk back into the protection of her petals, where she’d wait quietly until the next morning. I sighed at myself for putting up with it all.

I could never, ever bring myself to just stop caring for Liliace and let her wither away. Her company was fine, and learning about her species little by little kept my fascination. But I was always conflicted with how much I still didn’t know, whether her appearance in my yard was a devious plan of hers or her innocent attitude was just a sham. I never got within arm’s reach of her all this time for the fear she might be a man-eating plant breed or God knows what. Only the hose seemed to be our most constant connection between us, and I just shrugged off all of her odd advances. Until the drought was over, one single, friendly alraune was all I had left when other resources were scarce.

-~-

The area government eventually got its act together and realized that things needed to be done for the people during the drought. That lowly offering was a single case of water bottles left by my front door another blistering morning. Eighteen bottles; they had to be kidding.

Regardless I stowed it in my fridge for the time being. Heading back to the living room, I wiped my brow and slumped down onto the edge of my recliner. I had given up with the air conditioner and so I had every window open for any semblance of a breeze. The cicadas going off like sirens made me raise the television volume in response.

“Your news headlines at noon: Hurricane Claire has been named in the Caribbean,” said one of the anchors. I leaned in all of a sudden. “Our head meteorologist will tell us what you need to know.”

“Now folks,” began my best friend the weatherman, also trying to contain his excitement. “I don’t want you all to panic, but look at these predicted paths so far. Each model is guessing that we could have a Category 1 arriving in our region this weekend. Claire is coming ashore and taking a big turn east. Could be a glancing blow, could be a direct hit. But you don’t need to hear it from me that damaging winds and steady, driving rain are going to be what we’re watching…”

It was all I needed to hear. I got up and paced, thought about — well, first, what I needed to do for preparedness’ sake — but also if there were any plants that made sense to grow in mid-summer after a drenching storm. Then I thought of Liliace.

I stopped before the back window. Maybe she’d love a saturating, natural rain. Or maybe… They posed a lethal problem for species like her. But I gradually understood what might happen, one fate or the other. Leaning my hands on the sill, I pondered how to keep my hands clean through these next coming days.

-~-

I went out back to Liliace on the eve of the hurricane. I had with me all the water bottles and I set them down in the center of the yard. This was possibly going to be the grand experiment; the way I’d know if she could get waterlogged or not. The sound of me tearing the plastic film of the case must have awoken her. She emerged from her plant-bed and craned her neck towards me. “Ohh, back so soon? I hadn’t finished sleeping off this morning’s drink…”

“Here,” I told her. “They put enough bottled water for a family of four on my doorstep. I just figured I’d give them to you.” I took a few in my hands and started lobbing them underhanded to the base of her body. Her eyes lit up as they thunked down in a loose little pile. The water shimmered through the plastic like meals on silver platters.

“Amazing!” she said as she bent her legs and back and picked one up. She inspected it in her grasp for a moment, tried to shake it onto her body and frowned. “…Thanks, but, this doesn’t appear to be working.”

“Turn the cap?” I suggested with a shrug. She just pulled a bigger face as she tried that and got nothing. “There really aren’t enough plant fiber… things in your arms to twist open a lid?”

Liliace had an innocent smile as she reached as far she could with the bottle. “I think I might need your help.”

I conceded with a sigh and approached her. I quickly cracked open the cap and handed the bottle back, but just as I turned away, Liliace spoke up.

“Ooh, could you open another for me too?” she smiled as she was dumping the entire bottle upside-down onto her chest. “Actually… open them all.”

I did a double-take at her face and then her figure on accident. “You’re not even going to try to ration them out?” I asked in disbelief.

“Why should I? I’ll have it all stored in for days! Saves the hose for the grass, don’t you think?”

I was one part dumbfounded, and another part complacent. She appeared ready to carry on heedless to any sort of limit. I caught myself from staring at her frame, already changing from stout to overweight. Now, it was morbid curiosity compelling me to stoop for a second water bottle and hand it over to her.

“Gimme two,” Liliace demanded as she dropped the first. Taking an opened pair with each hand, she laughed and doused herself over the head with her mouth agape. I unscrewed the cap on another and dropped it in front of her, unfastened yet another and shook it out over her flower. Down her hair petals, over the growing bulge of her belly, water spilled in crisscrossing streams on the way to the thirsty ground. It was less like a hose and more like a waterfall this time, and the effect it made on the alraune’s figure was staggering to say the very least.

Liliace surpassed the point it looked like she was carrying twins, her stomach bowing from the weight of the liquid. Maintaining its spherical shape, it grew and grew by the inch like a smooth green water balloon. The plump, teardrop-shaped sacs of her breasts were sagging ever so slowly down, gaining a cup-size every time I took a subtle glance. The ivy vine was pressed between them, dripping water off of it in a spiral. Hips blooming wider, her waist also spread to stay proportionate. And her legs, the thick, healthy stems they were before, now pulsed with their growing fullness, bulging slightly from below before they sent an even bigger bloat to settle in her thighs.

Barely could I see the darker spot of a navel beneath her skin, as the larger she expanded, the more apparent she was turning a shade lighter, more translucent.

If she wasn’t busy holding the water bottles I handed to her, Liliace would definitely be feeling up herself; I blocked out the sound of her gentle moans as she wriggled in delight. I focused instead on the hearty sloshes from her insides as she tipped back to revel in the cool splashes of another bottleful. Quietly her fibers groaned throughout her body, struggling to stretch around the girl who was growing like a weed, slightly in height too, surprisingly.  

Once every bottle had been opened, there wasn’t much else I could do but step back and let the soaking, bulbous alraune greedily plug her lips to the final container and drain it down. Gracefully she dropped the container and carefully laid her hands on her blimped belly. It stood out like a bubble fit to burst, gurgling dully from its sheer volume. I didn’t think she’d be able to reach her belly-button, in fact. The vine gently cut into her like a tight sash on a corpulent pageant contestant. Her fattened upper arms, bloated significantly out from the sleeves on her forearms, tenderly bunched her watermelon-sized breasts together. With her tremendously wide waist, Liliace simply had the roundness and smoothness of a vase.

“Good God,” I could only say about the massive woman before me.

Liliace took a deep breath, eyes closed and smiling. She then relaxed and her body softly rippled. “Thanks…” she managed to get out between her rounded cheeks. As she looked at me, I half-expected to see her pupils floating. “That w-was—!“ She suddenly belched, making her insides roil and a mist of water to float out. “…Delicious…” For once she glanced down at her orbicular stomach, lovingly pressing her palms into it. “Oooogh, I’m so huuuge~” she crooned.

“Yeah, you’re a real blue-ribbon winner,” I hesitated to say at her enthusiasm. I stuck my sneaker out and started to sweep up some of the empty bottles from underneath her.

I got too close; Liliace leaned her bulk on her tree-trunk legs and grabbed me by the wrist.

“C’mere! Feel!” she giggled, and I made a glunking sound against her unfathomably-full tummy. She did have the muscles to keep me rooted in place for a hug. I fidgeted and clung to her body, only able to reach about halfway around her. Cold moisture kept seeping through my T-shirt as I scrabbled to get away. But now I could truly take in the enormity of her form pressed into her like this. My eyes were only up to her chin. “See…?” A flowery scent wafted as I was turned side to side in her arms. She was squeezing me so hard, I was concerned she’d pop right in our embrace. But her skin was still so flexible and sproingy, oozing back out into shape when the pressure let up.

I pushed out of her waxy hold on me. “Jesus, Liliace, enough!” I hissed. “The neighbors might see us…!” Of course, the fence boards were seven feet high and had the most miniscule of gaps between them. I just wanted to be out of there, and I flicked water off of my fingers to try to feel dry.

“Okay, okay,” she sighed, but couldn’t stop snickering at how embarrassed I probably looked. To say she jiggled from her laughter was an understatement. Now unable to put her hands on her hips, she just happily clutched what she could of her belly. “Just thank you again. Are you still going to say hi to me tomorrow?”

I didn’t respond for a while as I made a makeshift bag from the case and tossed every bottle in. When I straightened up, I looked at Liliace with a weary smile. “Yeah, we’ll see. Have fun with that… body of yours, I guess.”

I heard her hug herself as I started back to the porch. “Ohhh, I so will…! Hee hee hee hee!”

Please just don’t moan through the night so loudly, I begged in my thoughts. I gazed up longingly at the sky for a sign of grey clouds before drifting back indoors.

Just out of curiosity, I peered through the window and wanted to see how she would deal with her new unwieldy weight. Glancing down at herself, she wobbled her gigantic hips to start settling back into her flower. It only seemed to close halfway around her middle. Awkwardly she hefted her boobs into the top of the bulb and hunkered down, at least able to have her body from the shoulders-down be concealed. Tossing her petal hair, she grew still and finally closed her eyes. I shook my head and went about preparing for the inevitable rain.

 -~-

It was years since I was last in a hurricane. That was several summers ago when I still lived at my old home during college breaks. Fending for myself in my own place though was like fortifying a castle, or battening down the hatches on a pirate vessel. The dread sets in when every glance out the locked windows looks more menacing. In the early morning hours it grew loud enough outside to pass for a siege and wet and blustery enough for a storm at sea. I would run out into the street and do a dance if I wasn’t huddled on the recliner with an array of candlesticks at the ready.

The power cut before the morning news was timed to come on, so the only entertainment was to watch the sheeting precipitation and the bend of branches in the other neighbors’ yards. The house was too deathly quiet after a bowl of cereal and lukewarm milk — it was enough to get me pacing.

I found myself at the back window eventually. Faintly, through the dripping screen, I saw Liliace outside of her flower. The alraune’s body was still looking excessively round and turgid, but I couldn’t tell if it was even larger than yesterday’s gorging. For a second I thought she might be the one enjoying the rain more than me, but her arms were just thrown over her head. The gusts were strong enough to bend her huge mass to the side and only then did her hands reach out to shield herself from the buffeting water. I couldn’t make out her expression. If she was crying out, I wouldn’t hear. She made a sudden glance towards the porch door and I cowered out of sight.

The outside kept echoing through the walls as I shambled through my dark hallways. I huddled into my recliner and tried to take my mind off the chaos with a novel.

My body clock struck dinnertime at one point. Just before the light died in the sky completely for the night, I wanted to see how Liliace was holding up.

I don’t think I ever saw a more pitiful sight in that bleary, dreary darkness; she was completely keeled over on the ground. Her head was drooping and hiding her face, her hair petals plastered against her body, some of them flapping wildly in the wind. Her legs had fallen forwards like windswept logs. It was probably from the burden of her belly, protruding from her sides and forcing her to lean up off of it. Even with her arms holding her up, she had to be struggling to keep her weight off her middle. Her back had even rounded out slightly— for the first time I learned alraunes have rear-ends, and Liliace’s wobbled profoundly across her pair of vast hips. The only sign of life the ballooned plant girl displayed was when she raised her shoulders for a gasp of carbon dioxide. Her enormous, ovular breasts just barely left the grass for a moment when she did.

The water had turned Liliace beyond obese, inflating her curves dramatically wherever possible. She had to be just barely holding herself together at that size… I rubbed my neck, looked hesitantly at the lock on the door as well.

“There is nothing I can do,” I admitted to myself. I let the darkness of my home’s interior swallow me up while the hurricane’s eye continued its pass overhead. I was sure it would be glaring.

-~-

A rescue vehicle passed by in the morning and woke me up with its yellow emergency lights flashing through my window. I stirred on the recliner, realizing the outside was quiet at last. The sky was still grey and branches, strewn in the street, tumbled from the hurricane’s remnant breezes. My house seemed to have survived, but Liliace…? Once I gathered up and threw away some empty snack bags on the living room table, I quickly went to the back window.

There was a shadow cast on the porch. “No fucking way…”

It was like an oak collapsed in my backyard. A gigantic alraune, lying in a daze on her back, was the culprit. I flung open the back door, hit by the stifling humidity right away, and the mind-boggling sight of Liliace’s transformation. I had to creep around her and take my place at the side fence to see all of her.

Her length spanned close to fifty feet, her head nearly as tall as I could stand.

“Liliace!” I exclaimed. “How did this happen to you?”

She had her eyes cast up at the clouds, her breath coming ragged from her heaving, bountiful chest. The giantess ignored me and puckered her lips to spit out a little extra water into the air. Her head rolled to my direction and more liquid trickled from her slacked jaw. “Help me, please…” she said in a feeble tone.

Some of her curves had shrunken at the expense of stretching out her height so much, but she remained looking tighter than ever. Her belly had the size and the elastic quiver of an inflatable bounce-house, straining, gargling, practically dominating her frame. It was a wonder the ivy vine didn’t come apart and still reined in her abdomen, though it was so rounded it was like a pipe ready to split. I realized even her flower had swollen to twice its size, the petals sagging and spread on the ground. It was stretched painfully around Liliace’s massive legs, twisted and kinked together like two hoses because of her position. The forearm sleeves laid discarded like tattered corn-cob husks on the grass, so her bare arms were bent up close to the sides of her head, keeping her hands off herself. Liliace hiccupped and winced at the trembling it sent throughout her.

“You tricked me,” continued her soft, accusing voice. She was so big it amplified her volume.

“D-Did I?” I fired back, leaning up off the fence. “I’d say good old Mother Nature punished you for being a glutton.”

“There was a storm coming…!” she seethed. “If you warned me I could have drawn up my roots, you could have surrounded me with mulch, could have…!” Liliace stopped to cough and splutter. “Ohhh, I could have died…!” she moaned and looked up miserably at the heavens.

“I’m surprised you didn’t,” I said under my breath. I glanced about and saw a snapped branch about an arm’s length, lying close to her hips. Keeping my eyes on her, I tried going further into the yard to snatch it up and stab her with it.

Liliace suddenly reached out for me with her arm and slapped the sodden grass with the sound of a pool noodle. I recoiled back. “I hate you!” she wailed. “Just… leave me here... I want to go back to normal…!”

I gave her a wide berth and slowly moved away. The monstrous girl laid her hands carefully on her tummy and whimpered, trying to soothe it. The conflicting thoughts crept back into my head watching her suffer so badly. She needed to go, but if natural causes wouldn’t do the dirty work for me, then what possibly could?

I was examining her so closely that I swore I saw her gain just a sliver of an inch to her body. It might have been her shoulders or one of her canoe-sized hair petals twitching gently. I could barely make out the sounds of her skin straining some more as she lay there, too.

“How are you still growing?” I demanded all of a sudden. Liliace tilted her head back and fixed her desperate gaze on me, sharply sucking in her breath and huffing it out. “You’re still soaking up the lawn...!”

“I’m sorry!” she cried out, squeezing her eyes shut. “I can’t help it! My roots are everywhere underneath the yard! They’ve… just always been that way!” She crossed her arms over her breasts, frowned and hugged herself like she wanted it all to stop, but it wouldn’t.

“You greedy—“ I began as it dawned on me, and looked down at my shoes at the ruined grass. With how sodden the dirt had become, it made this repulsive brown sludgy stew with tiny curls of dead grass mixed in. I furrowed my brow. I started towards the garden hose.

I began to unloop the coils and tossed the length out, wishing, pleading in my mind that the water supply was back in full force, and that I had all the resources in town now that the storm had rolled through. I rotated the valve the furthest it would go and advanced towards Liliace with the end in my grasp. As soon as I felt the hose hum, splash about on the inside and finally send out a generous stream of fresh, cool water, I knew this had to be it.

I stopped and casually let the hose empty itself from shoulder-height, and Liliace realized something rolling off her hair instantly.

“Wh-What are you doing to me?!” She rotated her immense bulk to the side to get a better look at me standing there, eyes wide in disbelief.

“I’m giving you your daily water.”

“No…! I can’t grow any more! Nnnngh…!” Liliace tensed up as her body was swelling again. She reached out an arm to swipe at me, but I was still a good five feet away from her fingertips. “Shut it o-o-off!” Her other arm reached around to cradle her ballooned tits from underneath, nursing her blimping body that filled and filled involuntarily. Her hips blossomed upwards as they were smooshed on their side, and her belly’s curvature edged closer and closer to the side fence. Her bulge was towering over the posts, hissing with the steady intake of water, churning from its unimaginable fullness.

“P-P-Please!” she begged me through one opened eye. “You’ve got to let me empty out! I can b-be transplanted to a nursery, to an open field—!”

“What, so you can steal all the water there too?” I grinned and started sweeping the hose everywhere over her creaking form. Liliace moaned pitifully and tried to stretch herself, clawing for me despite the ominous, rubbery squeals her fibrous skin made. She had to clutch herself again from the pressure that shot up her legs — being held in a vice from her flower’s unbearable tightness — to her breasts in which one laid dangerously on top of the other. Even the humid atmosphere seemed to overwhelm her as she lay there limp and panting.

Then she squirmed realizing her belly had grazed the fence, and was now pressing into it, testing its durability as if it was a dam she could breach. Her skin started to bulge into the neighbor’s yard for a precarious moment. Liliace howled and, with a display of gargantuan strength, turned herself over and let her overgrown stomach keep rising unfettered into the air. The vine finally snapped like a spent leather belt, making her belly jut forth all of a sudden with a resounding slosh. “I’m gonna exploooode!”

I kept the water trained to her shoulder area as I covered my mouth with a hand, watching her keep expanding, hearing her insides rumble. She was coursing full of liquid, pulsing with every dangerous pump her body continued seeping into her innards. There was nowhere for the water to escape or leak from; the pressure just kept building relentlessly.

Liliace’s skin gradually tinted lighter, showing the signs of wear through white blade-thin streaks traveling up to the crest of her gut. Her boobs were wobbling loosely as they were pushed to the sides by her stiffening middle. The now-constant groans of her frame deepened further in pitch, echoing, reverberating, signaling her end. I only felt dwarfed in comparison seeing only her upper body stretching its final inches in every direction before me. Her growth finally slowed while her panting rose to a fevered pace. She spread her arms to grip the nonexistent grass. “Ohhhh!” she moaned boisterously. “I can’t take it— i-it’s too muuuch!”

Bloated to capacity, Liliace let out an exhausted whine before a gurgle arose in her throat.

“Crap,” I muttered and dropped the hose.

SPLOOOOOSSSHHHHH!

Liliace burst, her belly blowing up like a geyser before a huge ripple of water followed, flooding outwards in every direction. I sighed as a wave spilled over the openings of my sneakers, and I hurried away from the epicenter to close the valve. I surveyed the carnage as the water gradually receded. The ground was even muddier than before, streaked with tendrils of pale nectar and clumps of shredded vegetation. Orange petals laid about the swamp like shrapnel, and a sweet aroma permeated through the air.

I couldn’t help but shudder, almost feeling a little tearful, as I gazed over the mess I made of my backyard. But I knew the lawn, the garden — everything — had some recovering to do. I just slogged over to the porch step and got myself inside.

All tags:

• water
• hose
• alraune

Login or register to tag items