Little House of Horrors

Some girls have cats. My sister has three enormous Drosera plants sprouting beside her couch. They had outgrown their home on the windowsill, so now they took up a large basin on the floor. I am not entirely sure they weren’t putting roots under the foundation of our house.  

“They’re suffocating,” she said.  

My sister Seraphina was standing in the corner of the room, watering her carnivorous plants. 

The plants, a carnivore-diet variety called Drosera, were situated along the hardwood floor facing into the living room, not out toward the window where a slit of sunlight slipped through the drawn yellow curtains. Each of my sister’s beloved plants was about the height of a toddler, stems as thick as beer bottles and bulbs the size of my fists. Their flowered heads opened to reveal tooth-like white prickles in place of delicate petals, which Seraphina said had a purpose: it told the plants when their supper had climbed inside. I would have been much more comfortable if she had been a cactus person like other college girls. 

“What do you mean, they’re suffocating,” I asked.  

Seraphina opened her mouth to explain herself and then shut it again. It was like that a lot. She would skip the explanation when I was around. I wanted to say it was because we were so close as sisters that our minds were just telepathically linked, but really, I noticed she went quiet whenever I argued back.  

“They can’t be left covered so long at the root, they’ll suffocate and shrivel up and die,” she finally said. 

She covered the base of the Drosera every night with a thick layer of damp towels to retain the soil’s moisture. And every night, after a few hours, she removed the towels delicately placed over their roots so that “the plants didn’t suffocate.” Last night, I guess she had forgotten to take off the towels before she went to bed.  

“Roots don’t need room to breathe, they’re underground,” I said. 

She didn’t respond and continued to water her plants.  

Some people would consider my sister abnormal, even ghoulish. In high school, I heard her nickname was Basil because she was sensitive to light—something all kids at Coos Bay County High learned in freshman-year biology. To me, she was just Fee. And sometimes, I wished she were a little more like me.  

Fee was born six years after me, in 1982, on the shortest day of the year, but she very much disliked Christmas and all of what she called the “forced cheerful festivities.”

Fee looked like me in ways that made us appear very similar at first glance—same brown eyes, same brown hair, same small nose—but I thought there were several distinctions that made Fee and I different—not just our personalities. For one, her hair was darker, likely due to less sun exposure from years of being a homebody. Her skin was paler, her mouth typically turned down as if she had just tasted something sour, and her feet were a size smaller than mine. Unfortunately, this did not keep her from occasionally borrowing my shoes, or “borrowing” any clothes I happened to buy in black. She was very much a fan of black.  

She and her Drosera plants could be described as “prickly,” and both gave off a warning energy that told everyone else not to mess with them. Looking inside my sister’s plants, beyond their petally “teeth” was a pit of darkness. Even if I had decided to shine a light into the plant’s trap, it would have revealed nothing. It was pitch black. 

Despite their hazardous appearance, I had begun to think of the Drosera like family. They were constantly in need of attention to stay alive, and they seemed to wilt under my glance if I stared too long at their bizarre void-like traps. Much like my attempts to help Fee, I didn’t know how to take care of them, but they meant something to me because of their value to my sister. 

Everyone else came second to the Drosera, even me.  

Fee and I were sharing this space in our childhood home, which our parents left to both of us after their divorce. Fee was here to save money on college, and she commuted instead of paying for a dorm. I was here saving up to move to a place with more hiring potential. I had already graduated from a business program and was hoping to find a better paying job than my current position at a local marketing firm. While the job was good, it just was not practical. The pay could not sustain me if I decided to start a family, and, while I was frugal when it came to expenses, Fee really liked her thirty-minute showers, and her Drosera loved their water, which raised the utility bill a little more every month.  

I would complain to my parents about the utility bill, but they sort of stopped checking up on us after they divorced and Fee started college. Even if they had told her to watch her water use, the Drosera’s needs would have trumped any other argument. She didn’t usually listen to me nowadays.  

As far as I knew, Fee had only ever had one other houseplant: a stubby basil plant that had sat on our counter forgotten for so long that it decomposed into its own potting soil. She never was motivated to take care of it.  

But these Drosera had been her obsession since she bought them from that shady dealer behind her college campus a year and a half ago, and she didn’t leave their side. She took her meals, studied, and even napped on the cushion beside the plants as if they were her dedicated partner of fifty years.  

I knew very little about the mysterious plants, other than what little information my computer could provide. Apparently, the plants’ prickles were venomous, and they were only “legally” houseplants in four states. Oklahoma was not one of them. I didn’t mind the legality behind their acquisition, but it was the impracticality of having three large, thirsty plants in our living room that made me wonder why we kept them, aside from their value to Fee.  

Fee was still standing with the watering can over her plants, even though all the water had emptied from it.   

“Fee, I don’t think any more water’s coming out. Do you think we should take a break from watering them for a bit?” 

She let out an exasperated sigh and stepped away from the plants. As she did, I noticed she was wearing my black converse. 

“Wait, are those my shoes?” 

She ignored me and headed around me to the kitchen. 

“I’m not mad…” 

“Then why would you bring it up,” she said, her voice raised. “Are you hoping to criticize everything I’m wearing again? You know, I’m only wearing your shoes because you’ve told me all of mine look ridiculous.”  

I opened my mouth to retaliate, but really, she wasn’t wrong. Her style was what some would consider “Wednesday from the Addams Family.” 

“I’m using the car this weekend,” she said before I could respond.  

In addition to the house, our mom left us her 1990 Honda Accord when she remarried and moved to Washington. I typically took it to work during the week, and Fee rode public transportation to school. What would she need the car for?  

“Before you say something like, ‘What would you need the car for,’ I just want some alone time. While I’m gone, would you mind taking care of my plants? Just for a few days.” 

“Sure,” I said. While Fee had lacked a green thumb for all plant life prior to the Drosera, I knew how to take care of smaller houseplants, and I had never killed basil. How hard could it be?  

“You’re probably thinking you know more about plants than me anyways, but I mean it this time,” Fee said. “You need to trust me and read the instructions.”  

“Of course,” I said. I was alarmed at how well she read my mind.  

“You have to listen to my instructions,” she said again. 

Fee left Thursday morning. She had written me very specific instructions for how to care for her Drosera, but I noticed there were several grammatical errors in her to-do list. 

MORNING

Prune any dead leaves that have shrivled overnight 

Water 

Make sure plants face the sun 

AFTERNOON

Check that plants are faceing the sun 

Water 

Every other day, feed one live cricket to each plant (in the top dresser drawer next to my bed) 

EVENING

Place damp towles at base of plants 

Remove cloth before morning so that plants can breath through soil 

After the initial surprise of Fee’s  grammatical mistakes, I had to consider the “crickets” part of her directions.  

I had not realized just how carnivorous Fee’s carnivorous plants were until that moment. I had assumed she had been feeding the Drosera something dead, or had just let it feast on what came in through the open window occasionally. How had she been keeping a box of live insects around the house without me noticing?  

Before lunch, I decided to check out this dresser drawer next to Fee’s bed. 

I made my way through the hallway, from the living room to the bedrooms, where a majority of our home décor had collected. My decorations included water colors I had painted in middle school and won a prize for and a pair of golden vases I bargained for a very good price on eBay. The seller had said they had never had a customer fight so hard for a lower price, which made me proud.    

While Fee was away, I figured I would do her a favor and move all her more “interesting” house décor, like the stuffed headless squirrel she made at a taxidermy convention and currently hung alongside my water colors, into her room where only she would see it. That way, she could enjoy her strange trinkets in the privacy of her own space, rather than making everyone else aware of how weird she could be.  

Growing up with Fee, I always took care to involve myself in her life. It was the job of the older sister to instruct and to guide and to occasionally criticize for the good of their younger sibling’s self-image. I wouldn’t want anyone else making fun of my sister. I hadn’t been immune to the hyper-judgementalism of school-age classmates, and, even though she never showed it and never talked to me about it, I was positive Fee couldn’t be, either. 

I made it through the hallway to Fee’s room and turned on the lights. She had painted the room dark gray, so the light did not do much more than illuminate the shelves lining the top of the wall above her bed.  

The shelf directly across from her bed consisted of two Furbies, skinned by the neighbor’s dog and who Fee actually preferred without the fuzzy coat. 

I pulled open the top drawer of her dresser to discover the live crickets in a sealed plastic case.  

This is crazy, I thought. Who keeps live crickets in their dresser drawer next to their bed? But apparently, my sister was that crazy.  

I feed the plants, and immediately they close around the crickets. 

A knock on the door startled me from my observation of the plants.  

I cracked the door open.  

“Hello?” 

“Hi,” the stranger said. 

Her arms were folded over her robust midsection. She was wearing a bright red shirt that brought out the awful red flush in her cheeks, and had a bob of box-dyed gold-blonde hair that gave me the immediate impression that this woman had something against me.  

“Something’s wrong with your house,” she said. What wasn’t wrong with our mid-twentieth century abode?  

“Hi, do you care to respond to me,” the woman asked, quite rudely. 

“Could you tell me what you mean by that,” I asked. 

“My name’s Darlene. I live a few blocks down? Anyways, I was walking my kids down the sidewalk in front of your house yesterday and one of them saw a dead animal hanging in your window. They’ve been distraught ever since.” 

The dead animal or the child? 

The closest thing to a dead animal was Fee’s headless squirrel that I had just taken out of the hallway. To have seen that, someone would have had to squash their head basically against the window in order to see that far inside.  

 “Why were you…in front of our house?” 

 “Why are you…making me repeat myself,” Darlene said, mocking me. The sister in me came out immediately.  

 “No, why were you in front of my house,” I said, emphasizing every word like I was talking to a child. “If your kid was close enough to see our interior decorations, I would consider that trespassing on our private property. Goodbye.”  

“You don’t have to be sassy with me,” Darlene said.  

I was already shutting the door.  

For the next three days, I followed Fee’s directions exactly and the plants thrived. The last night, though, before Fee was supposed to return, I thought the soil looked a little dryer than it had been all weekend. I started to understand why Fee was so concerned with watering her Drosera. They needed constant attention, but they didn’t need much else aside from the basic necessities and their nightly towel routine.  

I put the towels on the plants and headed to bed. If they were on for a few extra hours, I didn’t think it should make a difference, especially since the soil had looked like it needed some extra moisture anyways. After all, no other plant I had ever cared for has needed that type of precise care.  

I awoke the next morning to a bone-chilling screech. I scrambled to the living room, where Fee stood with her hands cupped to her mouth, muffling sobs as she looked at the Drosera.   

They looked much smaller than yesterday. I stepped closer, and realized all three budded heads had shriveled up and turned a dim brown hue. The inside of the bulbs was no longer pitch black, and the light coming through the window showed through their now-translucent husks. Now that I could see inside the black voids that had mystified me for so long, I realized that the Drosera had never been scary at all.  

“You,” Fee started accusing me between sobs. “You killed them. They just needed room to breathe but you didn’t give it to them.”  

“I was just looking out for you,” I said. 

“That’s NEVER how it’s felt,” Fee said, raising her voice. “Every time you think you know better than me, you always make me doubt myself. I just want you to listen to me and trust me to know what I’m doing!” 

I wanted her to know that I cared, that I was just as concerned about the Drosera as her, but as I leaned over the plants to find some part of them that was still alive to prove I took care of and protected them, I realized how much work I was putting into this. I really did not have the energy to fight Fee right now. I didn’t have the energy to hold back my words anymore. I just said exactly what I was thinking.  

“I only wanted what was best for you. I was never trying to be negatively judgemental, I just remembered how hurt I was when I was your age and wanted to shield you from the same embarrassment. Your taste in things is weird and I just don’t want people to have the chance to make fun of you.” 

“Is my taste weird? Or is it just different than what you like,” Fee asked quietly.  

We looked at each other and didn’t say anything. I could take care of a basil plant, but a carnivorous one was too much for me?  

…Or was it just different? 

Eventually I asked,  “Is that it then? Are you moving out?” 

“No, I’m not moving,” she said. Fee sighed and rubbed her hands over her eyes. “I just wish you had known how I felt sooner. You shouldn’t have kept trying to tell me that you knew better for me than I did for myself.”  

“I’m sorry. I thought I was helping,” I said. But after all that, an apology seemed too small. I understand you now, I wanted to say, but I felt too tired to get any more words out. You knew yourself best all along. 

I had suffocated Seraphina and now it was just me and these hollow, withered plants.