The Seeds We Buried

Trigger Warning: This story contains themes of psychological horror, grief, body horror, and implied self-harm. Reader discretion is advised.

You buried seven seeds beneath your pillow last night—wild ones, like the old stories said. A tradition, your grandmother claimed, passed down by “the blood-bound.” You didn’t believe in the magic. Not really. But you whispered your wish anyway.

And now something is growing in your room.

At first it was the smell. Not like flowers. Like fresh dirt—wet, sour, alive. You thought you’d tracked it in from outside, but the carpet was clean. The next morning, you found soil under your pillow. Not much. Just a few granules. Black as ink. Damp.

You threw the pillowcase in the wash and told yourself it was nothing.

By evening, it was worse. The dirt had spread in a perfect ring across your bedsheets, and something had burrowed a line through the mattress, like a worm trail. When you pressed your hand down, the spot was warm. Almost pulsing.

Your wish had been simple. “I want him to come back.”

You didn’t say who. You didn’t have to. The earth already knew.

You sleep with the light on that night. Blanket pulled to your chin. Music playing softly. Just one more night, you tell yourself. One more night, and the tradition will be over.

But at 3:12 AM, you wake up to the sound of something moving.

The dirt has bloomed. Thin, skeletal vines stretch across your bed frame. Small white flowers—bone-white, not alive-white—pulse in the dark. They hum. Low and rhythmic. The petals tremble every time you breathe.

You sit up. The air smells like rain and rot.

A voice whispers from under your bed. Not in a language. Just a presence. You feel it behind your eyes, in your gums, vibrating inside your jaw.

It’s him.

In the weeks before he disappeared, your older brother had become obsessed with something he read in Grandma’s journals. She called them soil wishes. Said every seed remembers who plants it. That they grow toward grief.

He believed it.

He started sketching symbols on mirrors, muttering to the dirt in your backyard, sleeping with the windows open even when it rained. You’d find mud under his fingernails. Scratches on his neck. He stopped answering texts. His skin looked like parchment. Brittle. Faded.

Then one night, he vanished.

Door locked from the inside. Windows sealed. Dirt beneath his blanket.

That was six months ago.

You buried those same seven seeds last night. Same patch of forest. Same moonlight. Same empty ache.

You didn’t believe.

But now you smell his shampoo in the air.

At school, your fingernails turn black at the base. Soil spills from your locker. A girl says you’re going goth. A teacher writes “See me” on your test in red ink. You’re sent home for “acting out your grief in disturbing ways.”

They don’t see the bruises on your arms shaped like handprints.

They don’t see the flower blooming in your throat when you wake up.

You clip it off with nail scissors. You flush it down the toilet before your mom sees.

You stop eating. The roots feed off you now.

Day three. You dream of a field of open mouths where flowers should be. They all chant the same word: “Return.”

You wake to find soil beneath your fingernails and a single seed lodged in your ear canal.

You don’t scream.

You dig it out.

You swallow it.

Day five. The dirt speaks.

Not with words. With memory.

You walk to the park, and the trees bend toward you. A black cat crosses your path and blinks in a familiar rhythm: two slow, one fast—the knock your brother always used when he forgot his house key.

You whisper his name. The wind replies.

When you get home, you find a note taped to the underside of your desk drawer:

“He’s still here. Underneath. Feed him hope.”

You don’t know if you wrote it.

You don’t know if he did.

You don’t remember writing anything lately.

You sleep on the floor that night, but it doesn’t matter. The vines find you. They wrap around your wrist and hum lullabies you haven’t heard since you were six.

Day six.

The breathing starts. Slow at first. Deep. Not yours.

It comes from inside the walls.

From under the bed.

From your lungs.

It matches your heartbeat. Speeds up when you’re afraid. Slows when you cry.

It comforts you. It frightens you.

It belongs to him. Or to something wearing him like a coat.

You don’t go to school anymore. The school doesn’t call.

The vines bloom again. But this time, they have teeth.

Rows of translucent fangs inside each petal. When you reach out, one flower bites.

Blood wells up. It drinks.

You let it.

You’re part of the garden now.

At 2:00 AM, barefoot and silent, you walk to the woods with a shovel.

You don’t remember putting it in your hands.

You just know where to go. The earth leads you.

You dig.

Not where the seeds were.

Somewhere deeper. Older.

After six minutes, your shovel hits something soft.

You brush away the soil.

A sleeve. Faded. Familiar.

It’s his hoodie.

You lift it to your face.

It still smells like him.

When you wring it out, a single black seed drops into your palm.

It pulses.

It’s warm.

You put it in your pocket.

It wiggles.

Final night.

You don’t speak. You don’t make a wish.

The dirt already knows.

At 3:12 AM, the vines have built something beside your bed.

Not a shape. A person. Him.

Or what’s left of him.

Roots twist through a frame of bones and breath.

Flowers bloom from hollow eyes.

Mud clings to the corners of his mouth.

His skin is pale bark.

When he kneels, the room tilts.

He opens his mouth.

Soil pours out.

Seven seeds hit the floor.

He points to your chest.

You nod.

You understand.

He didn’t come back.

You’re going with him.

The next morning, they find your room empty.

No footprints. No fingerprints. No signs of struggle.

Just seven flowers on your pillow—each blooming softly, swaying as if in wind.

And underneath your bed,

a hole.

Carved perfectly.

Still warm.