You were dared to do it.
All your so-called friends thought you were afraid of some… meat monster. One that doesn’t move, if it even exists.
The truth was, though, that you could never shake the feeling that the pictures of them were real, even if you’d never seen one yourself. You thought you had every right to be afraid. And even if they weren’t real, what point was there in tempting fate? What if you were wrong to be skeptical?
But your “friends” didn’t see it that way.
You were no pussy bitch. You’d show them.
The end of the paved road brought you to one of the many signs that could be found surrounding the outskirts of every forest that warned would-be hikers of the “harvesters”. It really was quite silly, wasn’t it? Like a sign warning drivers of deer crossing the road, except it looked like something straight out of a sci-fi movie.
Here be aliens? You had to be crazy for ever believing this stuff. The more you thought about it, the more you were laughing at yourself.
Nothing was out of the ordinary for a while, as you walked deeper and deeper into the woods. But soon you came upon something different — the grass was unusually lush and green. The plants covering the ground created such a tall and thick layer of green that it came up to your knees.
Then you saw it — taller than you imagined it, a mass of pulsating flesh protruding from the ground. Unmoving, but you knew instantly that you’d gotten too close. Forgetting everything you’ve ever been told about the things, you panicked. You stumbled backward, and that’s when you felt a sharp sting in your leg, then for a brief moment — nothing. Your world spun around in blurry circles as you found yourself on the ground, the numbness in your leg almost immediately fading to give way to the stinging pain.
You couldn’t move. This was it, you thought, cursing your “friends” for pressuring you to do this, even though nothing was stopping you from not coming here in the first place. But something wasn’t right; you weren’t bleeding out like the informational videos said you would. You were paralyzed and struggling to breathe, but the amount of blood that dribbled out of the open wound on your leg was a trickle compared to what you expected.
Crawling up your leg were more tendrils, smooth and slimy in comparison to the coarse vinelike whips covered in thorns that held you by your ankles and would dig deeper into your skin if you moved. Not that you could move much, but the smallest twitch of the foot sent pain shooting up your leg.
The slimy ones slid up higher and higher until they reached your waist. They felt around blindly as if searching for something.
One wiggled its way into your pants. Your body wanted to bolt upright on reflex, but the toxins in your body wouldn’t let you; you were frozen.
More tendrils worked their way under the fabric of your pants. As more forced themselves in, it overstuffed the pants until you could hear the seams tear apart, leaving you exposed to the open air and the writhing mass of appendages. You had a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that you knew what they were up to, and your fears were quickly confirmed when you felt the wetness rub over your most sensitive spots underneath your underwear, which were ripped to shreds like tissue paper just as it had done to your pants.
One pushed inside of you, which would have forced a scream out of you if you could have found the strength. It was thick and seemed to push on and on forever. Not a single whimper or moan could escape your throat; you were sure you were going to slowly die from the paralysis. The natural slick coating on the tendril helped, but the thickness of it was unbearable, pushing you open so wide that you just might split open. You cried silently as the thing moved in and out of you at a steady pace, rubbing against every nerve ending along the way. Part of it even felt good as far as your body could tell, but all you wanted was to somehow survive this and go home to your family and tell your “friends” to kick rocks.
Harder and faster it moved until it suddenly stopped, stilling itself as deep inside you as your body would allow, and unleashing a gush of fluids that gave way to something more… solid. Whatever it was, it left a number of bumps bulging out from your lower belly.
That was the last thing you remembered seeing before your body succumbed to the toxins. Everything began to fade to black. Surely, you were dead.
Hours later, against all odds, you found yourself awake. Alive. You didn’t know how, but you were alive. Your body ached, but you could move again… hopefully not directly into another Harvester tendril.
There would be time later to worry about whatever was going on with your body; you knew you had to get away first before you could worry about anything else. You crawled away from the dense mass of plants, away from the inhuman thing that just put something inside you that you know you’ll never be able to describe.
At the edge of the woods, you let yourself relax, falling weakly onto your side as you were still fighting off the soreness of the ordeal and the poison. Maybe someone would pass by and be nice enough to help you get home.
You wondered if you could go home looking like this. Would anyone believe you if you told them what happened?