Something about being a passenger always made Kate drowsy. She tried to stay awake, but there was nothing to see this late at night and nothing to do this far away from a wifi signal, and she felt herself nodding off for long stretches of the drive home as her parents chatted away about all the things she'd missed since she went away to college. She tried to listen, but the more attention she paid, the less it seemed like anything was actually happening back in Hickory Springs, Wyoming. After a year in New York City, the routine of small-town life seemed even slower than ever, whatever her mother might think.
"...and did you know, they are doing more construction out on I-25? They've routed everything along Highway 196 again, and you know the Millers, well, they've got a whole five acres along that route and a herd of cows that Jake Miller swears are trying to kill themselves. He's had to repair his fence three times in the last month, and every single time, where do you think he finds those cows? Out on 196 blocking traffic. The DOT says..."
The words dissolved into a stream of sleepy images, the cows floating past like balloons as Kate struggled to keep her dark brown eyes open and failed. The smooth motion of the car lulled her into sleep, badly-needed after a full day of travel, and Kate knew that when she woke up, it would just be to another story about the Millers' fence or the property-line dispute between Caleb Henderson and Miles Turley that was entering its third decade or the continuing health issues of Widow Simpkins and her ongoing battle with hypochondria. The details changed from day to day, year to year, but Hickory Springs didn't. When a new restaurant opened, it was practically a calendar event.
She surfaced briefly, but her dad was practically telling her a bedtime story with his tale of home improvements. "...so I said, 'Do you have those boards in green?', and well, damn if old Chet at the lumber yard didn't stare at me like I had two heads. It took me a week to get Jim to order me some stain in the right color, but you'll see it was worth it when you look at that toolshed, it's about the prettiest damn thing I made, if I do say so myself..."
Kate fell back into a doze, hoping she wasn't snoring but knowing her parents wouldn't really care if she was. They were just happy to have her back, and she was happy to be back. Even if Hickory Springs was probably the dullest place to be from in the history of little tiny towns in the middle of nowhere, and even if she didn't even bother telling most of her undergrads where she was from because they wouldn't be able to find it on a map, Kate loved to come back every year and take a break from the hectic pace of going to grad school in the busiest city in the world. No matter what kinds of craziness New York had to offer, Kate always knew that she could come back to Hickory Springs, curl up in the exact same bed in the exact same room in the exact same house she'd lived in since she was born, and know that there was at least one thing she could rely on to stay exactly the same.
"Wake up, honey, we're home!" Kate had a momentary sense of dislocation, unsure for a moment whether she was dreaming about growing up and she was really just getting home from a trip to see her grandmother, but she blinked it away and came back to herself just in time to see them pulling into the driveway. Sure enough, the house looked exactly like it always did. It had the same rustic cedar siding, the same bright red trim, the same old garage too full of stuff to park a car in, the same covered porch--
Kate stared in confusion for a moment, sure she was still dreaming. She got out of the stopped car, scarcely even noticing the stiffness in her legs or the weariness in her body. She walked up to the front porch in a wide-eyed daze, barely able to believe her eyes. "What...what is that?" she asked, her voice suffused with an incredulity that shaded into horror. "What is that?" she repeated, unable to stop herself.
Her dad merely shrugged and went around to the trunk to grab her luggage. "It's our front porch thing," he said, somehow managing to sound more indifferent than he had about pre-treated lumber. He hauled out Kate's bags and set them in the driveway expectantly, but Kate didn't even begin to pick up on the hint. She was too busy staring at the thing on the porch.
It was big, bigger than she was tall even though she'd inherited her father's lanky frame. She didn't think she could reach all the way around it, either, not that she had any intention of getting close enough to try. Something about the size, the mottled greenish-brown color, the thick veins that ran from its base all the way up to the tip and pulsed so faintly that Kate could almost convince herself she was imagining the motion...it all combined to freak her right the fuck out. It looked like something out of a horror movie, the kind of thing the hero burned in the third act only to find out in the last five minutes that there was a whole field of the damn things out back of the house. It looked like any second it would split open to disgorge a host of facehuggers the size of small ponies. It looked terrifying.
Her dad didn't seem to notice her terror, though. He just grabbed the bags after a minute or two and walked up the front steps to the unlocked door. Kate tensed up as he passed by the thing, half-expecting it to lash out with a host of tentacles and pull him inside it, but he went inside as though it was no big deal that they had a giant pod on their front steps.
"Mom, seriously," Kate whispered, grabbing her mother's arm, "what is that? Is it something you're growing? It looks...God, it looks like a lettuce and a stinkmelon had babies with an okra pod the size of a horse." Kate didn't think there was actually any such plant as a 'stinkmelon', but she knew what one would look like if it existed, and it would look a lot like that. It looked wilted and fungal in places, but the veins seemed almost luminescent in the shadows the porch light didn't banish. And the curled vines and leaves at the base looked downright rotten, even though Kate couldn't smell any decay.
Kate's mother patted her on the shoulder and gently disengaged from Kate's grip. It took her a few seconds. "It's just our front porch thing, dear," she said dismissively. "Everyone's got one these days. Now let's get you off to bed--we're going into town bright and early tomorrow, and I'm sure you'll want to come along and see how Emma's getting on." And with that, she walked up the steps and past the terrifying mutant pod-thing and into the house.
Which meant Kate had two choices. Walk past the thing, or stand out here all night. And while June wasn't the worst time of year to spend an evening outside, Kate knew she'd face an awkward conversation with her parents if she had to explain that she slept in the car instead of facing their hideous plant monster. Which...plant monsters were plant monsters, but nothing was worse than having to have an argument with your parents over which one of you was acting weird. Kate took the stairs at a sprint and darted inside.
