A Plant Called the Life-Stealer

Coughing, her chest heaving, the fit form of Athena ran full tilt through the trees, her thick boots crashing through the slowly rotting foliage floor. She knew the intense physical activity would accelerate her heart rate and breathing, and as such speed up the progress of the venom through her system, but she couldn't stop. She would panic anyway knowing it was inside her system, and she was too far from anywhere to be found before it took hold. Her only hope was to run to help and hope she could still speak when she fell at their doorstep, and that they had a cure. No way to know but to try, she knew. She wouldn't have the luxury of door knocking; the first place she found would help her, or she would be taken trying. Already she felt like she could feel it surging through her veins, rooting itself into her cells, burying itself into her flesh and spreading out like the endless roots of the plant the virus had come from.

With a shiver, as she crashed clean through a bush, the branches cutting and whipping at her thighs and shins painfully, she realised that not a few of those very bushes had most likely not always been a bush, and knew that would be how she would end up if she didn't make it to someone fast. She knew that, given enough time, the evil infection would fill her up and dig into every single system inside her body, rooting itself in her, living off her while it grew, feeding her slowly with more of the sappy venom until it grew and sucked her away entirely, leaving only a fresh new bush behind to mark her grave, the plant forever living off her life force, alive because it had lived off of her and slowly eaten her alive. She shivered again, although it was more of a hair-raising reaction on her skin than a physical shudder. Her pelting pace on the ground made it hard to do anything other than run, and she focussed as hard as she could on putting one boot in front of the other.

But the shivering didn't stop, despite the immense effort and focus she put into her speed. As she crashed forwards, she felt the cold air biting into her, cutting through her thick sleeves and layered clothes, making her skin prickle and her nipples raise. She felt like the sun had gone down, and briefly glanced up to see if it was still in the sky, despite the presence of sunlight around her. It was high overhead, almost midday, although she was beginning to feel like it was closer to midnight at a nudist beach. She shivered again, and this time the action did echo through her limbs, despite their movement pushing her forwards. It was not an unpleasant feeling, and that worried her even more than the deepest of pain. She shouldn't be feeling

good

right now.

And yet she did. The more she ran, the more she felt the pounding beat of her weight falling onto a fresh footstep, the more she felt the shivering waves rush over her skin and the more it made her nerves prick up. Another fifty metres and she faltered for a moment after an extra-long leap to clear a fallen tree, the rushing sensation across her skin twice as strong. Distantly, she realised the biting cold was distant from two sections of her body, and that those sections were alight with warmth. It felt refreshingly blissful to feel that heat through the cutting chill gripping the rest of her body. Doggedly, she ran on, pushing ahead, the waves coming on every step now. The running was something of a double-edged sword for Athena now - she was tired and aching and the fear and panic had taken a toll on her, yet she needed to run to survive. Yet running also brought her more waves of warmth, and it urged her to push herself further, to keep pelting her feet into the ground to feel the washing heat momentarily dispel the cold once more. Bending her head to the task, she decided it couldn't matter which reason she ran for anymore - she still had to run. At least there was something good making her want to keep running, she thought dully.

Another hundred metres passed before Athena stopped again. Panting and sweating, yet feeling like she was on ice, she drew her wet arm across her equally soaked forehead, glancing down at it as she drew it away. The sight of the skin made her blanch. There was what she thought might be thin, snaking green wires underneath the surface of her skin, as if tiny discoloured veins had popped up along the length of her arm. Glancing at her other arm she saw the same there, and, in a corner of her mind, she found herself wondering if her face had the same cracked green look on it. She decided that it must do, and almost whimsically, she shrugged. It looked like the venom had taken hold faster than she could get to help. It was almost like that realisation, that simple resigning to her fate, unlocked her tensed up mind and muscles, freeing her from the stress of beating the life or death timer inside her own skin. Slumping where she stood, she looked around herself, and sighed, still panting heavily. Green surrounded her, uneven trees interspersed amongst long, thick grass. Far away, or at least she thought it was far away, she could see a brown shape, but her eyes were stinging with sweat and dust and and slitted to protect them from whipping branches and she shrugged it off as a small hill or bulging tree.

All of a sudden, the exertion of the last twenty minutes caught up with her and she slumped to the ground, the ache in her legs sapping her will to stay standing on them. It was a good thing, too, she thought casually to herself. It felt better now that she was lying down. She should have done this from the beginning.

She sighed, rolling her head to one side, then the other. All she could see was the green grass she was lying in. It was still cold, but the heat in her core had thickened and solidified since she'd let herself fall to the ground now and it was soothing her, relaxing the tension in her muscles one by one. She settled into it, and to her delight found it spread quicker when she did. Anxious to dispel the biting, numbing chill from her arms and legs, she tried to relax more and found the heat inside her thickened and filled her out in reward. She shivered again, and this time it was a definite wave pleasure. She smiled numbly as the wave enveloped her, dispelling the last of the cold from her frame and taking her over with warmth. Now that she had stopped to take it in, she realised the heat was emanating from her pussy, and with a giddy sensation of girlish glee she realised she was wet as a hose. Now the shivers made sense, she thought to herself. She was horny.

Reaching tiredly up with one arm in a motion that should have been scarily stiff to her, Athena brought her fingers to her cunt and pressed, feeling the joyous rush as the pressure on her stunningly sensitive lips brought a cascade of thick, jolting waves to her. She was thirsty, and as quickly as her tough arm would let her, she dove her fingers into her belt line and buried her hand to the forearm inside her pants. Her fingertips found the source of the heat easily and she marvelled drunkenly at the intense warmth inside her as she slipped two digits easily into her sopping pussy, feeling the ecstatic rush as the action filled her with wave after wave of erotic bliss. She moaned, although intriguingly the moan came out more as a rough, dry croak. She shrugged and pushed a third finger into the slick opening in her pants and sighed in bliss as her pussy lit up with physical arousal. She let everything else go, completely relaxed her legs and let her head slump back and felt more rushing waves of warmth filling her up, accompanied by the now sawing fingers inside her body.

Masturbating readily now, Athena didn't notice the skin of her arm breaking as she moved her fingers in and out of her body, letting out small croaks of bliss as she did. With a dry cracking sound, her disturbingly dry skin broke apart, revealing a thin green tendril underneath. Slowly but unceasingly, it pushed upwards, seeming to grow out of her body. It twisted upwards, angling towards the sky, and thickening as it went. As the bliss-addled woman diddled herself with ever stiffening fingers, more and more of her skin broke, revealing tiny growths underneath waiting to escape. They began to reach out of her body, bending upwards towards the light. This was how the venom of the life stealer worked - once inside a host, it infected their cells, invading them and bearing their mutative DNA on them. As the cells were carried around, the DNA was passed on through the local area to more cells, spreading at first very slowly, then exponentially faster as it coursed through first airways, then veins and arteries, then the skin and nervous system themselves, until it was inside every cell. During the expansion process, the cells would accelerate whatever cells they joined to, encouraging them to work harder. In most victims, this led to increased heart rate, elevated breathing, intense sensitivity, and accelerated, if erratic thinking.

Sometime during the process, the cells began to slow down, more and more of them sticking together, until they formed clumps that could sustain themselves. They grew, and the cells would form a symbiotic seed host. The seed would root itself in the next place it found itself stopping, and bury tiny DNA strands into the wall of the host, growing itself into the body of the creature. Unlike other plants, which fought to share ground space with their neighbours, the life stealer plant merged with other seed cells until one network of new seeds was made all throughout the body of the host. Then at their strongest, the now single seed would expand, seeking out everything it would need to survive. It would suck exponential amounts of water out of the host as it grew, before reaching a size big enough to exit the host body. Once there it would break through the skin and sprout leafy flowers to drink in the sunlight while it used the remaining protein in the host to dig down until it rooted itself firmly into the ground. By then, the host would be almost gone, and the plant would move to sustaining itself fully off of the earth and the sun, flowering all year round, the heady scent of its blossoms attracting unweary hosts and infecting them, making them run until they fell, spreading the plant's seed further and further.

Athena's hand was slow now, stiff and hard to move, but she didn't care. She didn't know how to care. The roots were in her head, in her brain, numbing thought and silencing her resistance. Intelligent cognitive processing had ended when the stems of the infectious symbiont had grown into her mind, heightening her thinking before dragging it to almost a halt as it grew stronger. Athena was no longer consciously thinking. All that remained inside her was the strongest of her thoughts, the most powerful of sensations; her arousal. Numb and dull and completely unresisting, Athena's lolling head flopped back and her soft lips, dry and cracked as the water had been drained from her body, slowly parted, letting her small tongue loll. Empty, unfocussed eyes stared into the green not half an inch from them. Only the almost completely frozen motion of her fingers continued at her pussy, and even that was slowing rapidly.

With the last vestiges of humanity, Athena distantly realised that she was cumming. As though at the end of a long, long tunnel, she more heard than felt herself, as if she were watching herself from the outside. Indirectly, she realised she was, and in the strange calmness that takes over a person in death or during life threatening situations like surgeries or battles, she almost thought she was standing over herself. Looking down, she saw the cracked skin, the upturned green stems erupting from her body, and the arm buried in her pants. She could see herself under the clothes, see her body, and she felt herself cum. It was intense, blisteringly pleasure-filled, and she felt the numbed echoes of that intense orgasm shaking and echoing down to her distant consciousness. It made her happy, and made her satisfied. She knew she was in intense pleasure, more than she could comprehend, and in her detached self she appreciated what that meant. Without any discernible ending, she was gone, and so was the still form in the grass, the orgasm, and the plant that was now her.

Above the half petrified form of Athena, lying in the grass, flat on her back, a glazed, ever so slightly smiling look on her face, one arm rooted inside her pants, the first of the flowers of her new symbiotic life form sprouted, opening into bright, perfect flowers. They sprung wide, thick petals leaning back as far as they could go until they formed a cone of colour. Atop their peaks stood a thin, stiff stalk, covered in tiny pink buds. As soon as any creature big enough came near them, the warmth and pressure of their breath as they learned in to sniff the irresistible scent of the blooms would jettison thousands of tiny spores off the stalk, filling the air around it with them. They would stick to skin, float into water supplies, and be breathed back in by the creature, who would take them far away inside it before it too succumbed to the plant and formed a new rooting.

Hassu stopped running a few metres from the still form. He couldn't see her yet through the thick grass, but he could see the top of one of the flowers peeking over the top of the line of grass. He froze, not wanting to come any closer. The two friends he'd called to come with him to investigate whatever it was that he thought had fallen out here stopped behind him. They pointed, speaking to one another. No one moved for a few moments. As they talked, asking about the thing in the grass, but not game enough to go near it, a slight breeze picked up, making the grass wave and the trees shake gently. One of them pointed, tall enough to see the top of what had been Athena's head. The young man who'd first run up to them turned then and, pushing at his friends, started back towards their houses. They'd see what the elder had to say about the strange plant and what one of them thought had been a woman's head in the grass.

Some thirty minutes after Hassu and his friends had been angrily dossed down and questioned over the plant in the distance, and after he and his friends had assured their elder that they hadn't gone too close or touched anything, Hassu and his friends lay by the lake in the sun, fresh off a lively swim they'd taken after they'd gotten back. Wet and glistening and dressed only in lose pants, none of the three men noticed the stiff erections the others had, or the soft cracking sounds their skin made. None of them would. By the time their arousal had peaked and their bodies had started to dehydrate, each one was buried in the depths of a strong, stunning arousal that overpowered and subdued their minds and bodies. Some minutes after that, the fresh buds above their root-filled skin popped open, happening only a few seconds after the powerful orgasms each one had that would be their last thing they consciously felt.