::HELIOTROPHOBIA::

I've been asked twice in 12 hours if I ever thought of writing short stories. One request came from shared delight in masterful diction; the other came after a friend read this, described as "Lovecraftian" by said friend:

One day, on my way to high school, I glimpsed a potted sunflower on the side of the road. It was about six feet tall with a seed pod width of about a foot. The stem was a hardy green, and the tangled mass of organic matter behind its face was deep and dense. The sight gave me an immediate, visceral reaction: fear.

I didn't know why I felt that way, but over the next couple of days, bits of a dream I'd had as a child came drifting back into my consciousness. (Feel free to go as Freud-tastic you wish here.) I was walking in a field of tall sunflowers. Instead of doing the heliotrope thing and following the sun, the flower faces were following me. They moved, in a creepy stop-motion-photography rustle, watching me with their seedy eyes. I walked, deliberately, to the center of the field, where the largest sunflower grew. (I think of her still as the Queen.)

She leaned in toward me, her seed pod an easy three feet in diameter, and -- I woke up the instant before she ate me.