Blooms of the Apocalypse: A Mediocre Journal Entry by Ford Grayson

March 21, 2037

I’ll be honest. I don’t know why I’m writing all of this.

I’m sure there are people smarter than me who are doing the same thing, people who actually know what in the world happened and why. Or at the very least can figure it out themselves. I doubt anyone will read this journal. That is, if it (and myself) even survives. But at the very least, maybe people will find my story entertaining, if not completely obsolete. Here goes nothing.

It’s been a week since the plants destroyed New York. (Man that sounds weird now that I’ve written it down.) I've been searching with three other survivors (Their names are Paul, Lindsey, and Miranda) for anyone else who made it through the incident. So far, we've found no one. None of us has been able to make any sense of how all of this happened. In just one night giant vines, flowers, and weeds completely took over the city. Buildings that hadn’t been destroyed by the destructive growth were encased in the foliage. Looking at them, they're more like giant, disgusting green sponges than buildings now.

Many of the animals had also mysteriously gone missing. I expected to see some stray dogs or at least a few rats, but I haven’t seen a single one since the apocalypse began. We didn’t find out why until only yesterday when looking inside a ruined building for supplies. There, deep inside of the structure was a massive weed with uncomfortably long stingers at the tip of its leaves. A pulsing red bulb was at the center of the plant where all the leaves met. Dead mice were strewn all around the weed, shriveled up like the animals outside. If you haven’t already figured it out, this plant had stabbed all of these animals and sucked their blood until they were mummified corpses. I wanted to puke when the realization came, but I had nothing in my stomach to heave up. I imagine that there are hundreds of them all over the place, in abandoned skyscrapers ready to steal our blood.

And that’s one of the less deadly plants.

Overgrown dandelions with poison spikes instead of those fluffy seeds. Mutated flower roots that seem to enjoy hurling people through the air to a troubling degree. Sentient trees that grew bark-armored limbs. And no, I don’t mean branches. I mean FREAKING ARMS AND LEGS. They're deceptively fast and unmistakeably strong, capable of punching through cement walls without much force. I’d bet my life that if someone were to get spotted by one of these things, it wouldn't be long before the poor soul gets obliterated. Thanks a lot, Mother Nature. You completely ruined Ents for me. Oh, and you destroyed modern civilization. I’m mad about that too.

As for myself, I was found on the floor of my bedroom, on the fifty-second floor of the Broadway Boulevard apartment building. It was Paul that helped me get out of the building onto ground level. From what I’ve seen and what he’s told me, Paul is a natural survivalist. He was in Boy Scouts since he was a little kid, so he knew just enough to stay alive.

We met Lindsey and Miranda a few days after I was rescued. They seemed to be somewhat well off, having hidden in a ramshackle shelter made of broken rotting wood. Lindsey was the one who organized it, and she’s still proud of it. (A little too proud if you ask me). Her smug look when she is right about anything honestly makes me wish I had been eaten by the killer plants sometimes. But besides that, she’s nice enough and has been a big help finding information about our surroundings.

Miranda is deaf and though she can read lips, she can only communicate through a little broken English and sign language. Which Lindsey conveniently is fluent in. Despite all that, Miranda is far from helpless. In fact, she may be the most capable of us all. She has saved us several times from killer plants in the span of just three days, including the time she took a scarily-long knife and stabbed a dog-shaped horse-sized jumble of vines until she stabbed the pulsing bud deep inside and killed it. (Trust me, it’s even weirder than it sounds, but that’s a story for another time.) She hasn’t said much about herself, but I could tell she was looking for someone. Several times I had caught Miranda looking at a heart-shaped locket she kept in her pocket. I didn’t ever bring it up.

Honestly, seeing what the others can do, I wonder if I have any worth in this new world compared to them. I’m not smart or brave, and I’ve never been in Boy Scouts. I would say I’m helping by recording our experiences on the pieces of paper lying around the city, but as I said before, there are most likely others who are doing the same thing. The only difference is that they’re smarter than I am and are probably much better writers than I am. (Yeah, I’m well aware that my writing is not very good. And don’t get me started on my art.)

Then again, why should it have to be good? This is the apocalypse for crying out loud! I’m not going to increase my chance of survival by writing like Shakespeare. Why should I have to worry about making what I write complex and deep? If you ask me, writing about the real world should be plain and simple. No similes, metaphors, or overly complex words or phrases. Just the simple truth. Nothing about my new life is simple, but that doesn’t mean my story can’t be.

Who knows if I’ll do another one of these? Eh, might as well, since there’s not much else for me to do.

Best regards,

Ford Grayson