Minutusica
Stripped to the bone.
Lars stood at the the floor to ceiling window that served as the front wall of his home in Los Angeles, he was focused on the long driveway, and the absence of a car climbing up its cobbled path. The window overlooked his cactus garden, a menacing mix of gothic sculpture, wrought iron, and sharp plants. His phone chimed and he turned, walking away from the view. Vines and orchids trailed down from planters nestled in a built in shelf that ran the length of the window along the ceiling, catching the noonday sun.
His phone buzzed and he turned, pacing his black marble floors and scrolling through a text from his procurement man.
“Hmm…” Lars massaged his temples as he paraphrased aloud. “Not sure how he got out alive? His men are dead. An unknown insect disturbed by recent forest clearing that… drinks blood.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “Well did you get it or not?” He typed his reply.
“Idiot,” he hissed, turning on his heel and crossing the living room to the open kitchen. Bay was always getting himself into trouble. No doubt he’d use this fabrication as an excuse to demand more money. Lars set the phone on the counter and took a delicate blue teacup and saucer from a shelf. From a canister he scooped a teaspoon of pungent black tea. His hand shook as he lifted the teaspoon over to a teapot, spilling dried leaves on the counter.
“Dammit,” he dropped the teaspoon onto the black granite counter top. “What has he done this time?” He whispered to himself as he ran his fingers through his hair.
The phone chimed. Lars pounced on it.
-Yeah, I got it. But the cost, man…
Lars rolled his eyes. -Of course, you want more money.
-I want my men back. Three of them died in that jungle.
-It isn’t my fault that your men are incompetent.
-Were… You’re a real asshole, you know that?
-Just tell me when you’ll be here?
-An hour. Just landed.
Lars put the phone down and looked at the mess on the counter. Three men had died? Sure, Bay. And he had real estate on Mars. He sighed and brushed the tea leaves off the granite into his cupped hand and dumped them into the sink. It was Vintage Narcissus from the Wuyi Mountains, $3500/lb. A shame to waste it. He put the teapot under the tap, it was plumbed for cold, hot, and boiling water. All filtered, of course. Bay had never claimed his men died before, that was a new one. Usually it was just wanting a reimbursement for having to bribe customs, or insisting Lars replace some expensive piece of equipment that had been ruined. Death was certainly an escalation. Perhaps it was time for a new procurement man.
He the put cup, saucer, and teapot on a tray and carried it back to the living room, setting the tray down on an antique cherrywood coffee table. A photograph of a plant lay on the table and Lars slid it over to where he sat. The Alocasia sanderiana var. minutuscia. A strange, wild variety of the common houseplant known as the Kris plant. The Kris plant was endangered in the wild due to habitat loss, but so many survived in the warm sunny windows of plant lovers all over the world that, in its standard form, it was of no interest to Lars. This variety though, this was something different. Produced by a wild mutation, its dark, black-green leaves were veined with blood red. Lars had never seen anything like it. Its leaf margins undulated down to a sharp point, the red veins making the terminus looked like a drop of blood about fall. It was a plant he needed.
However, there had been complications. Initially upon its discovery the Philippine government had given permission for the plant to be collected and, if possible, cultivated. But no one from the first collection team had made it out of the jungle alive. A rescue team reported that all members had been killed and skeletonized. That is, bones were all that was left of them. Not terribly unusual in the jungle. There are a lot of hungry mouths in the jungle. But the interesting part was, the bodies hadn’t been disturbed. All of the skeletons were intact. Nothing large had carried off any limbs or scattered any small bones. There was no damage, no teethmarks, nothing broken, they lay there as they had fallen, still wearing their clothing.
The hypotheses was that some kind of insect had swarmed them and cleaned the bones. It certainly wasn’t unheard of. The rescue team had collected the bones of the dead, and had gathered a few rhizomes of the plant, which, they noted, grew abundantly in the area. In the nursery where the rhizomes had been taken, the plants had sprouted and grown quickly, seeming to have the same care requirements of the original A. sanderiana. But when employees at the nursery began to present strange bite marks and blood loss the plants were destroyed on the assumption that the offending insect was somehow the cause. No one had actually seen a bug though, so there was no way to know for sure. Lars had been furious when the plants were destroyed. How could such a beauty be so callously discarded? The Philippine government had forbidden any further attempts for collection and rubber-stamped a pending permit to turn that part of the forest into farmland. The botany community had given the plant the informal variety name minutusica, Latin for tiny dagger.