The Hungry Garden

Chapter Ten: How Does Your Garden Grow?

Our debut as Larkin and Adelia had gone great. Rafe and Debs were perfect in their roles as villains and we loved the back story Rafe had brought to life with Uncle George's letters. Uncle Morbid added a few touches of his own, like the hanging roulette game with the cheesy pun puzzle. The game was well received by the general attendees, though when they played it they actually did face a random outcome. Maise and I wrote up our in-character journal entries, included a few plot ideas of our own, and e-mailed them to Rafe and Debs.

Work was continuing nicely on the Hungry Garden. We had the designs for all the plants we wanted to include and had built small scale prototypes for most of them. We'd completed a couple more munchers and tanglers and made a start on the pitcher plantation, essentially a row of deep tubs decorated with big leaves placed at the bottom of a deep pit with steep sides. The eggs for the egg hunt would be suspended in batches above the pitcher plants, so players would have to get them without losing their footing and sliding into the liquid traps. Getting the losers out to take them off to Limbo would be messy and awkward, but nothing that couldn't be accomplished with a carefully placed ladder.

Uncle Morbid let us call upon more staff from the office to help us in the workshop and promised a large team to assist with the egg hunt when the garden was opened. Most people working at Morior were connected with the Masquerade in some way and acted as angels and stagehands as part of their duties, we also had angels that did not work at Morior but just came for the Masquerades, spirits who took on duties in lieu of subscription fees or who were employed for token wages, at Uncle Morbid's discretion. Some of these would become our shamblers, others would be deployed to tend to players who had been eaten by plants, collecting them up when the coast was clear and taking them over to Limbo. Most of those players would have to wait inside the plants until the end of the game – it wouldn't do to have dead avatars wandering off in full view while play was still in progress and they were meant to be being slowly digested anyway.

Mid afternoon a message came through from the kitchen: Craig and Rebecca had something to show us. Chris and Wilco carried on work while I went down to the house to check it out.

When I got to the kitchen, I couldn't see Craig and Rebecca anywhere. There were beakers on the worktops containing a light green translucent liquid with little fizzy bubbles, but no sign of the two of them. I called out a greeting, there was no answer. When I went back to the door to look outside, I heard a quiet smirk from somewhere in the room behind me. I turned around and started looking behind the shelves around the edge of the room – silly games of hide and seek were very much Craig and Rebecca's sense of humour. Then I heard a little splashing noise, followed by another little chuckle, which seemed to be coming from the corner over by the door.

There I found a large vat like you'd find beneath a carnival dunk tank, with a see-through perspex window fitted into the front. The tank looked like it was filled up with the same light green fluid I'd seen in the beakers on the worktop. And sat inside were Craig and Rebecca, neck deep in the liquid. They gave me a wave through the window of the tank and called me over.

"Hi Lexie," said Craig. "Come and stick your hand in this."

I leaned over the side of the tank and dipped my hand into the liquid they were bathing in. It felt a little like thick soapy water, but with a fizzy tingle. It had an acrid smell of rotting food.

"We're being digested," said Rebecca. "At least, that's the idea. This tank is basically a prototype for your pitcher plants, we've been in here for about an hour to test it for safety and both feel fine. We put in a bit of fizz and a hint of acidity, but it won't actually burn you. You can get in with us if you like."

"I'll take your word for it," I said, "that stuff smells rancid. It looks good, though."

Craig laughed.