The Hothouse Horror

The new life form was a strange plant with an exotic scent—and a sinister method of spreading its seed.

 

(F, FM, nc)

By: Punchinello for Pulp Erotica

 

Titan Base 1, 2053

Inside the main dome of Titan Base 1, down its long main corridor and thru the double doors that lay at the end was the Pacific Room, the largest of the base’s conference rooms. Space being at a premium on the base, the room was reserved for only the most important of meetings. But this was a very important meeting indeed: the announcement of the discovery of a new form of plant life.

Doctor Sylvia Holdt rubbed her forehead gently while the others chatted and caught a whiff of an unusual scent. She sniffed at her wrist and found the strange odor, probably a tiny amount of plant oils that had got on her in spite of the protective suit she wore when working with the new species.

Doctor Holdt sipped her tea modestly while the other scientists across the broad table chattered among themselves the implications of the new discovery. The whole scientific community would soon be abuzz with the news, just as these representatives were now. They wanted more pictures, extensive video, genetic samples—and, of course, they wanted to see the thing with their own eyes.

Doctor Holdt sniffed her wrist again, attracted to the unusual scent in an indefinable way. She found herself slightly uncomfortable and squirmed in her chair.

Across the room sat the man who had actually brought the discovery into the base from the surface of Titan: Lieutenant Commander Peter Macintyre. He sat leaning against the low cabinet that ran the length of the room, coldly observing the commotion. He had a calm, quiet, almost motionless manner, as if he were a predatory cat eyeing its potential prey. The only thing about him that moved were his eyes: cool blue, darting from one scientist to another as they spoke.

As dark-haired, doe-eyed doctor watched the handsome man, she slipped her hand under the table to scratch an itch on her thigh, high on the inside, and continued rubbing gently, moving inward toward her womanly center. She found herself strangely anxious and unable to sit still. She looked away from Macintyre and around the room, but it was no help. She tried to look casual as she pressed her hand into her crotch, massaging herself gently, squeezing her legs together to make the sensations more intense. This was what she needed; suddenly, she wanted desperately to be alone.

But the sensuous scientist was jolted out of her reverie by another question. “Doctor?” asked the Russian scientist, the only other woman in the room, “Do you have a name for it?”

Doctor Holdt smiled bashfully—and beautifully. She and her assistant Dennis had indeed named the historic species. “Yes,” she replied, “but I hadn’t planned to make it official until my assistant and I could publish the complete written report.”

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense, doctor,” demanded the grizzled Commander Polczic, clearly not in suspense at all.

She replied, “Xenofloris Titanus.”

“Ahh, ‘Alien Blossom of Titan,’” the English scientist translated. “How fitting.”

“I might have thought you would have named it after yourself, doctor,” remarked the French scientist, who had been flirting with the shapely Doctor Holdt all day. “It is fairly customary to name a new species after its discoverer.”

Before Doctor Holdt could speak, the lieutenant commander spoke up. “Actually, I’m its discoverer,” LC Macintyre reminded them coolly.

“So you are, I suppose,” sniffed the Frenchman.

“Doctor Holdt, are you busy this evening?” came a voice from behind her as she left the Pacific Room. It was Macintyre. The woman cringed inwardly. “There’s an aspect of this I’d like to discuss with you,” he said.

Doctor Holdt stopped to face him. She had to crane her neck to look up at him. “I appreciate the continued interest, commander; but as I see it, your work is done. You brought Xenofloris Titanis off the surface and into the lab. Now it’s the scientists’ turn.”

The remaining scientists brushed past them, flushed with professional euphoria and expectations of a viewing on the following day. Doctor Holdt began walking away, toward the elevators.

“As I said; there’s another aspect to this,” Macintyre began, “a security aspect.”

“Everything has a security aspect to you people,” she said over her shoulder.

Macintyre ignored the insult. “My men—” He waited until they reached the elevators, to avoid being overheard. As they did, the elevator announced its arrival; they both stepped in. Doctor Holdt pressed the button for the top floor, where her hothouse laboratory had access to the meager sunlight offered by the Titanian sky.

Safe in the elevator, alone, Macintyre continued, “My men reported some...unusual reactions to coming into contact with the lifeform.”

The beautiful scientist look over her glasses at the soldier. “Your men should not have come into contact with the lifeform without clean-suits,” the doctor chided. “If you’re looking for a security violation, I think you’ve found it.” Doctor Holdt stepped out of the elevator and marched down the corridor toward the hothouse lab.

“The fact of the matter is—”

“Thank you for escorting me to my lab, commander,” Doctor Holdt said flatly, pressing her ID badge to the scanner. “I’ll keep you informed of any security issues I uncover.” Macintyre bit his tongue and turned away as Doctor Holdt entered the lab.

He was barely fifteen feet away before she screamed.

Macintyre raced back as the door re-opened. The hothouse lab was a shambles—a table overturned, glass everywhere, instruments scattered on the floor. “Xenofloris Titanus,” she said quietly. “It has...grown.”

Macintyre and Doctor Holdt gazed across the near end of the ruined laboratory. There, they saw the alien plant had burst its container and grown to enormous size: the leafy base six feet across, its supporting stem so thick and trunk-like that it had fallen on its side and now sported a great bulge in the middle. It had stretched its roots across the steel plate flooring and into the soft loam of the hothouse’s open plant area.

“It’s overgrown other plants in its path,” Macintyre said, advancing warily. “Absorbed them.”

“Incredible,” Doctor Holdt observed, also creeping closer to the monster plant.

Macintyre picked up a notebook and read an entry. “‘The subject’s seedlings have flourished. It’s displaying blossoms similar to the plants it has absorbed. It appears to have incorporated their genetic material into its own!’” Macintyre looked up. “How is that possible?” he asked.

“Is isn’t, commander—not among life as we know it.” She took the notebook. “The final entry: ‘The aroma is strange—somehow alluring. It seems to require contact with human skin to take on this effect, perhaps by some combination of the plant’s essential oils and the hormones—’”

“What about them?”

“That’s all. It just...stops.”

Macintyre suddenly had a sick feeling and began looking all around. “Doctor Holdt?” he said to the entranced scientist. “Where is your assistant?”

She looked around, even daring move around Xenofloris, looking for Dennis. Slowly, both of them returned to focus on the monstrous plant with the suspicious bulge in its misshapen trunk. Then, to both of them, the plant took on the semblance of a gigantic constrictor snake, lazing in the jungle shade after gorging on a wild pig, swallowed whole.

“Oh my GOD!” the woman gasped.

“Stay calm,” Macintyre ordered. “Don’t get carried away. There has to be an explanation. Maybe your assistant left the lab; maybe he ran away to report this.”

“Dennis!” Holdt called. “Dennis are you here?” Her voice echoed off the glass roof and metal walls far in the distance, but only faintly. The hothouse beyond the lab was a thick growth of Earth plants of all sorts, allowed to grow wild and lush, an almost impenetrable mass in places. “He must have left the lab. He would have reported it if he had seen the thing...moving.”

“This is a big place. Let’s look for him in here,” Macintyre said, turning the doctor around bodily and putting his arm around her shoulders. “I’ll radio for security to search his quarters and other likely places.” He ushered her toward the hothouse jungle, but she went slowly, numbly.

 

Macintyre radioed for any reports of unusual activity in the hothouse lab. Nothing had been reported. They searched down the hothouse’s long, haphazard rows of lush green plants, so overgrown that it really was like a jungle. They tried to radio Dennis directly, but without luck. Macintyre sent security to Dennis’s quarters and to the common areas nearby where he might be found. As they turned back, Macintyre ordered security to go to the infirmary to inquire about injured and unconscious patients brought in that day.

While Macintyre finished the call—no Dennis; no unidentified patients—Doctor Holdt returned to the hothouse lab.

The plant had blossomed.

A sickening stench of rotting flesh wafted from the huge, blood red bloom. A trail of blood and slime led away.

“Oh my dear God,” she murmured, slowly comprehending the horror before her. She wandered off, looking for Dennis, fearing he had been trapped by the giant plant, hoping had since escaped. She followed the trail toward the wall of windows.

When she found the creature released from the belly of the monstrous plant, Doctor Holdt found it basking in the sun at the window.

It twisted this way and that, clearly a thing that was not—or at least no longer—the man she knew as her assistant. It was naked, slimy with blood and other fluids, and mottled green and red in color. Its limbs were sinewy and branch-like, its fingers wiry tendrils. Its face was an unruly mass of vegetative matter, with tiny black eyeballs and a gaping, gasping mouth. The creature turned to her, revealing its horror fully, and moved toward her, shambling and reaching. She screamed in terror.

“Doctor Holdt! Doctor Holdt?!” It was Macintyre calling for her from the lab, unable to tell which way she went.

The woman backed away, then ran toward the lab, gasping and sobbing, lashing out for a weapon, scrambling for a hiding place.

The creature pursued her as she ran for the laboratory proper. It caught her with scratching appendages and tore at her clothes. She shuffled out of her lab coat as it pawed at her, making a hideous gurgling in its throat, stinking that strange odor, but it dropped the coat and tore at her dress, ripping the back. She twisted away and ran further, screaming—but had lost her bearings and ran back into the virtual jungle of plants in the hothouse.

The Doctor’s dress was in tatters, hanging off her shapely body like a rag, revealing her plain brassiere and panties. Her breasts her small and conical, jutting out from her chest. Her panties were loose and frilly, belying her feminine side—one she never imagined would be revealed in the hothouse. She stumbled in the thick undergrowth and fell, and so crawled thru the loose mulch and soil and leaves for cover. Her body was on fire with strange, unbidden feelings. She had gotten close to the creature—much too close—and the scent of it was a concentrated formula of the scent she had smelled on her wrist earlier and which Dennis had described in his notes. It was a powerful lure.

No—It was a human pheromone: an aphrodisiac.

A sense of dread filled Doctor Holdt suddenly. How could this be? How could this alien plant mix its chemicals with those of her assistant and produce a sexual attractant? And for what purpose? For mating? The thought repelled her, horrified her.

“Doctor Holdt! Doctor Holdt?!” echoed Macintyre’s call. But he was further away this time, and the woman knew that to call out to him would only bring the plant creature.

The unnatural creature pursued her thru the foliage, finding her again at last and quickly cornering her. She screamed uncontrollably, desperate for Macintyre—her only hope. But her head clouded with doubt, with strange sensations. The sickly-sweet aroma of the monster caught her senses.

Now, the panicked woman saw, the creature displayed a bulging groin, a cyst which opened, revealing a fantastic blossom. And at the center of that blossom was a large, stiff stamen. The alien plant creature meant to mate with her! To impregnate her to further evolve its horrible species! She screamed in utter horror and revulsion.

Then the cloud settled on her mind as the young woman was overcome by the scent. It wafted thru her, inside her. It was strong, musky, sweet, and yet somehow delicate—and intensely erotic. It filled her with an intense sexual urge, an animal desire to mate. It overwhelmed her completely, and her knees buckled as she fainted. She only vaguely felt herself pulling at her brassiere, exposing her breasts, pushing at her panties, revealing the dark blond mound the monster sought.

The plant creature pinned its powerless victim down and tore away the remaining rags of clothing in the way, scratching her skin, drawing thin lines of blood on her thighs. She lay back, helpless in its grasp and in the grasp of its scent. The creature prepared to penetrate her womanhood. Weakly, unwillingly and repulsed but somehow compelled, she spread her shapely legs.

Just then, gunshots rang out. Bits of plant matter and blood sprayed up. The creature spasmed in pain. It was Macintyre, shooting the monster with his service blaster. The creature leaped up and rushed away, wounded. Doctor Holdt rose from her lust-soaked haze and ducked into the vegetation to hide again.

“Doctor!” the soldier cried, astonished that she would flee from him also.

Macintyre went after her, but she was ashamed of her nakedness and behavior. “Find it! Kill it! But stay away from me!” she cried.

“Are you hurt?” Macintyre asked. “Where are you? Come here,” he hissed.

Doctor Holdt pushed back the vegetation a little. “Here,” she whispered. “Don’t come too close. I’m naked.”

“My God!” Macintyre exclaimed. “Was it trying to ravish you?”

“Yes! It must have some kind of mating instinct. It’s odor is a human pheromone—a sexual chemical, like a natural perfume, but much more powerful.” She remained hidden in shadow as they discussed the creature’s origin and wonder how badly it was injured.

Then there was a rustling in the undergrowth. “It’s coming,” Holdt squeaked in terror. Macintyre leaped into the bushes and found himself side by side with the nude form of Doctor Holdt. She huddled close to him despite her undignified state of undress; even her stockings were torn nearly off, and she had lost both shoes—she was almost completely nude.

Then the creature passed by them where they hid, close enough that the two both caught the scent of its bizarre blossom. Holdt raised his blaster, but found his head clouded, his arms heavy. Indeed, Doctor Holdt’s arms where around him, weighing down his own, embracing him shamelessly. “My God, it’s incredible,” Macintyre breathed.

“Like a drunken stupor,” the doctor murmured, pressing hot kisses on his neck. “I can’t stop myself. I must have you, commander.”

Suddenly, a clawing appendage burst thru the vegetation and stretched at Macintyre’s chest. The soldier swore and fumbled for the blaster as the creature burst thru the brush. It tore at him, ripping thru his shirt and carving scratches on his chest. Macintyre leveled the blaster and squeezed off a shot, thrusting the monster back half a meter. It howled in anguish and advanced again, but the soldier blasted it again, twisting it half-around with the powerful, point-blank firepower. The monster suddenly leaped off into the jungle again.

A heartbeat later, Doctor Holdt had thrown her arms around Macintyre. “It’s gone! We’re safe! Take me now, commander! I can’t stand it!”

“You fierce little bitch,” Macintyre muttered, smothering her mouth with his own. Overcome with lust, still terrified for their lives, Holdt and Macintyre hastily stripped off the soldier’s tattered shirt, pushed down his trousers, and fell together in a desperate embrace of flesh against flesh.

“Fuck me, please,” the woman begged, pulling Macintyre closer and spreading her legs wide. “Please fill me up with your cock.”

“Spread your pussy,” Macintyre growled. “I’m gonna fuck you till you scream.”

“Oh God, yes!” Holdt groaned as his swollen and rigid dick met her wet and waiting pussy. “I can’t believe I’m doing this! Oh God! Make me scream, Macintyre. Make me come screaming. Oh yes! Yes!”

Macintyre thrust hart into the petite woman’s wet and waiting center. She gasped and groped at him, pulling him into her. He pounded Holdt’s hot and juicy cunt again and again. The two groaned in lusty harmony, pulling and grasping at one another’s naked bodies, mouths meeting in hungry, demanding kisses.

Macintyre rose to his knees in the black soil and leaf litter, raising Doctor Holdt with him for better leverage against her pelvis. “Don’t stop!” Holdt cried. “Fuck! Fuck me harder! Oh! Oh!” Macintyre kissed her again to quiet her ecstatic cries. He pounded her harder, faster, with angry thrusts that satisfied his most animal desires. And at last the two came in thunderous, shuddering orgasms together, his creamy jism spewing into her hot hole even as he continued fucking her, filling it, spilling out with lewd, wet noise as his cock slid in and out.

“Ohhh! Yeah...” the petite doctor moaned as Macintyre finally withdrew and collapsed beside her. “God, how wonderful—like nothing I’ve ever known....”

“We’re not out of danger,” Macintyre reminded her. “That thing is still out there somewhere.” He wearily dragged himself up and found his service blaster.

Macintyre pulled up his trousers and went into the jungle foliage to search out the creature. He followed the route he had seen it shamble off in when he’d shot it earlier and soon found tell-tale speckles of its strange blood. Deeper into the hothouse undergrowth he went, listening intently, wishing the security detail would show up.

Then, in a circular clearing designed as a sitting area, the soldier saw it. The creature lay on a bench, bathed in the pale light of the sun that filtered thru the hothouse windows high above and down thru the leaves of the tree canopy. He could see it breathing, nursing its wound, but even as he watched, it rose and stood upright, turning its hideous mottled head toward him.

With a grunt and a lurch, the monster rushed him, a horror with murderous intent. Macintyre leveled his blaster and fired again and again, blasting away parts of its head and chest in an attempt to destroy its most vital organs, assuming it was built more like a human than a plant.

The creature finally fell, gasping and coughing, bleeding and oozing, on the floor of the hothouse that had accidentally given it life.

Macintyre wandered toward the lab again, calling out for Doctor Holdt, feeling foolish that he still called her by that name when they had only just made violent love together. Doctor Holdt emerged from the greenery, still nearly naked, bruised but not seriously hurt. She covered him with kisses and whispers. She still smelled of the beast’s affecting aroma.

“That scent,” he moaned, pressing into her soft hair, groping her bare flesh. “It’s still on your skin. It’s incredible. It’s driving me crazy.”

“I want you again,” she breathed. “I do; I can’t stop myself.”

“The security team will be here any second,” he said, kissing her neck and cheek.

“Stay with me tonight, Commander,” she pleaded desperately, caressing his bare chest. “I’m so afraid—and so feverish. I’ve got to have more of you. Please say you will.”

“I will,” he said quietly. “I want to hold you in my arms again and make love to you properly. We can take all the time we want.”

The naked woman slipped on a lab coat just as the security team arrived. They were careful to demand the team put on hazardous material suits before coming close to the doctor.