Smith walked out of his office, taking no particular care to avoid stepping on the sentient flowers lining the walkway. The air was so humid that warm water dripped off vines grown into the walls, and the glass roof misted with morning dew. It was disgusting.

He pressed up against the glass door at the end of the corridor and pushed it open. On the other side he reached up to a plaque and cleaned it with his sleeve. It read:

                            Smith’s Criminally Competent Consultancy.

The plaque misted up almost immediately, until all that remained was the word “criminal.” He moved on, careful to keep his soaked sleeve clear from the rest of his suit, he had an appointment to keep.

He waved absentmindedly to an old creature standing at the corner reading the paper. It shook the paper every now and then to slough off the condensation, and its barky limbs swallowed up the water in the paper as if the old woman were parched. Smith thought it was a woman, as far as the creatures cared about such distinctions. He’d never bothered to talk to it.

He had no such natural advantages in drying out his morning paper, and the damp revealed unwanted layers of text within the recycled pulp. He didn’t care about the advances in reconstituted plastic. He didn’t care about that ancient FARC malarkey. He definitely wanted to see how the planet of sleeping trees won the cricket, but the paper was ruined already.

He flung it aside and wrung his sleeves once more, before sliding his hands through the hair plastered to his scalp. He watched as the old creature on the corner grew her way over to the dropped paper dissolving into pulp, her three trunk-like limbs teetering her precariously across the paved floor. She closed her newspaper with feelers that stretched like petals from her spine and placed it in a mesh pouch hanging off her torso. It dripped suspiciously.

Then a proboscis unfurled from the middle of its torso, stabbed into his mess of a newspaper and sucked up the pulp without a pause.

Smith shuddered. Definitely not a woman. It hobbled, its limbs finding purchase in the cracks between pavers, over to a hole in the wall. It regurgitated what was once his paper into the hole. It poked its proboscis out at him once or twice before moving back to its corner. And there it stayed.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Smith loved this planet.

He also loved the subway. Or what passed for it here. It certainly had the advertisements, “Visit the city of Tulips!” Or so his translator supplied. It was essentially a gigantic walkway that moved, dragging you along with everyone else. It was abominably slow, and worst of all was the fact that the “subway” was actually some kind of mutant jungle vine, constantly growing. The rhizome express was damp, dank and completely silent, despite the crowd of creatures pottering about. They drank from the water gathering on the leaves of the subway itself, large sail-like things that dipped and knelt periodically as the creatures around him tapped at the floor with their feelers.

The prison itself was a relief. All grey concrete with foundations in actual rock. No greenery in sight. Walking inside those cast iron doors was glorious, a waft of dry heat keeping him sane on this swamp planet. He would have a few dry minutes before he began to sweat. Better make them count. He marched into the room and claimed his seat.

Smith held his hands neatly folded across the table. His white suit at odds with the grey table and gray walls. Not to mention the guards or the bars. He wrung his hands as he looked at the diminutive figure sitting across from him, who slouched as if he wished he could slide beneath the table. He focused on the small creature, and the translator whirred, focusing on the way its feelers tapped against its bark.

“I understand you’re to be my lawyer,” he squirmed.

“That I am. Smith’s consultants for the criminally competent.”

The soon-to-be prisoner wavered, and his bark wavered between emerald and fawn. He tapped his feelers against his cuffs and across the red plastic overall covering him head to root.

“How are you as slimy as every other lawyer I’ve met?” the criminal grumbled.

“We’re a universal species,” sniffed the lawyer, “and it’s unbearably warm on this planet.”

“Then sod off.”

The lawyer smiled and nodded amicably. He advised, “I’m quite certain we could get you cleared of all charges.”

“I confessed.”

“Under duress.”

“I –“

“Subject to undue influence.”

“What influence? Guilt?”

“You’re really making my job difficult here.”

“And I’m trying to get into my prison cell.”

“No-one wants to be in a prison cell.”

“I do.”

“No you don’t,” the lawyer steepled his fingers, “trust me on this one.”

“Actually I won’t, I killed someone. I deserve this.”

“You stood on a flower. Just forget about it.”

“They had a family.”

“None of whom can speak.”

“And if you kill someone who’s mute everything is fine is it?”

“If they were never someone, then sure. Your “crime” was no worse than say stepping on the morning paper.”

The creature poked his proboscis out of his torso aggressively, and the translator supplied a few choice words as possible translations.

“It’s a fact of life that some flowers are going to get stepped on. It’s what happens when you walk.”

***

Smith walked out of the prison building and was instantly drenched. He groaned and looked around, he was completely alone. Not a monster in sight. He saw a little flower bending under the weight of the dew on its stem and felt a sick urge. No-one would know. He raised his shoe above the creature.