The only things we had to defend ourselves with were a few knives. Judging by what we had encountered so far, I didn't think knives would do us much good. We were going to have to find a place to stay now, for sure. If that thing caught up to us, or if we encountered something else... Well, these things were hard enough to take out with a gun, so without one... I doubt we'd last very long at all.

"Oh!" Sarah shouted and slowed the van, "Oh... oh no..."

We were coming up to an intersection, and right in the middle of it there was a huge mass of vines and leaves all coiled together.

Emerging from that mass, was a single, absolute massive sunflower that almost covered the entire center of the intersection. The stalk of the flower was short from what I could see, buried under the vines so that the flower was only about a foot or two off the ground. There was just barely enough room for us to drive by, but only if we turned to the right.

The flower was facing away from us, but as we stopped about ten feet from the intersection, it seemed to perk up. Then, its stalk lifted and extended itself about twenty fee into the air. It "looked" straight up into the sky, letting the rain pour over its petals and drip onto the road below, then twisted itself to look down at us.

It smiled.

I don't know how a flower could smile, I don't know how to explain it... but I know that it was smiling as it looked down on us, despite not having a mouth.

There was this strange sense of warmth fighting through my unease. Something drawing me towards it.... I shook my head. The stench of the invisible thing started to waft towards us again.

"We have to go by the flower," Sarah said, trying to convince herself. It probably wasn't a good idea... but we didn't have the liberty of making a decision. It was our only choice. We either had to try and make it by the flower, who knew whether it was hostile or not, or what the hell it was even capable of... or we could go back and get crushed by the invisible thing. If it had crushed the gun that easily, no doubt it would smash the van just as effortlessly.

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I caught a glance of slight aberration in the pattern of the rainfall behind us, which could only mean that the thing was here. Sarah saw it too, and immediately put her foot on the gas, sending us hurtling towards either escape or imminent death.

The flower twitched as we neared it, and I winced as we drove through the small gap between the sidewalk and the vines. The sunflower followed our movements, and just as we went by it, the vines coiled around it all instantaneously uncoiled and shot straight up into the air. I heard a loud crack as one of them came crashing down onto the roof of the van. Sarah screamed as more vines came speeding down towards us, but instead cracked against the asphalt. Sarah had succeeded in bringing us out of their reach and we sped further away.

There wasn't anymore of the flowers lined along the road, luckily.

In the rear-view mirror, I saw the massive sunflower tilt downwards, giving the impression that it was lowering its "head" dejectedly. The invisible thing let out what would have been an almost heart-tugging wail if it wasn't for the fact that it had been trying to kill us.

We had escaped.

"Man, it's just one crazy nightmare after another..." Jared muttered, shaking his head, "Just... one batshit insane thing, one... after... another..."

Aaron looked down, "But we made it!"

The five of us laughed, "Yeah," I said, "We made it... all thanks to your quick thinking, Sarah." I rubbed my head, "That hurt like hell, and the thing only grazed me. There's no way Jared and I would have stood a chance if you didn't shoot it when you did."

"Yeah!" Jared said, laughing a little from the elation brought on by our escape, "And if she and Aaron didn't haul you in the van, you'd still be back there. I guess we really were lucky we happened to run into her."

"Thanks..." she said, blushing a little. I noticed she was trembling.

"Did you want me to drive now, Sarah?" I asked her.

"Yeah... I'm a little shaken up, despite everything."

I nodded, and Jared, Sarah and I returned to our original seating.