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They call me perfect.
You may call me the most successful of my kind.
My stem is sturdy and holds me high. My colors are the most vibrant in my entire patch, and my nectar is sweeter than sugar. My leaves are soft, my teeth are strong, and my charm is incomparable.
Not only am I the jackpot in the genetic lottery of Venus flytraps, but I’m also incredibly skilled.
I’ve learned the art of predation to perfection. My sweet nectar lures only the biggest, most sought-after insects. They come to me with desire and curiosity in their hearts, and hunger in their stomachs. They want to feast on what I have to offer. I take advantage of their natural urges and seduce them with the false promise of fulfillment. I let them trust me, let them take from me, give them everything I have to offer and let them cherish me for it, and then, I strike.
I devour them whole, ruthlessly and remorselessly. It’s spontaneous and violent. They fight, but I do not care. Only I can match their strength, and I always win against their struggle, never leaving room for error. They sustain me—keep me strong, confident, and prosperous. Without them, I am nothing, and I will never not be everything to this world. I’m driven by instinct and my own passion to kill. There is no room for weakness in my way of hunting. Only cunning. Only allure. Only me.
The other plants envy me. They wish they had my success, my nectar, my colors, my fortune. They believe I’m the messiah of entire species, the prodigy of my craft, the apex of my ecosystem—I’m everything a flytrap should be. I’m prolific, efficient, and utterly unstoppable. My affluence is my legacy, and when I die, my name will be legend. There truly is no one like me.
That was until my leaves began to shutter, and my mind grew weak in a way that made me feel the sting of something unfamiliar.
I first noticed the bee when its golden honey dripped onto the soil next to me. The sickly sweet aroma hit me in the teeth and the smell felt like it was soaked into my foliage.
At first I was entirely confused, even a little offended. The honeybee couldn’t be bothered with its mistake. I glared at it with annoyance.
However, that feeling of mine started to drop as soon as I watched it.
Flying around diligently, the bee collected pollen and nectar. But not for itself, no… that was the strange part. It worked for its hive. It exerted itself for the greater good of its people, and it didn’t seem like it had any intent of stopping. It was naturally selfless and hardworking, without even trying. I continued my observation, and I felt my passiveness on the bee further dissolve.
He was breathtaking.
His wings reflected against the sun like ice with the haze of diamonds, glittering and glowing in my eyes. His plump, fuzzy body was striped with dazzling gold and existential darkness, hypnotizing me as he winged through the breeze. His eyes were hooded, a unique feature that subtly broke the visual uniformity of his hive. When the light hit them, they entranced me in their deep, dark brown color, endearingly warm and mesmeric. The first time I heard him, I thought Heaven’s gates had opened behind me. I can’t describe the distinctiveness of his voice with words, but it was the most pleasant thing that has ever graced my ears. It reminded me of the way the cool, earthy soil feels on my roots or how the glowing rays of the sunrise warmed my skin.
His tiny legs landed gently on the delicate petals of flowers, treating them with kindness and consideration, a kind of respect us carnivorous plants never received. His pollen-dusted face sifted through its center as he collected everything he needed. He never dared to hurt the plant in the process. I don’t even think he was capable of such a thing. He can’t register anything but kindness toward others. He reached out a helping-hand not just to other bees, but any insect that asked for it. He never acted out of his own selfish desire, and he never got involved in any activity that he knew could potentially end in someone being hurt. He got along with everyone and wasn’t afraid or judgmental toward anyone that came across his path, even if they didn’t reciprocate his decency. It didn’t seem biologically feasible for someone to be so naturally altruistic and goodwilled. But there he was–my polar opposite.
Anything that could be considered a flaw on someone else only enhanced his beauty; he was perfectly imperfect. He was beautiful in a way I had no word for yet. In fact, he looked so much like an angel, I almost mistook him for having a halo. His beauty blinded me to the point everything else seemed to fade away in my eyes.
From there, I watched him fly back to his hive, putting in the overwork just so his community of other bees could prosper. He wasn’t greedy, aimless, and self-involved, unlike the other insects I consumed. Unlike me. He was pure, hardworking, mindful, and empathetic.
Watching his virtuousness, something in me began to churn.
My leaves turned brighter shades of green and red. My stem strengthened to something unbreakable by any insect. My teeth grew longer, sharper. It was almost as if I began to glow. I turned into something Herculean.
I thought it was hunger.
I kept my stomach empty for his taste, hyper-fixating on making him my next meal. Just as it was written in my blood, I was destined to consume. But it was more than that. I wanted to swallow him whole. Him, specifically. And once I crave something, it doesn’t go away until I’ve devoured it.
My curiosity grew into obsession. His nature opposed mine so strongly that I grew deeply attached to him. Why I cared, I didn’t know for sure, but I figured it was pure instinct. My predatory genius is what guides me, and now, since I feel such intense emotion at the concept of our differences, it should be safe to assume it was nothing but a deep, animalistic hunger.
I’ve never had a taste for bees. I never tried them. But, I heard they were gross. Foul-tasting from the odor they gained when they work, and what’s worse, they reek of the pollen from other flowers. They weren’t even considered visually attractive to most others. On top of that, they didn’t have much nutritious benefit. But to be honest, I didn’t care about the taste or what I’d get from it or how I’d look consuming a bee. Anything the other traps tried to tell me about how bees weren’t worth the trouble went through one ear and out the other. This was a battle controlled by my identity as an utter monster, and I ignored any implication that I wasn’t in it for the meal.
Occasionally, he came back for my nectar. But I didn’t eat him. Not yet, at least. I learned his patterns, his preferences, his judgments. I adjusted my every attribute to suit him, perfecting a false identity just to entertain his arrival. It felt odd to pretend to be someone I wasn’t, but I had to remind myself of my goal whenever I felt indifferent to the process. Plus, it brought me an odd sense of joy to get to know who he was, likely another attribute of my natural talent to hunt. I ignored the other insects around me, sparing their lives just to prepare for the bee. I simply refused to break my focus from him, no matter what was going on intrapersonally or interpersonally.
And so, I continued my pursuit of the bee. I poured copious amounts of my energy into sweetening my nectar, and I shifted the pigments of my leaves over time to mimic the flowers the bee was attracted to. It was an art only some of my kind were able to perfect. And then, I waited.
Every passing day, I yearned for the bee. It was an itch, an insufferable one. My heart, wherever that may be in terms of my cellular body, ached for his return. By God, the waiting was unbearable. At some point, it felt like it was killing me–a slow poison tearing me apart from the inside.
Still, I continued to do so because no matter my patience, it was the only thing I waited for. He was the only thing that mattered to me at that moment. The passion in me, the passion to kill, could not be stopped until he was mine. That was why I was so obsessed.
The thought kept coming back to me, the reason I had to kill him: he was the opposite of me. A creature with such a golden heart coming face-to-face with another whose nature consists of pure malice; the only rational conclusion to be drawn from the situation would be the devouring of the angel by the demon.
But even with my logic, I felt incomplete in my thoughts of it. In fact, the nature of the situation felt as if it was starting to eat me alive. A rock in the back of my throat formed every time I thought about it. My chest ached and the veins on my own leaves started to become hazy and bright whenever I looked down at them.
As time went on, a steady, dripping stream, the thought didn’t go away. The intense emotions I felt from it didn’t go away, either. In fact, they got worse. On the outside, my body was bright and healthy, more than ever before, but on the inside, my brain made it feel like I was deteriorating. I became unsure of why I was chasing his likeness in the first place. Instead of his good-will being my motivator for eating him, it made me uneasy, and, what’s worse, it made me question if it was even his death I craved.
I was only shaken out of my red haze when I felt a brush against my trigger hairs. At first, I thought it was another ordinary insect.
However, this time, I smelled it. That sickly-sweet smell I never forgot. The one that haunted my dreams and feigned my existence. The bee.
I had nearly forgotten—this was the day I promised to kill him, or I'd lose myself in the ache for him. It's finally here. This was the moment I’d devoted myself to for so long. This was the time; the time to strike.
He was in my grasp, and all I had to do was snap my mouth closed. In an instant, he’d be living decay in my mouth. The reek of death would seep out of my teeth like it did with every other insect I consumed.
Any moment now, I’d bite, and he’d suffer.
I just…I had to wait for the right second. I had to wait until I knew he wouldn't escape. And then I’ll close.
But the bee was getting ready to leave, already.
I had to stop wasting time, I had to kill him. It’s now or never.
I felt my urges split down the middle. Somehow, I wanted nothing more than to close on the bee, but another part of me…
Panic filled my body. My chest thumped wildly, and I felt flushed. My mind was racing; I felt compelled to cry. I was never like this while I was hunting. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. All of my instincts were screaming to close around the bee, to swallow him whole, but I couldn’t bring myself to. No matter how much I yelled at myself, demanding I end the bee’s life, something in me fought it. It was unfamiliar but it was something I felt before. Was it…fear? What would I be scared of?
The bee’s wings started to flutter.
What’s happening to me? Why can’t I do it?! But I… I…
The realization hit me like a ton of bricks, and it was at this moment that I made the decision not to snap my mouth shut on him.
I do not want to hurt the honey bee.
My head started pounding greatly as I became overwhelmed with a plethora of different feelings I did not want to confront. That same thought came back to me, the one that reminded me how contradictory our existences were to each other, and with it, something else came. Even with the bee resting on the plate of my jaw, I realized my mouth was already full. It had something in it already; something gross, something nasty, and it was bubbling up quickly. I needed to get that something out quickly.
His feet parted the ground, and I felt the weight of his tiny body start to lift off of my leafy jaw.
But I mustn't close. No, not for him. For the first time in my life, I understood that I wanted him to live, and I cannot let myself give into this repulsive knot at the back of my throat by slamming my jaws shut on him.
I began to realize that the filth had been there, I just hadn’t noticed. It made me nauseous. Disgusted. I can’t believe I never tasted it until now. It was outright revolting.
The bee was soon to be gone, but the sirens blaring in my head became unbearable. But that awful flavor in my mouth was still there. It made me nauseous. Disgusted. It was so outright revolting that I could hardly focus. It seemed like everything was distracting me in that very moment.
But I couldn’t stop it. In my upheaval, I failed to realize I was starting to spit that loathsome thing out of the confines of my throat. I failed.
The bee started to depart. My teeth sharpened and my mouth slammed shut as I found myself violently choking out the words, “I hate you.”
…
The bee was gone.
He flew away right as I snapped shut. I looked into his eyes one final time and saw a deep wound form in the place where his trust for me used to be.
The taste was gone, too.
My eyes widened. My leaves shivered. I felt the color drain from my face.
The other flytraps stared at me in disbelief. I felt something warm and wet run down my stem—digestive fluid. My trap was still closed. I wasted all my energy closing it; I didn’t have the strength to open it back up. My enzymes had already started to break down a meal that wasn’t there. Without anything to digest, it leaked through the gaps in my teeth. It was a corrosive substance, and it streamed down my jaw to my leaves, to my stem, to my soil, to my…
…I’ve killed myself.
The liquid flowed down my plant body like tears, burning my foliage as it streamed down. It soaked the ground underneath me, and a wave of fatigue hit me over the head as it reached my roots.
The fault laid on nobody but me. There was nothing about this fate that wasn’t inevitable. A deep pain entrenched my heart as death overtook me slowly, forcing me to reflect on my actions.
I could say I hate the honeybee. I could say I hate him for dropping his honey onto my soil. I could say I hate him for coming back for my nectar again and again. I could say I hate him for acting as the antithesis to my entire being. I could even say I hate him simply because that fact meant I could never be at peace with him. But that would be a lie. It was nobody’s fault but my own. I only hate myself. I hate what I did. I hate why I did it. I hate my nature and my desires. I hate my very existence.
Because if I’m being totally honest with myself, I don’t hate him with any one of the rectangular cells in my body. In fact, I love him. And that is what I truly hate about myself.
The lie I told myself, that I was obsessed with him because that’s what I was meant to do–it was an excuse. A pathetic excuse to ignore the significant reality of my yearning.
Deep down, I knew it would never work between us. I don’t compliment him in a way that wouldn’t restrict his happiness. We are polar opposites. It simply wouldn’t work. I chose not to accept that and to let go of my sacred wish for him because I was selfish.
I love him with every fiber of my being. If I could rip my heart out of my chest and give it to him, I would. His presence makes me calm. He keeps me whole, keeps me sane. But, even when I look into his eyes, even when I hear the soft hum of his wings soothe my tired ears, even when my heart starts to beat to the movement of his face—against my will I find myself uttering the same words: I hate you.
Never for a moment were those words true. They were simply a disgusting manifestation of the anguish that overflowed from my being, one born of the pitiful fear that is incompatibility.
However, my regret is not my suicide. It’s the hurt I saw in his gaze as he left me for the last time. I did that. I hurt him. I thought I wanted to, but I didn’t. My agony possessed me and he faced an unpleasant brush with mortality because of it. I failed the one I love.
With every passing hour, I grew weaker and more unable to move. I could not mend the damage I did to him, much less apologize, no matter how much I wanted to. That’s what torments me the greatest, even on my death bed.
Now, I’m destined to die to the most ironic fate possible: to commit a grave sin, a sin I did not want to commit, and not be able to repent for it. I denied my longing for the bee, and my punishment is to hurt him against my own desire.
As the poison of my being finally swallows me whole, my pain eating me alive from the inside, I laugh weakly at the fate of the greatest monster. The monster who claimed to hate. The monster that is I.
All because I could never bring myself to say the words, “I love you.”