George was his name. No one really knew why, but the king of the Evil Plant Empire fancied the language of the old two-legged ones. There had never been a George before him, so there was no need to use all those fancy numerals and titles. None the less, George liked to model the two-legs by being a tyrant who took pleasure in watching his subjects suffer. He was especially infamous for using the techniques of the two-legs to torture his subjects, and word spread quickly about how he would stuff peppers and have a daisy’s petals slowly plucked one by one, while an ominous chant was repeated: “eh-loes-mah, eh-loes-mah-knot”.
It was interesting, George thought as he skimmed through his favourite book of torture, “Larousse Gastronomique”, how plants always stopped at the most conventional methods of causing pain. Sure, it was fun to boil your subjects in hot water, but using the hum-boxes that the two-legs had left behind was far more effective. Watching the plants inside the box slowly spin round and round as they wilted and shrivelled was always entertaining. As George would argue, the plants that were sent to the hum-box would never even get the satisfaction of knowing they would taste good at the end of it all. Nothing ever came out tasting good from the hum-box.
Today however, George was not doing some light reading. He needed a solution to the uprising occurring in the East, where he had pressed a few too many grapes and recently the entire regional cabbage population had gone missing (although George had nothing to do with that). Ah yes, he had found what he was looking for. George carefully put the book aside and began rummaging through his cupboard, eventually finding a bottle full of transparent liquid with a pungent odour. It was time to do some pickling.
Thanks to my family for giving me the prompt “evil plants” and “George”.