VeronaHills, Round Twenty Eight: Notes
Cliff used his intelligence connections to find what he was looking for.
His desk buddy at the agency knew a guy, who knew a hacker who knew how to access "not necessarily the black but, like, the grey area market if you get what I mean", where one could obtain a single seed of the supernaturally-rumoured human-eating plant. It was a long shot that Cliff followed through burner phones and layers of VPNs to get to, lest he and anyone involved along the way be fired or arrested or worse. Cannibalistic plants weren't simply a search engine away for the plebs of the general public to access. Such botanical life was reserved for wealthy underbellies, like the Tricou family; since Eartha's aunt, who was part of that family, refused to help, Cliff was left with no other choice but to add a possibly inert seed to his cart.
Spoiler alert: it was not inert. The cherry on top? The forums weren't trolling about the cow-shape of the plant's flower.
"Babe, what is this?" Eartha asked one day, fascinated but incredulous as she laid down on the grass at the plant's level for a closer look. There was no point hiding it away from her; Cliff had a feeling the eventual size of the thing would make keeping it a secret logically impossible without a deep basement or bunker - domains of the rich. He managed to whip up a plausible explanation about a work experiment, creating new plant life for vegan milk production that tasted just the same as dairy. The truth was too confronting for Cliff to speak aloud, least of all to his wife.
The wholesome family activity of visiting a cat rescue shelter to adopt a cat was a welcome breath of fresh air from dark webs and deep secrets. Rambo (a name selected by the shelter that the family decided not to change as he already responded to it) would be a lovely companion for Kesha, with only the occasional harmless chomp being likely.
