Fred the Assassin

I’m small.  It’s not my fault.  I was designed this way.  Petite and tender green like the emerging shoots of plants in spring, touched by delicate pink.  Pretty but deadly, I’m the deceiver, the destroyer.  I eradicate. 

My brothers and I were cloned.  Mercenaries, our lives were sold to aid in the war against bugs.

I do not march.  My skills are of a different kind.  Slender stems, springing from an innocuous stalk carry lightly capped amphorae.  Rounded, voluptuous, each curve gently highlighted in the sweetest blush contains a precious liquid deep inside that attracts the hungry enemy to my door.

“What is that perfume, that luscious smell?”  They move closer.

“Come on in,” I encourage.  “You’ll find out.”

The charming cup is lined with soft and gentle fuzz, a zillion hairs to smooth your path.  “Go deeper, my friend.  Please be my guest.”

It’s one way into the chalice. 

Temptation is how I kill.  I will suck your juices.  I will dissolve your bones.  I will feed.

It’s lonely here.  Except for some silly, oozing pygmies, I stand a solitary watch. My insidious skills protect flats of lettuce that share my colors but not my deadly purpose.  More red, more green, more leaf thrown out with careless abandon, they foolishly succor the enemy.  They offer space between their roots to his offspring who feed on their dying leaves.  Who grow fat and breed.

The fools.

The enemy is everywhere, in the ground and in the air.  They taunt me with their flights, their freedom, as they visit destinations I can only imagine.

More fool I. 

Those I protect become salad.  For pity sake, I guard salad!

I was not cloned to question but to serve.  The calculated result of an insidious breeding program by monsters seeking to combine subtle beauty with deadly appetites in ever smaller packages. 

I am Fred the Assassin.

Serious article about Fred and his pygmy friends at http://gaias-gift.com/blog/?p=1991