Elliot, thirteen years old, with ragged dirty-blond hair and the freckles of an Outdoor Child, was lost in the forest.
It was a simple enough mistake. He had been chasing the family dog, an enormous English sheepdog named Arthur, and had gotten turned around a bit amidst the thick tree trunks. He was not worried at first; he’d been in the woods countless times, and if he just kept walking, he was confident he’d find something that looked familiar.
But as he continued on for hours upon hours, no landmarks seemed to jump out at him. The rocks protruded at strange angles, the tree limbs crossed each other in unfamiliar patterns. It was beginning to grow dark, and the lengthening shadows further confused him.
Elliot was beginning to grow frightened. With darkness falling, he became more desperate than ever to reach home. He began to run, the thick leafy carpet of the forest crunching under his dirty blue-and-white sneakers. Twigs and branches caught his clothing, his hair, but he pressed on, faster and faster, desperation encroaching. His sight began to fade as the hidden sky beyond the leafy canopy dimmed rapidly. Night always fell first within the forest, where precious little light reached in the first place. Elliot had known this, but never before had it been so immediately problematic.
Faster he ran, pushing his young body for everything it would give him, panic lending speed to his flight. But darkness was falling, night seeping in through the cracks in the leaves and creeping about him, until finally it lashed out; Elliot’s foot caught on a root and he was sent sprawling. His elbow scraped against a patch of rough tree bark, leaving his skin red and raw. Twigs and debris dug into his knees as he lay panting on the forest floor.
It was full dark now, and though Elliot’s eyes had adjusted gradually to the light, he could still see barely half a dozen feet in front of him. He lay still for a moment on the ground, trying to get his bearings, when suddenly he felt something slither against his leg.
In a panic, Elliot shot up from the ground, looking desperately down to the earth next to him, but nothing was there. He was sure it must have been a snake, but even in darkness, he should see it at such close range, especially if it was moving. And yet, there was nothing there.
Elliot shivered in the cool breeze of the young night. He had not dressed for the cold of a night in the woods. Somewhere in the depths of the treetops, an owl hooted. There was a restive rustling from the trees behind him. Elliot whirled around, but once again saw nothing.
Suddenly, there was another brush against his ankle, a whisper of something smooth sliding against his skin. Elliot lifted his leg and stamped the ground roughly in panic, searching desperately for the snake, but only innocent leaves looked back at him.
Then: movement!
Like lightning, a thick coil erupted from the leaves and wrapped itself tightly about Elliot’s ankle, snagging his leg and toppling him to the ground. Elliot cried out as his chin knocked painfully against the hard earth floor of the forest, but he was more concerned about what had tripped him. He could feel the lithe narrow body of the snake twisting around his leg, coiling about it and traveling upward like a vine.
He scrambled up onto his hands and turned over, reaching forward to grasp at the offending creature. To his surprise however, he discovered that it was a vine after all! A thick, green plant tendril curled in a spiral up his left leg. Elliot grabbed the offending vine, tearing at it, trying to remove it from himself, but it held tight. Even as he struggled, he saw further movement from the corner of his eye as a second vine approached him.
He rested one hand from fighting the vine on his leg long enough to grapple with the second, approaching one, but this move proved unwise. The second vine met his hand and twisted around his wrist, beginning to curl up his arm the way the first continued to slide up his leg. Panicked, Elliot pulled at the trapped arm, but to no avail. The vine wound quickly down his arm, slid up his shirtsleeve and around his shoulder, before coiling about his torso, anchoring itself around his ribs.
Elliot did not know what this thing was, but he had a sudden desperate fear that it would try to choke him. His free hand left the vine he was struggling with on his leg and began to pull at the one around his arm and chest. The second his hand left the vine on his leg, however, it continued to creep upwards, wrapping around his thigh and slipping into the leg of his shorts.
As Elliot tugged at the vine around his arm, he failed to notice another approaching until it snagged his wrist. Elliot’s eyes widened and he tugged desperately, but the vine was very strong and curled around his arm, yanking it painfully back until he was spread-eagle, only his right leg free. Even with this, he only managed two kicks of the limb before another vine trapped it, halting his movement altogether.
Even so, Elliot continued his attempts to fight the strange plants. He writhed in his confinement, twisting his torso back and forth, even as one of the vines slithered down past his ribs to his navel, twisting around his hips.
Suddenly, the sharp feeling of twigs and debris poking into him disappeared as Elliot felt himself lifted into the air. As he twisted helplessly, the vines lifted him up and up until finally, Elliot saw where they originated.
The vines that held him, along with many, many more, snaked up from an old, gnarled tree that stood as a deeper shadow against a very dark background. The grasping branches reached towards the blackened sky, vines writhing among them like Medusa’s snakes. As Elliot gaped at the strange sight, he was drawn closer to the tree, like a predator drawing in its prey.
Elliot felt himself turned around, and was suddenly and roughly pushed against a central limb of the tree. Immediately the vines set to work, wrapping around him and binding him to the thick branch. A vine wound around his torso, anchoring him down, while another snaked around his limbs—all his limbs—and tied his wrists and ankles into a single knot beneath the branch, his legs and arms spread out on either side of the wide arm of the tree.
Elliot’s shoulders were secured as well—in fact, he felt several different vines wrap around his midsection until he was tightly fastened to the tree branch. He could barely move. The tree was enormous, the limb so thick that the muscles of his thighs burned painfully where they were forced to stretch in order to straddle it.
Elliot’s breath finally began to return to him as his panic subsided along with the movement of the vines. With what oxygen he could pull in, he screamed desperately for help, but there was no one around to hear it, and his cry disintegrated into the calm of the night woods.
But the panic and the rapid breathing returned quickly as the vines began to move once again. This time Elliot felt rather than saw the two squirming coils that slithered their way up the backs of his legs. He felt them slip up inside his pants from the bottom; they did not even hesitate upon reaching his underwear and nudged their way inside, the plant flesh cool against his bare skin.
They continued forward, up the backs of his thighs, across his buttocks, and then, meeting each other, they paused. Elliot’s harsh, sobbing breaths were loud in the still night air as the wriggling limbs moved towards his anus, pressing testingly against the ring of muscle. One seemed to hesitate in deference to the other, which pushed forward, a little harder and a little harder until suddenly it popped into him, pushing inside his tight, virgin entrance.
Elliot cried out as he was penetrated for the first time. The tendril pressed forward mercilessly, disappearing inch by inch into his anus. Elliot squirmed as hard as he could (which was not much), but it did nothing to alleviate the thick burning sensation as the vine slid deep into him.
It was probably not more than an inch in diameter, but it felt wider. Elliot felt filled almost to the point of pain, but his eyes widened further as he realized that it was about to get much worse; he could feel the second vine, stalled, impatient, begin to push against him where the first vine already occupied him.
Elliot’s mouth opened in a silent scream as the second vine began to part him. His anus stretched—wide, so wide—to accommodate it, his muscles protesting in pain as it burrowed forward relentlessly, squeezing itself into the opening until with a final –shove– it was in. Elliot gasped and sobbed in pain as the second vine, now past the point of entry, squirmed its way deeper inside him.
He wasn’t sure how far inside him the tendrils had gotten—it felt too far, too deep—when they finally stopped. He lay panting on the tree branch as the stillness overcame his surroundings once again. He wondered if he was going to have to remain like this, if he must stay tied to this tree branch, vines buried inside his ass, until someone found him or he starved to death.
But no. There was movement again. He heard the rustling of the vines behind him and felt more of them, several, slither up the legs of his shorts. For a moment his mind was filled with desperate panic at the thought that they might all attempt to cram inside him. He struggled as they slipped beneath his underwear, but his fears were unfounded. When they reached his entrance they continued; some slipped out the other leg of his shorts, some kept going up to his waist, until there were nearly half a dozen tentacles threaded under his clothing.
There was a short pause, a few seconds only, before all the vines suddenly erupted upwards, shredding his clothing in a loud snarl of ripping fabric. Within seconds the tatters had fallen from him, only a few bare scraps trapped under his belly between him and the tree bark, leaving his naked legs and bare ass exposed to the open air.
Elliot gasped at the sudden cold, and for another moment, nothing happened. A chill breeze blew across his naked cheeks and he shivered with cold, even the thin protection of his shorts and underwear denied to him. But then his attention was arrested elsewhere, as the two vines inside him began to squirm once more.
Elliot moaned as the writhing tendrils bucked and gyrated, stimulating him. They had sat inside him for long enough now that his muscles had grown used to them, though he still felt slightly sore. But now they began to pull apart, one moving to the left, the other to the right, pulling away from each other and stretching him open, wide open, until he felt as though he might split in half. The cold breeze was now free blow into him, and he felt its shivery touch over every inch of the sensitive skin on the inside of his rectum.
Elliot was acutely aware of the rough feeling of the bark digging into his skin, of the cool, smooth texture of the vines wrapped around his limbs, of the goose-bumps forming all over the surface of his arms and legs, of the cold, sharp spikes of air drawn through his nose and into his lungs.
At the opening of his stretched passage, Elliot felt the head of something large. Very large. Larger than both of the vines.
He screamed as it pushed into him, wide, long, stiff. Slowly, burning as it took him, the mysterious object penetrated his anus deeper and deeper. Elliot felt as though he truly was about to be split in half. It went on forever, deep, deep, deep as the vines and past them, piercing him, opening him wide.
The vines scraped his inner walls as they withdrew, leaving the huge object embedded within him. Even without the two tendrils stretching him open, he still felt absurdly full, like log with a splitting spike placed in it, ready to be broken in half by one last blow of the hammer.
To Elliot’s sudden surprise, however, he felt the vines around his torso begin to loosen. He grasped onto them desperately as his balance on the tree branch suddenly became precarious. He felt the wood slip away beneath him as he slid off the side of the branch, clutching for dear life to the vine. He slipped down it, his weight dragging him down, friction burning his hands, until he landed sharply on the ground, the jarring impact forcing the foreign object deeper inside him and making him cry out.
Surprised but grateful for the escape, Elliot tried to stand to run from the grasping vine tentacles of the tree, but the thick penetration stopped him—his legs would not support him. Instead he rose to his knees and crawled painfully forward, as fast as his obscenely filled body could manage. On his hands and knees, he struggled away from the tree.
He crawled until his arms ached, until his hands were cut from sharp rocks and awkward twigs, until his anus burned and throbbed from the constant pressure and friction on the object created by his shifting limbs. He crawled until the pain finally swept over him and dragged him down, laying him prostrate on the ground, and smothering him into unconsciousness.
When he awoke, Elliot was aware only of the intense burning of his anal muscles as they clenched around the large object inside him. With trembling fingers he reached down between his legs and felt at his entrance. His teeth clenched spasmodically as he felt the smooth, rounded end of the mysterious object sticking out of him. Bracing himself, he grasped as much of the object’s surface as he could and pulled, straining as it scraped him, stretched him, groaning as his body reluctantly gave it up bit by bit.
It came finally from him, with a last release, like his body giving a sigh of relief. For a few moments he lay panting in the brush of the path. Then, hesitantly, he levered himself up and stared at the object, now lying innocently on the ground.
It was large, around two and a half inches in diameter, wider in some places, and nearly a foot long. It was dull gray in color and covered with smooth scales. It looked like nothing quite so much as a giant pinecone.
Elliot stared at it for a few moments, his breathing slowing gradually, and then struggled up onto weak and wobbly legs. He stumbled once, twice, and began his slow walk forward. To his great relief, he realized that he recognized the large rock to his right. He knew where he was. From here, he could get home.
He left the pinecone object on the path, thinking nothing more of it. But years later a traveler, returning to that spot, would see a large gnarled tree, with thick vines hanging innocently from its knotted branches. The Grasper Tree had spread its seed.