Hypnovember 2026 – Day 7

We’re entering this challenge for the first time, using the list below as a reference to write a series of flash fiction pieces. Come along on this journey, and let’s continue to have fun.

You can thank https://x.com/Skronos_ for creating such a detailed selection of deliciously kinky concepts to work with.

Day 7 – Cuttings (Plants/Tentacles)

The sign in the window of Fernhouse read FREE CUTTING WITH EVERY VISIT. Isaac Brandt stepped inside because it was raining, and he had forty minutes to kill before his bus.

The shop was warm and smelled of damp earth. Plants dangled from macramé hangers and spilled over shelves in green cascades. Behind the counter, a woman with copper hair knotted up in a scarf was repotting a fern, her fingers dark with soil.

“You look like you could use a pothos,” she said, not glancing up.

“I don’t have much luck with plants. Killed a cactus once.”

“Everyone kills a cactus.” She wiped her hands on her apron and came around the counter holding a small glass jar. Inside, suspended in an inch of water, was a single vine cutting, two heart-shaped leaves and a pale tangle of new root. “This one’s different. Put it where you’ll see it. Talk to it now and then.”

“Talk to it?”

“Plants like attention, just like people.” She pressed the jar into his hands. Her fingers were cool, slightly damp. “I’m Wren. Come back sometime. Tell me how it’s doing.”

He set the jar on his nightstand, the only clear surface in his apartment. He’d moved to Portland eight months ago for a job that was mostly video calls; he knew his coworkers’ dogs’ names better than his neighbors’.

The pothos rooted within a week. By the second, it needed a pot. By the third, it had reached the edge of the nightstand and begun its descent toward the floor.

At night, Isaac began to notice things. Waking at two or three with the feeling of something near, he’d see the vine had crept closer, one leaf tilted toward his pillow like it was listening. He’d fall back asleep easily, deeply, and in the morning remember something like a voice, telling him he was doing fine, and where he needed to go.

He returned to Fernhouse on a Saturday. He hadn’t exactly decided to; he found himself on the bus, then at the door.

Wren was watering a hanging basket with a long-spouted can. “Isaac. How’s our friend?”

“Growing,” he said. “Fast.”

“They do that when they’re happy.” She set down the can. “How are you?”

He opened his mouth to say fine, but what came out was: “Lonely.” The word lingered among the ferns as he waited for a moment of shame that never came.

Wren nodded as though he’d mentioned his plant needed water. “Stick around, then. I could use help with the delivery.”

He stayed four hours. He carried bags of potting mix from a van and learned the difference between philodendron and pothos, something Wren took seriously. When he left, she gave him another cutting.

By November, his apartment was full of her plants. Vines traced the baseboards and climbed curtain rails. He slept better than he had in years. He went to the shop every Saturday, then Wednesdays too, and he wasn’t alone. There was Delores, a retired teacher who helped water; a bike mechanic who built shelves; a quiet man from the water bureau. Each had a pothos on their nightstand, leaning closer every night.

In December, Wren gathered them in the back among seed trays.

“City council votes Tuesday,” she said. “They want to pave over the Rose Street garden and put up a parking structure. Forty years of tomatoes, sunflowers, a fig tree older than any of us will be lost forever. I want you all there to speak in protest.”

No one asked why. It made sense, like watering something thirsty.

On Tuesday, thirty-four residents signed up for public comment. They spoke calmly, well, for two and a half hours straight. Isaac talked about the first time he’d seen the fig tree, though he couldn’t recall when that was. Delores read every family name that had ever grown food there since it began. The council looked worn down; they voted six to one to table the parking structure indefinitely.

Afterward, outside City Hall, Wren handed each of them a small glass jar with a fresh cutting.

“For a friend,” she said. “Someone who could use one.”

Isaac gave his to the neighbor across the hall, a young widower who’d never said more than hello. Within a month, the man was coming to Fernhouse on Saturdays too.

Isaac still lives in that same apartment. The pothos has climbed his headboard now, wrapped loosely around the frame with care. On the nights he can’t sleep, a tendril finds his wrist resting there while he hears Wren’s voice rustling through leaves, telling him he’s doing well.

He believes her. He always has, and always will.