Kinabalu Vegetable Killers – Chapter 3, The Lettuce of Rage

Half way up the mountain, Spam was starting to feel bored. 

“I’d prefer to fight the next vegetable demon, rather than being this bored”, he said to himself.  Passing all of these tropical trees, with legs aching, feet feeling like they’d been run over and generally felling tired all over, it was boring stuff for two elite demon vegetable killing machines.  After leaving the remains of the Peas of Despair behind at Timphon Gate, the trail had steeply ascended.  Unlike Annapurna, where the friends had conquered the Leek of Evil and the terrain was an equal mixture of ups and downs with more ups and some extra downs, this trek so far had just been straight up.  The flora and fauna was really dense by the gate, but as they ascended the mountain, it thinned out and became more rugged. 

On the way up, at the 3.5km mark, the friends met a fellow tribe of squirrels who informed Spam of a plant that had kept swallowing up their villagers and so they had had to leave their homeland and seek shelter and beg for food from the evil vegetable loving humans.  When Spam showed them the picture of the Lettuce of Rage in his book, the chief squeaked that that was the plant that had the remains of his citizens still digesting in the deep depths of its roots. 

Spam read aloud “The Lettuce of Rage can only be defeated by letting it swallow you so that you may kill it from the inside by ripping out and destroying its seed”.

“Well, I’m not doing that!” said Evan

“You so are though” Sam replied.

“OK, I’d rather not, but I’ll try” Evan sighed.

After another half an hour’s speedy hiking, the friends came across a massive root, laid across the jagged path.  Sat perched on the root was a lettuce that was way too big to be real.  Much bigger than the carrot or the peas, Spam could see how this thing could easily swallow squirrels.  An intoxicating smell hung around the plant, and Spam had to stay quite a distance to avoid being sucked into the horrors sat below the lettuce.  Evan, however, didn’t seem affected by the smell, so Sam told him that he would have to go in alone and battle this demon.

Evan crept cautiously towards the green mass of lettuce leaves, and as he got closer the plant started to shake as if in a breeze.  Then suddenly, a pencil thin root shot out, wrapped itself around his leg and threw him towards the mouth of the waiting lettuce.  As he plunged inside, he took a deep breath, and a good thing too, as once inside the lettuce, there was no oxygen, only carbon dioxide.  He splatted onto the wall of the lettuce’s stomach and dug his claws in so that he could have a good look around.  He was lucky.  Two centimetres away from him there was a gaping tunnel leading down to the roots. 

“Phew!”, he thought.  “I nearly fell straight down through that hole.  Next time, I’ll need to be a bit more careful”.

Just then, he noticed something.  Suspended from ropes made out of leaves, right in the middle was the biggest lettuce seed he had ever seen.  It was as big as he was.  He lunged for it.  The moment he let go from the wall, a root shot up and it only just missed him as he landed on the seed.  Suddenly, an idea struck him.  He jumped across, and as predicted, another root shot out from where he had been standing.  He repeated this again, and again, and again until there was a floor of roots sturdy enough to support his weight spanning the lettuce.  He strode purposefully across the floor and powerfully yanked the seed out of place.  As soon as it disconnected from the last ropey leaf, everything went dark.

“Well, I think that’s one job done”, Evan muttered to himself.

He walked back to the wall and, using his razor sharp tail, he slashed out a hole in the wall just big enough to crawl through.  He stuck his head out, and heaved a huge gasp of fresh air.

“I am never going to go inside a lettuce ever again!” he exclaimed, exasperatedly.

As soon as those words left his mouth, the seed flew out of his claws and shot up to the top of Mount Kinabalu.

“Wish I’d held onto that a bit tighter” he sighed, “It would have been a nice lift!”

CHAPTER 4  CHAPTER 5  CHAPTER 1  CHAPTER 2

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