There's a Monster at the End of This Book

Jo wasn't humorless. It was, in a dumb sort of way, funny that a witch had turned her and her mother – former purveyors of tequila – into agave plants stuck on the side of a dusty road in Southwest Texas. It was just really, really not funny at the same time.
 
If they'd been turned into something mobile, they'd at least have had a chance at tracking down the witch or finding some other hunter who'd stop shooting long enough to help them. As it was … they were stuck. Worse, they were rooted. Jo had no idea how long agave plants were supposed to live, and she didn't care to find out. If she only had a couple months to go, that sucked. If she had a couple decades – well, that didn't sound much better. Jo was already sick of watching this dumb stretch of road (and the sky and the ground and her mother, since, apparently, plants saw everything within 360 degrees).
 
Jo stretched out her thick, waxy leaves, hoping to get some sort of breeze. The Texan sun was hot, even if you were a desert plant.
 
“Joanna Beth, quit your fiddling.” Her mother had turned into a much taller agave plant, with a short, flowering stalk that grew taller by the minute. It made Jo nervous, although she had no idea why.
 
“I'm a plant. I can barely move. How can I be fiddling?”Jo hated the whiny edge in her voice, but something about turning into a succulent plant also made her feel about five years old.
 
“It don't know how, but you're still doing it.” Ellen sighed, her leaves moving with a soft whisper. “Shoot, we're really in a bind with this one."
 
Jo wished she could see her mother's face – beautiful and careworn and familiar – rather than spiky leaves and that weird stalk. Plants were freaky, now that Jo thought about it. At least as freaky as the Harvelle women and the things they hunted.
 
“At least the witch doesn't seem to be coming back to use us as an ingredient in anything,” Jo said. “At least we're together.”
 
“Sap,” Ellen said, with fondness.
 
Jo rolled – well, not her eyes, but her mental idea of them or something – and returned to watching the road.
 
***
 
A cloud of dust kicked up, in the distance. “I spy with my little eye ...” Jo started. They had been rooted in the worst possible place for a good game of “I Spy,” but what the Hell else did they have to do?
 
Ellen seemed to perk up. She'd grown almost twelve inches taller in the past few days. Her stalk had started branching out into tinier stalks. Whatever was happening to her plant body, it seemed to leave her tired and impatient. Though, that could also be chalked up to having been turned into an agave plant.
 
“Is it a cloud of dust?” Ellen asked. “That's all I see.”
 
“Yes.” Jo squinted. Kinda. A black shape was emerging from the dust. “Mom, is that –?”
 
The Impala shot past them. Before she was hit with the tidal waste of dust spinning from the car's wheels, Jo made out Dean driving with one hand on the wheel, cheeks stuffed full with some kind of cheap foodstuff. Behind him, she caught the barest glimpse of Sam.
 
“Mom! That was the Winchesters! Sam and Dean.” Jo coughed the dust from her tiny stomata. “You think they know about us?”
 
“I can't see how.” Ellen's stalk managed to convey a frown. “With those boys, we're either saved, or we're screwed. Your guess is as good as mine.”
 
“We're already screwed,” Jo pointed out.
 
“Listen to me, Joanna Beth. No matter how bad it is, it can always get worse. And most of the time, it does.”
 
“That's cheerful.”
 
“It's true.”
 
Agave plants are too thick and sturdy to really wilt, but Jo gave it her best shot.
 
***
 
Two days passed. Ellen grew even taller and started to flower. Jo sang “Runaway” under her breath, just long enough for her mother to snap out of plant mode and yell at her. Every reminder that her mother was still her mother was a welcome one.
 
Jo didn't want to admit it, but fear was creeping up on her. She didn't think she'd ever been this helpless.
 
***
 
On the third day, a tumbleweed ran smack into Jo, impaling its tangles onto some of Jo's spikes. “Hey!”
 
Jo immediately felt foolish – there's no use in talking to real, actual plants – but then the tumbleweed let out a soft, embarrassed breath and said, “Ow.”
 
“Sam?” Jo asked.
 
The tumbleweed startled. Maybe it hadn't registered her voice the first time. “Jo? Is that you?”
 
“Well, it's not the Easter bunny.” Jo shook her leaves as hard as she could, which amounted to almost nothing; Sam stayed right where he was.
 
“Oh, um.” Sam twitched around Jo's leaves. “Could you knock that off? It's kinda … really … uncomfortable.”
 
“You're the one who ran into me, doofus.” Jo shook her leaves again.
 
Sam groaned.
 
Jo froze. “Am I hurting you?”
 
“Uh, not really,” Sam said. “But what you're doing doesn't feel … it isn't really good, either. Also, I think I might be upside down.”
 
“How can you even tell?” Jo asked. Sam seemed more or less rolled up, in a jumble.
 
“I can't, not really. But I also can.” Sam shuddered again, tiny brambles clenching around Jo's thick leaves. “Ah, that's … that's bad. Maybe if I, um, wiggle ...”
 
He twitched harder, making soft grunts as he tried to pull himself off Jo.
 
“Oh my God.” Jo vibrated in horror. “I'm inside you.”
 
Sam squeaked. “I'm a plant! It doesn't … it's not like it counts!”
 
“Oh my God,” Jo said again.
 
Ellen roused herself. “Jo? What's going on?”
 
Sam hissed a curse under his breath. “Your mother's here?”
 
“Sam? Is that you?” Ellen swayed her imperious, elegant stalk. She stilled, and Jo knew that this was bad. Real bad. “Sam Winchester, you get the Hell off my daughter before I beat you off with a stick.”
 
Sam whimpered.
 
“Mom, it's not his fault he can't get off.”

It was Jo's turn to whimper.
 
Ellen managed to look dangerous, even as a stationary plant.
 
“We're plants!” Jo yelled, because someone needed to have some perspective. “We're all fucking plants!”
 
Silence settled over the dusty road.
 
“Dean?” Ellen eventually asked.
 
“Still human, as far as I know.” Sam kept very still. “He'll figure it out.”
 
Mother and daughter exchanged a silent, 'here's hoping,' and went back to watching all the nothingness that stretched around them, in every direction, as far as the eyes they didn't have could see.
 
***