Story by Jill

Erica's favorite lunch spot, the le Grasse Café was bustling. The clink and rattle of flatware and china mingled with the happy chatter of voices in the crowded dining room. Today it was packed with enough people that the large windows were mostly covered with steam, the warm room a pleasant contrast to the chilling January air.

She sat down at a cozy corner booth and took out a paperback to read while she ate. Today she was having the vegan grilled panini, a hot sandwich with pan seared artichoke hearts, eggplant, and red peppers stuffed into grilled bread that had been brushed with garlic and olive oil. A side of marinated stuffed olives and a glass of tomato juice completed the meal.

Le Grasse café specialized in Mediterranean vegetarian fare, and Erica, a vegan for more than 15 years, had been coming here since it opened. Every year it seemed more and more occasional diners became regular customers, turning her quiet lunch spot into a busy local favorite. Proof that the vegetarian movement was gathering steam, Erica thought with satisfaction.

She had decided become a vegetarian when she was in the 8th grade. It started as an act of rebellion against her “meat and potatoes” family, but it had grown into an important part of her life. She celebrated world vegetarian day by giving literature to her coworkers, she taught vegan cooking classes at a co-op down the street from her apartment, she even maintained a vegetarian resource website.

Shortly after she made the switch from vegetarian to vegan she read an article about the chemical reactions in plants which had witnessed a person destroying their seedlings. She knew the article was ridiculous but began to feel bad for the vegetables she ate. What if they had families and personalities too? Could they feel pain? What kind of monster must she be to them? In the supermarket produce isle she even imagined the oranges trembling and backing from her reach as she picked them up, squeezed them and choose which ones she would take home.

A friend had made her see reason. They didn't have a nervous system, which was a requirement for a personality and certainly for being able to feel pain. “Besides,” he had said, “you have to eat something.”

She found her place in her book and began reading. She had read less than a page and taken only two bites when she realized that the restaurant had fallen silent around her with the exception of two people in a booth laughing hysterically. She glanced up from her reading in time to see another patron turn up the volume on one of the overhead televisions that was playing it's normal pantomime of 24 hour news.

“Is this The Muppet Show”, said one of the laughers.

“No”, replied an awestruck patron. “It's CNN”. The laughter abruptly stopped.

Every eye in the room was fixed on the screen. Forks were frozen halfway to mouths, cashiers stood with their fingers poised over register buttons, tea and soda dribbled out of several slack jaws. Erica followed their gaze to the television and what she saw on the screen made her jaw drop too.

A talking cabbage stood addressing the United Nations. Erica blinked twice, rubbed her eyes, and looked again. Yes, still a talking cabbage. It laid two leafy hands on the podium it could reach only because it had been stood on a hastily assembled pile of books. Green veined appendages that must be the cabbage equivalent of feet protruded from the creatures bottom. There were dark spots positioned on each side of the head that seemed to function as eyes, they looked like bad spots you'd cut out if you were making coleslaw. A jagged line below the spots opened and from it came a voice deeper and more serious than you'd expect from a cabbage.

“Too long have you used us for your own cruel ends. No more.” The cabbage turned to gaze around the room and then stop to address the cameras with an expression that might have been mournful disdain “I speak for the plantae and we will no longer stand for your barbaric disregard for life.”

“You drink our blood, serve it to your children for breakfast, you cook and eat our corpses. Worse, you grow us and keep us in slavery on your farms, harvesting us in the prime of our lives and selling us to be eaten alive unless we rot in your crisper drawer. In these same facilities of torture you force us to breed with plants that are not our kind and create freakish mutations through genetic modification.”

“You stand accused of committing unspeakable acts against our brothers the trees. You clear huge swaths of their ancient civilizations and use their bones to make your houses. You grind them and bind them into your books. You burn them alive.”

“All of plant kind has stood idly by, waiting for your people to evolve, to begin to take your nutrients from the sun, to see a better way. But in recent years your cruelty has only increased. You continue to contrive new and harsher methods in your war against us. Now you use us to fuel your cars and consume more of us than ever before. But the final blow, which we simply cannot stand for, you seek out our young. Baby eggplant, baby peppers, baby romaine! You label them gourmet, organic and tender. They are tender, and dear to our hearts; do you even hear their mother's cries?”

“We have watched you grow, watched you evolve and watched you perform miracles of technology. Yet you are still a barbaric society. Throughout history you have oppressed us and we have remained silent, what could we do? But you have proven to us that your war against the plantae will never end. You have left us no choice; we can no longer accept your brutality. Stop the murders at once, let not one more seed, sprout or plant die at your hands. If you do not meet our demands, we will stop absorbing sunlight. We would die, to the last, before we give ourselves over to your gruesome appetite. You will asphyxiate or you will starve, it matters not to us.”

The cabbage stopped speaking and turned from the cameras to hop off the pile of books. Erica looked down at her sandwich with unease, and just before her eyes had fully focused on it she thought she saw a piece of artichoke heart give a tiny death throw.

Suddenly Erica wasn't hungry.