"Good morning, day-campers!" Mrs. Twombly sang from the daycare's threshold with her hands behind her back; the shop's regulars all gathered at the store owner's feet. "We have a new friend joining us at the pet shop today!"
Twombly brought her hands forward and revealed the new arrival: a pot with a peculiar little plant inside. "This is Manny-Tor," she explained, oblivious to the baffled looks on the pets' faces. "She's from a place far away. Her owner tells me that she likes to roughhouse, so I don't want to hear any commotion going on back here!" Mrs. Twombly set the plant down on the floor, beside Sunil, who cautiously took a wide step back.
"See you in a bit, sweeties!" With that, Twombly left the room, leaving the pets alone with the new day-camper.
"Well... this is awkward," Zoe said, rubbing the back of her neck.
Penny was the first pet to approach the plant, eyeing every angle of the 'pet' in a curious manner. "Seems... quiet," she diagnosed.
"She's a little creepy," Sunil murmured from behind Penny.
Russell pushed past the cowardly mongoose with a clipboard and pen at the ready. "Hello, Manny. Welcome to the Littlest Pet Shop day-camp! I'm Russell, and I'd like to ask you a few-,"
"Come on, Russell!" Vinnie cut in, leaving Sunil to stand between Russell and Manny-Tor with his back turned on the plant. "It's a plant! Plants can't talk!"
"'Plants can't talk,' he says! HA! Think again, mincemeat!" A booming, theatrical voice sliced through the mellow air of 'Littlest Pet Shop'; Vinnie's back and tail went rigid. "Well, small fry? You gonna just stand there all day? Get me some lunch! I'm stah-ving!"
Vinnie ran away screaming like Hell on wheels. The other pets, save for Russell, gaped in bewilderment at the speaker: Manny-Tor. She picked her head up from the soil, like a cobra rising to the call of a flute. Her head was similar to the bulb of a flower, but it opened up like a mouth to reveal, not only a disgusting pink tongue, but dozens of dull but numerous incisors. The leaves growing around her head was reminiscent of a frilly collar, giving her that one feminine trait she so desperately needed.
Needless to say, Sunil passed out. Penny Ling scooped him up and held him in her arms.
She turned her giant maw to Russell and shouted, "I'm hungry, thorn-boy! Feed me NOW!"
He calmly scribbled down several notes while Zoe threw in her two cents: "She sounds like a 'he'."
"And he-she's go no eyes!" Minka pointed out through a series of sporadic leaps around the plant.
"An' you're lookin' like a mighty fine snack, baby. Now, I'll only ask one more time: WHERE'S MY FOOD!?"
"All in due time, Manny," the hedgehog replied, casually, never looking up from his clipboard until he finished writing the last of his notes. "Guys, Manny-Tor is a Venus Flytrap. They don't have eyes because they don't need them. They have a very acute sense of smell, which they use to locate and lure prey with a pheromone excreted from the mouth."
Manny demonstrated his hypnotic ability by breathing a cloud of orange-colored gas on Russell. He seemed largely unaffected by the attack. "Mm, tangerines. Luckily, I'm not a fly. Oh, and one more thing. Venus Flytraps are... gender-less."
"This boy's got a head on his shoulders!" Manny proclaimed. "And I'm starting to see a pattern here: The bigger the head, the smarter you ain't!"
Zoe seemed unaffected by Manny's insult. Instead, she casually shot back with, "Vinnie is living proof that your claim is invalid."
"I heard that!" he shouted from the backroom.
Manny's maw opened wide, appropriately, like a bear trap, and she released a thundering bout of laughter that seemed to shake the entire shop. "Oh-ho-ho! I like this one! Yeah, my owner wanted me to be a girl, so he calls me 'she' n' addresses me as 'her'. He named me 'Manny-Tor', which is a lil' joke I guess on the phrase 'man-eater'. Doesn't make sense considerin' I don't eat humans."
"I wouldn't think so," said Penny Ling, gently setting a still-unconscious Sunil on the floor.
"Yeah, the meat's too stringy. I like 'em gamy and tender! Mm-mm-MM!" The pets all froze, giving Manny a bunch of funny looks that goaded another hearty laugh from the plant. "You littlest pansy pet-shop pets are always so much fun to play with!"
Russell's head suddenly shot up, not at the jocular comment, but to something a more concerning matter. "Hey, has anyone seen Pepper?" he asked.
The pets all looked at each other and shrugged; that's when Manny piped up. "'Pepper'? You mean that skunk with the freakishly disproportional body? I saw her owners come an' pick 'er up! By the way, was that a girl or a boy? I can't really tell! Tee-hee-hee!"
"Choose your next words carefully, buster!" Zoe seethed.
Russell scurried towards the chivalrous canine and place a paw on her tensed shoulder. "Easy, Zoe," he whispered, "Ms. Twombly said that Manny likes to roughhouse. Besides, you do not wanna pick a fight with a Venus Flytrap. You'll lose." Zoe gave him a cockeyed look. "Please, Zoe," Russell begged, "For once, just listen to me. A Flytrap has been known to consume entire animals bigger than they are, and I don't want to get on this guy's bad side. So please, just do this for me."
Zoe gave Manny a stern look, then walked away without a word. "Wait for me!" Penny Ling cried, scooping up Sunil in her arms and running off into the day camp's play area where the others were.
"Sorry about that," pardoned Russell, turning back to Manny. "She's a little edgy with newcomers. Now, on the subject of food..."
"Hang on there, beefcake." Manny extended a leaf from her pot like a hand and pressed it against Russell's chest. "I wanna talk a 'lil more about that, uh, Zoe girl."
Russell rose a perplexed brow. "Uh, okay?"
"She's quite a looker, ain't she?" she muttered in an unsettling, raspy whisper.
Russell began to feel the sweat dripping from his brow. "I guess you could, uh, say that, heh."
Manny's nonexistent eyes ogled the distant pooch, who was laid out on a dog bed, sleeping on her back. "Yeah, she's got a de-licious form. Lotta juice, y'know what I'm sayin'? What're they feedin' you guys, anyway?"
Russell started to practically sweat bullets, ushering Manny to extended another leaf, wrap it around his shoulders and pull him in a step closer. "I, uh, I don't really like talking about my friends like this," the hedgehog answered with an uncomfortable quiver to his voice.
"No, no, baby. It's nothing like that. Just makin' a casual observation, 's all I'm doin'. That dog's got a lot more meat on her bone than the skunk, that's for sure."
Russell swallowed hard. "I, uh, I should probably be getting you your food-"
"You got some meat on your bones, too, hedge-hog." Manny's voice purred as she said that.
"Wh-What? Me? No, I don't..." Russell's voice began to deteriorate as he fought against the urge to scold the sentient plant on her insult.
When Manny sensed Russell's leg twitch, thinking he was going to take a step forward, she slid the leaf on his chest up and around his throat. "Don't move. Don't scream."
Russell attempted to negotiate, but his pleas came out choked and hardly-legible: "Please... don't hurt... I can... get you... some dried flies..."
"None of that 'dried fly' crap. It must be blood," Manny hissed, "It must be fresh." She wrapped the other leaf around Russell's legs and lifted him up off the ground. "It must be you."
The plant slowly lifted the stocky hedgehog into her giant gaping maw, swallowing him in one stomach-churning gulp. Manny knew that none of the other pets saw him, and he had to make sure they wouldn't be suspicious of their friend's sudden disappearance. Inconspicuously, a vine unwound from the dirt of Manny's pot and slithered across the day-camp floor. It pushed open the door just enough for the bell to ring.
As if rehearsed millions of times, he called out in the door's direction, "Alrighty, hedge-boy! Manny'll catch ya later! An' thanks again for the food!"
The pets, save for Minka who called out 'Bye Russell!', ignored their friend's sudden departure. To them, it was just another day in the 'Littlest Pet Shop'.