“I just need a simple plant stand,” Marcus muttered to himself as he entered the peculiar shop that had materialized overnight between his favorite coffee place and the laundromat. The bell above the door didn’t ring—it meowed.
The shopkeeper, a tall woman with leaves growing from her ears, smiled. “Welcome to ‘Standing Ovation: Where Plants Meet Their Match.’ I’m Flora.”
“Hi, I’m looking for—”
“Oh, we know exactly what you’re looking for,” Flora interrupted, her leaf-ears twitching. “But first, you’ll need to play the game.”
Marcus blinked. “I’m sorry, what game?”
“The Plant Stand Championship, of course! Everyone who wants the perfect plant stand must compete.” Flora pressed a button behind the counter, and the floor beneath Marcus began to rotate.
“Wait, I really just want to buy—”
“Level One: The Succulent Sprint!” Flora announced, now wearing a referee’s uniform with leaves instead of stripes.
Marcus found himself in what appeared to be a Super Mario-style platformer, except all the platforms were different types of plant stands, and he had to jump between them while carrying a increasingly heavy collection of succulents.
“This is absurd,” he said, barely catching a falling cactus.
“That’s the spirit!” Flora cheered from somewhere above. “Now, tell me about your relationship with your mother while avoiding the Venus flytraps!”
Three hours, seven levels, and numerous existential conversations later, Marcus had collected enough “Plant Points” to qualify for the final round. His arms ached from carrying various botanical specimens, and his mind swirled with the philosophical implications of furniture ownership.
“Final Challenge,” Flora announced, now dressed as a game show host, complete with chlorophyll-green hair. “Choose your perfect plant stand!”
The room filled with thousands of plant stands—some defying physics, others defying good taste, and a few defying reality itself.
“But how will I know which one is right?” Marcus asked, overwhelmed.
“That’s the neat part,” Flora winked, “you don’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” she said, pulling out a watering can that seemed to contain liquid starlight, “that the perfect plant stand isn’t about the stand at all—it’s about the journey of discovery, the friends we made along the way, and the existential dread we conquered.”
“But I didn’t make any friends, and my existential dread has only increased,” Marcus protested.
“Exactly!” Flora beamed. “Now you’re getting it!”
She handed him a small, completely ordinary plant stand—exactly like the ones he’d seen at the hardware store near his apartment.
“That’ll be five dollars,” she said.
“After all that?”
“Would you have appreciated it as much if you’d just walked in and bought it?”
Marcus considered this as he paid. “I suppose not. Though I’m not sure I appreciate it more now either.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Flora said, her leaf-ears rustling contentedly. “You’ll never know if this was the perfect plant stand, but it’s perfectly satisfying because of the absurd journey it took to get it.”
As Marcus left the shop, plant stand in hand, he turned to ask Flora one last question—but the shop was gone, replaced by a brick wall with a small potted plant sitting on a familiar-looking stand.
The plant winked at him.
Marcus decided it was time to give up gardening.