Your three friends and yourself are a bit puzzled by the rides' names and pictures on the stand. On in particular looks rather obscure. It's called The Obedience Booth and floral decorations, fake plants and drawings of leaves decorate it. One little detail does catch your attention. It says: resist the commands and win cash prizes! Money is always good., It beats the soft toys most stands and booths will give and that people rarely win as a rule. You're all juniors in high school so winning little toys isn't fantastic. Moreover, you guys don't have any girlfriends to give them to, or rather none serious enough to warrant that. To be honest, all of you are bullies so spending money on girls that don't satisfy you like the obedient hotties in movies doesn't make sense. All that cash is better spent on video games and illegal beer. Girls on this trip would be annoying and between guys you can comment on other girls and make fun openly of nerds and dweebs. It's funny and there are more people to pick on than at school. Not your fault if those idiots look stupid or disgusting. Their parents should have paid for surgery or told them not to eat like pigs or to stop being babies and become men. Their parents were too poor and idiotic and that was all. It's their fault and you are not like them so it was a proof they were lazy. And it was funny, to make fun of others, to make them cry and feel bad. As a group, you always had an insult to throw at others. So winning cash to have more fun afterwards sounds really good. You could pay an adult to get you beer and you could buy video games or porn magazines, or firecrackers. Sounds easy.
"You young men think you can resist the orders and imprecations once past the booth and inside the glass house?"
"Yeah," your buddy Sean says. "Easy. How much money are we talking about?"
"Well, if you resist the orders thrown at you while you go through the glasshouse, 500$."
"Really?" you exclaim.
"Each," smiles the carnie widely.
You're all standing aghast. Sweet! You get your four tickets eagerly and step in. There are no lines and you feel that soon you'll be rich and that stupid carnie won't be smiling anymore. But unbeknownst to you, your group of friends and yourself are off to as different path than the usual customers.They go through a maze of plants with orders like 'sit' or 'sing' or 'jump on one foot' flashing at regular intervals. Those who do not obey out of sheer fun end up obeying the last one 'be startled' thanks to a few jump scares. So the carnie cannot loose. However, for little louts and uncouth bullies like those he had seen and hating those making fun of others out of sheer meanness, there is another path. A door is closed and another opened, leading to a different glass house, housing very, very special plants. Disobeying them is even less possible, as you and your mean buddies are all about to find out.
You all joke at how you will all make easy money and how the carnie is an idiot. You follow the maze where plants grow thick and tall. t gets humid and hot but not too much. It's more than bearable. You all wonder after a few turns what is it you're supposed to obey too when each of you is snatched brutally out of the way. Your pal Sean is seized by long leafy branches resembling those of a weeping willow and pulled into the air, to disappear in the thick canopy. Cole is hauled up by branches covered in blossoms, the smaller branches acting as hands pinning him there. Connor gets wrapped in a bush of broad leaved, vanishing into it. You, Christian, are seized by a vine and thrown into a gigantic vegetal plant in the shape of a pitcher, the rim too high above you and covered in a thick gooey liquid. Tiny tendrils seize your wrists and ankles and make sure you stay put. You all scream, frightened at being captured by plants. A deep female voice answers your cries for help.
"Well, well, well... What has my charming tender decided to send me as prey?"
A gigantic flower shaped like carnivorous plant stare at you in turn, all toothy smile and smirks. Branches and tendrils have covered your mouths, stopping you from shouting out but you all struggle against your binds. Eaten! You are going to finish eaten by plants!
"But you do not look like fruitflies or fertilizer or other insect treats," the plant muses. "Then again, when humans are sent to me and my children, it's for pure pleasure. And the desire to teach you all a lesson. So I suppose my dear tender thought you acted like mean little boys. Am I right?"
You all moan through your gags your innocence but the mother plant continues as if it had heard nothing.
"I don't like little bullies. You must be if you're sent here. But maybe you can get out of here... Remember the prize you were offered if you resisted the injunctions? Let's play a game if you can resist my next order, you all go free of charge and you can claim your petty little coins. How about that?"
You all nod fervently. Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes!
"Glad to see we're on the same page, the plant chuckles. Here is my command. DON'T LAUGH!"
At once, the plants holding you go about their work. They tickle you without mercy and the gags are removed for you all to laugh throatily and to your heart's content. You all fail in a simple matter of seconds.
"You loose! You all loose!" chortles the mother plant. "But you each deserve a consolation prize."
The plant proceeds to blow a loud raspberries on each of your bellies. You giggle all the more.
"The fun is just starting, naughty little ones," she says with obvious glee. "You are here to stay. Me and my children shall tickle you silly! We'll map out all your nerves and when you'll be nothing more than sobbing messes, we'll lovingly hypnotize you to sleep. We'll all break you and when the men of the carnival, our providers, come for you, it'll be to regress you to creatures destined for the attractions. You'll be given to new families, blank slates to be raised again. A better use for your pathetic lives than what you were before. You'll make some people happy, for once! But in the meantime, YOU'RE ALL MINE!"
How long did you stay in the glass house? None of you never got to know. Days blurred into one another. You never knew how your friends were doing. Sometimes a new victim was sent and snatched up to be regressed and transformed later. You think one guy and two girls were from your school but you never knew for sure. Soon enough you were naked and of the first night had been the worst, everything took on a pattern that meant time and days had no more significance. The vegetal pitcher you were in tickled your feet for hours and then it bent forward, rolling you down a tiny slope and straight in a clump of carnivorous plants very similar to the mother plant. They grabbed you and kissed you and licked you, commenting on where you were the most ticklish and calling you ridiculous baby names. At dawn, you were a breathless giggly mess and a branch grabbed you and slid you into a pod filled with petals and which curled its sides up. A comfy bed from which you could not escape. Different plants blew various spores into your face. Some made you sleepy, others fuzzy and others strangely happy. All of them kept you compliant. Sweet scents made you constantly drowsy and at regular intervals a squash-like tuber appeared, with a tube that allowed you to suckle it. A filling warm liquid, like creamy milk, filled your belly them and it made you feel so content and ready to take a nap that you just laughed and giggled, squirming like a little child when a plant amused itself by caressing and poking your bloated belly. You stopped caring. After all, the attention was sweet and nice and the mother plant so encouraging. She kept saying how obedient you were and how much of a sweet little boy you were. The plants squeezed the rolls of fat that gradually made their way onto your body and all the plants complimented you about the softness of your skin. Of course it made you all the more sensitive to the delicate touches and brushes of the plants. All called you and the other humans "tickle toys". All the leaves, twigs and tendrils seemed to desire nothing else than tickling. They quickly learned your weak spots, in your case the feet and the armpits. You overheard other plant chuckling about other captives being very ticklish at the neck or belly. Other plants like to be mischievous during some nights, asking you over and over if you are ticklish and repeating 'coochie coochie coo' endlessly, adding whether you have become a good boy yet. During those nights, the mother plant may play at coming to the rescue grabbing you and gently patting your back until you burp, chiding falsely the plant by affirming that you're a sweet little one, obedient and adorable. She rocks you to sleep in her leaves. Or she dangles a tendril before your eyes, swaying it back and forth. Everything then becomes fuzzy and you can only hear the mother plant's voice. Her voice is even more caressing than that of the other trees, flowers and bushes. She sings little lullabies, whispering them in your ear and when she asks you gently to gurgle or suck on your thumb, you obey readily. She's so nice, why wouldn’t you obey? It's funny and relaxing. Listening to her means no worries and constant giggles and warm naps in the smoothest beds ever. Being cradled to sleep gently and woken up by light tickling brushes is pleasant. The plants tickle you for hours and hours on end, repeating that you are a baby, a little baby, a little ticklish boy, the sweetest darling. You agree just as much and you are a mere shadow of what you were weeks ago. From a selfish bully, the plants have created a giggling, barely-speaking, chubby softie. Making you repeat that you are a polite, obedient and sweet baby through submission through tickling, hypnosis, sweet foods and mind-controlling spores make you actually believe it. You forget your life of before, slowly but surely. All the plants work at gently and painlessly chipping away your previous memories and mind. You become innocent again. You are not even bothered when a tendril tickles your testicles and diapers you in a nappy of leaves filled with soft mosses. You get happy and reassured when you are cooed at and woken up to the sound of "Wakey wakey, sleepy-head." Time doesn't exist. Just the now and the desire to please. You are eager to please. Any hint at even resisting the orders you are given are long gone. You love falling asleep through gentle rocking, covered in sweet petals and with the skin of your stomach taut with a warm filling meal. You feel so, so safe. Warmth, security and a full belly. What more could you ask for. If a plant then asks you to gurgle and coo or suck your thumb, you obey immediately. Things are so good, why refuse? It feels good and being fussy or something other than docile is just not worth the effort. The plants have countless ways to make you drowsy and submissive and you are now powerless to resist any of them. But it's not like you'd care anymore. You just live for the instant, uncaring, having long forgotten that you might be chosen for adoption by the carnival creatures at some point. You are the good little boy of the mother plant and you are eager to continue being so. There is nothing else you desire.
If you worried being missed at the beginning and were hopeful your disappearance would traced back to the carnie and this crazy place, your hopes are long dead. Not that they were ever alive to begin with. A warlock among the carnies created magical replicas of you and your friends to live another week as you guys. These magical clones apologized to everyone they harmed, did chores and housework and gave all their savings to charities right before getting into a car and crashing into a river. The bodies were never found, having disappeared as the illusions they were and the police concluded that realizing that you were bullies, you decided to end your lives and do good to pay back all the hurt you had all done over the years. Very strange but plausible and no other explanation was available. The saddest thing is that these replicas did do more good than you in just a simple week.