Dalton opened his eyes. The first thing to greet his groggy sight was the brilliant blue afternoon sky, which for some reason seemed to be in front of him. Accompanying it was someone’s head staring at him from a lopsided angle and speaking to him, “Are you alright? Can you hear me?”

It was then Dalton noticed a slightly prickly feeling all over his entire body’s backside. He reached behind him to feel it and realized it was the feeling of grass – he was lying down in the yard.

Kneeling down next to him was someone Dalton soon recognized as one of his neighbors. As soon as Dalton fully came to, she asked him again, “What happened out here?”

Getting to his feet and brushing stray strands of grass off his back, Dalton asked the same thing. The neighbor explained she just happened to be passing by a moment ago when she witnessed him lying motionless beneath the tree. What was worse, as she described as the thing that made her know for sure something was terribly wrong, Dalton had what looked like dozens of beetles and centipedes crawling all over him.

The neighbor shivered with goosebumps all over herself just from relaying the scene to Dalton, adding, “Weirdly enough, they all scattered away into that tree as I came into the yard to check if you were alright… and thank goodness you are, I was only seconds away from calling an ambulance.” And she pointed at the tree Dalton recalled himself talking to before he woke up on the ground just now.

Despite the confusion of having to take in so much at once right out of the blue, Dalton thanked the neighbor and confirmed to her he wasn’t in need of medical services (“Are you sure? After all those bugs you were covered in?”), before allowing her to carry on with her day.

Once the neighbor was out of both eye and earshot, Dalton turned to the tree with just as much confusion as before to ask, “Did you happen to see anything while I was out cold? Did I just keel over for no reason in front of you?”

For the third time that day, the tree responded only with stillness. Finding it weird that the tree wouldn’t answer a question about something it was bound to have witnessed, Dalton then tried to ask his friend if covering him with its bugs was its idea of attempting to wake him back up, when he suddenly remembered something else.

“Oh, bloody hell!” He exclaimed, and pulled out his phone to see it was already mid-afternoon – a good several hours past the time he was supposed to meet up with his friends! To add insult to injury, Dalton also noticed several missed calls from them, who were no doubt wondering why he was absent with no explanation.

With his mind not knowing whether it wanted to feel panicked, embarrassed, or just downright upset over this, Dalton quickly dialed one of the numbers. He prayed he wouldn’t be greeted by a bunch of angry voices shouting where the hell he was.

To Dalton’s relief, what he actually heard was a voice of half-puzzlement and half-concern asking, “Dalton, what happened, man? Did you sleep in or something to not show up or even pick up our calls? Or is there anything wrong over there?”

Knowing what actually happened would be too difficult for his friends to understand, Dalton replied, “Something like the former, I fell a little ill and forgot to call y’all while in bed. Sorry about that.”

“No, no, don’t be sorry over that of all things. Can’t help it if you suddenly feel under the weather.” The voice on the phone reassured Dalton.

“Yeah…” Dalton sighed, oblivious to the presence of a single beetle hovering behind his head, as if listening in on the conversation. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be alright after a good day-long rest at home. See you Monday at school.”

Once the call ended there, Dalton turned back to the tree again, “You really don’t know what happened while I was knocked out?”

Silence.

“Alright…” Dalton shrugged and proceeded to climb the tree, “Can’t keep asking you questions that you don’t have the answers to…” What with the time he was hoping to spend with his friends today being long gone, Dalton figured he might as well spare a little for the friend he had right here.

He could tell the tree was happy for it, from the way several of its bugs came into view to skitter around in their typical excited manner, as well as the blossoms from the tree’s branches giving off their sweet scent again.

Speaking of which, it was when Dalton propped himself down in the same place he’d fallen asleep in days ago and noticed that very smell he remembered yet another thing. The more he thought back to what he did before he woke up on the grass, the more his mind latched onto the one sure thing he did remember from then; the weirdly strong flower scent emanating from the tree.

Dalton stared up at the flowers blooming on the branches above his head in a perplexed glance. It had only been twice so far, but even twice was enough to make him question as to why was it that every time he found himself knocked out near the tree – whether in its branches or just next to its trunk – the last thing he recalled was the tree’s blossoms smelling way stronger than they should’ve. Enough to make him think there was potentially a correlation between them.

Slightly nervous from not knowing what exactly to expect out of this, Dalton cautiously asked the tree, “I know what I said earlier, man… but just asking, did you ever notice the smell of your flowers has gotten a tad too strong these days? I might’ve brushed it off the first time I noticed, but now I’m actually kinda concerned. Like, is there something wrong?”

Silence again.

Dalton sighed a little and didn’t bring up the subject again during the rest of the time he spent with the tree that day. Aside from the tree itself not answering him for some reason, there was also the same unexplainable nagging feeling from several days ago coming back stronger than before. Particularly now that this strange incident had happened twice. He just couldn’t explain for the love of him at the moment as to why, but that feeling told him it was probably for the best that he didn’t confront the tree about such matters.

“Then to who, though?” Dalton thought to himself. Nobody, not even his parents, ever believed the tree he called his ‘friend’ was an actual sentient being, what reason would anyone have to believe him now if he ever confided the matter in them? The only thing people would believe in him would most likely be that he needed the nuthouse for genuinely thinking an inanimate plant could possibly do any of the things he said the tree did with him. And even with that bleedingly obvious issue aside, what did it matter to other people if the flowers on a tree in his home’s yard smelled funny? Even more, did he have any way of proving there was something wrong about it without it involving him confronting the tree, which his gut was still telling him not to do for unexplainable reasons?

With these thoughts racing in his mind even long after he’d bid the tree goodbye for now and went back inside the house, Dalton hoped he’d be able to somehow find an answer to all this. And also, that these weren’t anything like signs to something bigger.

And little did Dalton know right then, he’d get the answers to those questions the hard way – a way Dalton wouldn’t wish upon even his worst enemy.

***

When Dalton went to school on Monday (and greeted by his friends who were glad to see him okay after saying he was ill), his homeroom teacher announced homework in the form of a group project, which required working together with those of the students’ choice. Needless to say, Dalton and his friends teamed up into a group of four with no questions asked.

The homework wouldn’t be due until next week, but Dalton’s group figured they didn’t want to procrastinate and – as procrastination typically did – forget about the project until it was too late. So they decided it was best to do it as soon as possible and get it over with while they still could.

Which was why after school that day, all four of them headed towards Dalton’s house to begin their homework. Both Dalton and his friends usually did stuff like this best when they were on their own, so seeing how his parents both worked late ever since his final year at middle school, Dalton had agreed with the other three that they’d probably have a lot of time to do their work at his place.

“Should any one of us get distracted by anything and try to drag the others into it as well, please remember to snap us out of it by any means possible.” One of Dalton’s friends, James, piped up as a joke as they approached the Schmidt house.

The other two friends, Hector and Scott, laughed along with James at this, while Dalton joined in, “I ought to tape a big poster saying ‘you should be working’ where we can see it, in case we all get too distracted to remember that.”

The playful chatter continued all the way into the front yard where, unbeknownst even to Dalton, the four boys were being observed with the utmost discontent by a familiar wooden presence, as well as the countless beady eyes of the insects it accompanied.

As they were halfway to the front door, Dalton paused for a moment and said, “Hold on, lemme get the keys to the door…” then proceeded to fish around in his backpack’s pockets for them.

James, Hector, and Scott momentarily paused with Dalton during this. Unfortunately, and again, unbeknownst to any of them, this very brief moment was enough for the seething spectators to spring into action.

Just as Dalton got the keys to his house with a “Got it.” And turned back to his friends, he saw all three of them suddenly slap one of their hands to the sides of their necks in the same way someone would swat at a mosquito, accompanied with looks of mild surprise and annoyance.

Just as slightly startled as them at this sudden simultaneous motion, Dalton asked, “What is it?” to which Scott perplexedly tilted his head and continued to feel at the one particular spot on his neck, “Dunno, I just felt like a small prick on my neck or something.”

“You too?” James and Hector asked in unison.

Only just noticing what looked like three bugs flying away from near them and somewhere in the direction of the tree in the yard, Dalton initially didn’t make much of this and simply told his friends, “Let’s all get inside first, then see what’s up with your necks.”

With that, Dalton walked the rest of the way up to the front door and was just done unlocking it, when he felt something was a little off. He immediately noticed it was because his friends hadn’t followed him there and turned around to ask them if they were coming. But no sooner had his head rotated so much as an inch did Dalton also hear the bizarre noise of what sounded like the dry, strangled coughs of choking. And when he’d fully turned in the direction of his friends, he was greeted with a sight that nearly gave him a heart attack.

It turned out the noises were coming from James, Hector, and Scott, who were all collapsing onto the ground before Dalton’s eyes, rapidly clasping at their throats. Upon frantically running over to them and getting a closer look, Dalton saw to his horror that all three of their necks were swelling up at an impossibly alarming rate. It looked more and more like balloons had been surgically implanted underneath their neck skin and were now being blown up by an invisible air pump.

In half a blink of an eye, Dalton got out his phone and dialed 911. But the heart-stopping fear and panic in him quickly began to make him dread the worst just as quickly as it drained all the strength in his legs, causing him to also fall to the ground. Even as he told the operator everything from his address to the severity of the emergency, it almost felt like his friends weren’t going to make it. Their eyes were only showing their whites as they rolled up in their sockets, while their breathing by now was reduced to a bunch of pained gurgling that barely sounded like any air was going into their lungs at all. Not to mention the neck swelling was only going from bad to worse as it started making dark-colored veins pop up here and there on the rash-red skin, reminiscent of something straight out of a zombie movie.

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And the worst part of it all, was that there wasn’t anything Dalton could do or even try to help until the ambulance he called for arrived. None of the neighbors he’d called out to for help had any idea what was happening and likewise, what ought to be done about it. In a desperate last resort to keep them alive long enough, Dalton even attempted CPR, which made absolutely no difference to so much as ease his friends’ ever more constricting airways. So, much to his absolute devastation at his powerlessness, Dalton was only forced to cower in a trembling, sobbing heap in the middle of a circle of nervous people watching his friends continuing to suffocate.

After an ambulance did eventually arrive and carry the three boys off to the ER, Dalton’s parents came back from work a while later and inevitably heard of the shocking news through both their son and neighbors. Rushing to the hospital where Dalton had followed his friends to, they were relieved beyond words to see he was at least unscathed. However they were also worried at the sight of him looking as if his fear had cost him his sanity; they’d found him sitting still in one of the benches out in the hospital’s hallways, his eyes unfocused and his hair reminiscent of someone who got electrified.

He appeared so traumatized, when the doctor approached the families of James, Hector, and Scott standing nearby to tell them their boys were still alive, it didn’t even seem to register with him. But then again, the doctor also added that the boys had fallen into a coma of unknown causes, which wasn’t the most comforting news to anyone hearing them.

“We also can’t seem to determine for now what exactly has caused the extreme swelling in their necks…” Dalton faintly heard the doctor continue, before asking the families if any of them ever had a history of severe allergies to anything. This finally got a reaction out of Dalton, as he very slowly turned his head in the direction of the conversation with an unchanging, stone-faced expression.

His mind, on the other hand, was a racecar in a straightaway. The moment he heard the doctor talk about the swelling, Dalton began seeing everything he could recall happening before his friends collapsed in a haunting slideshow inside his head – those being James, Hector, and Scott slapping the sides of their necks and saying something about a mild prick, as well as the three bugs he’d briefly seen fly away from them… towards the tree. What was more, now that Dalton thought about it, the swelling also seemed to have started in the exact same places his friends had felt the pricks.

As he gradually put two and two together, Dalton came to a shocking realization that at first turned his fear to bewilderment, then into anger and betrayal. That nagging feeling in his gut be damned, he was most certainly going to confront the tree about this, and this time get some answers from it. The way he was feeling right now, no kind of excuses, reasons, or silent treatments could dare make him overlook the heinous thing his childhood friend had done to his current ones.

***

On Tuesday, after hearing of the harrowing incident that befell upon his group the other day, Dalton was assigned a new group to do the project with. But Dalton couldn’t care less about any of that when there were much more important matters he needed to sort out. And he did indeed, as he hurried back home the moment school ended and walked right up to the tree in his yard. For once, he didn't even bother to see if there was anyone around before speaking (there wasn’t, but again, that was the least of Dalton’s worries at the moment).

“What in the goddamn hell was that yesterday?!” Dalton shouted up at the tree. “You think I didn’t see what you did to my friends with those bugs of yours?! Now you’ve put them in the hospital and a coma even the doctors can’t tell when they’ll ever wake up from! Explain yourself!”

As expected, the tree remained silent. Dalton didn’t, however, and kept shouting while his blood boiled, “Don’t you try to ignore me this time! You’re gonna answer me and you’re gonna do it right now when I tell you to!”

Still the tree gave no response.

“I suppose that weirdly strong scent from your flowers putting me to sleep was your deliberate doing as well, huh? What are you playing at?!” Dalton demanded more aggressively than before. “Yeah, that’s right, I know the flowers were your handiwork too by now!”

More stillness. By now Dalton was infuriated so badly he was even beginning to throw empty threats at the tree just to make it answer him, “I said talk to me, dammit, or do I have to go get the chainsaw in the garage?!” because as enraged as Dalton might’ve been at the tree, it was nothing more than his current emotions at the moment which made him say such things – because beneath the surface, a law-abiding citizen like himself honestly didn’t have it in him to deliberately go out of his way to harm a sentient living being, regardless of the situation or the nature of said living being.

This finally got a reaction out of the tree, in the form of more of that accursed flowery scent blowing down on Dalton. The moment his nose first picked up the slightest of it, Dalton tried to cover his face with his sleeves, “Oh no you don’t, I’m not falling for-“

But this time, the sickeningly sweet aroma didn’t knock Dalton out of consciousness. Instead, Dalton found himself staring out at the yard and the house from a different part of the lawn than where he’d previously been standing. In his confusion at this sudden change in perspective, Dalton tried to look around himself properly, but to his horror, discovered he couldn’t move his neck – or other parts of his body, for that matter – in any way. Only his eyeballs were able to dart about here and there in sheer panic as Dalton tried with all his might to break free from the mysterious invisible force immobilizing him. He couldn’t even call out for help, as not even air seemed to come out of his mouth with every attempt, like when you try to scream yourself awake during sleep paralysis.

In all this immensely terrifying predicament, Dalton didn’t even notice the sky above him had abruptly changed from the bluish-orange of late afternoon to the fuller blue of just before noon. By the time this bizarre change finally registered with him though, something else happened.

The front door to his house opened, and out stepped his parents. For some reason they looked rather cheery and showed no acknowledgement to their son stuck standing motionless in a part of their yard. Out of both instinct and his panic at the moment, Dalton uselessly tried to shout at his parents to help him out of whatever was happening to him. Of course, absolutely no sound or breath came out, nor did his parents turn their gaze towards him.

And then from somewhere between Mr and Mrs Schmidt, out came Dalton as a small child.

If Dalton wasn’t immobilized already, he surely would’ve frozen on the spot with utter shock. How was it that he was seeing his childhood self like this when he was standing right here as his present self? Was any of this even really happening before him?

Dalton kept watching with wide-open eyes as his parents told his child self a few words he couldn’t hear from where he was stuck at, then sat down in a couple of lawn chairs propped up on the other side of the yard. Meanwhile, child Dalton excitedly ran up to present day Dalton with a huge smile on his face and holding something behind his back, before looking up at his older self and saying, “Hey, wanna see what I got for you today?”

Dalton then felt a ticklish sensation run somewhere down his front. Rolling his eyes downwards as far as they would go, the very edge of Dalton’s vision managed to catch a glimpse of a tiny beetle scurrying down his body to meet its own eyes with those of child Dalton’s.

Before Dalton had any time to make sense of where the beetle could’ve possibly come from, child Dalton revealed the thing he was hiding behind his back, which turned out to be a picture book with a green cover. The cover featured a small boy standing in front of a great tree. The boy was also catching an apple falling from one of the tree’s branches, which was drawn to look like it was deliberately handing the red fruit down to him.

“Mommy found this at the library and said she thought I’d like it, and I did! So I wanted to read this to you and hope you like it too! It’s almost like a story about you and me!” Said child Dalton, and he sat down leaning against present day Dalton to read the book aloud to him.

A bigger wave of shock coursed through Dalton’s immobilized body as he realized what this was all about. There was no mistake he must be reliving one of his childhood memories of hanging out with the tree. Except right now, he was in the tree’s position, which most definitely explained the spot he was standing on, the beetle, and his inability to move.

Dalton’s theory was proven correct when he witnessed his child self’s following actions matched up exactly with how he remembered the day he first read the storybook to the tree, from the promise of never cutting down the tree like what was shown in the book, to his mother dusting child Dalton’s clothes while saying, “Honey, you might ruin your clothes from doing that, do be mindful.”

As Dalton saw his child self go back inside the house with the book and call to him over his shoulder, “I’ll be back!” the scene abruptly changed again, this time shifting to a whole series of Dalton’s past memories quickly flashing by in front of him. In a blur of fast motion, Dalton saw himself grow up to elementary school age, middle school age, and eventually into his present age as a high school student. During this, all of his past selves could be seen spending less and less time with the tree – or from Dalton’s current perspective, himself – while also spending more and more time with either the friends he sometimes brought over, or his family at home. All while leaving present day Dalton all alone in the corner of the yard, unable to do anything but stand and watch as past Dalton, the only living being who ever cared for and loved him, kept growing ever more distant with age.

“Wait, what the hell am I thinking?” Dalton thought. “These are just my memories told from the tree’s perspective, why am I suddenly having such thoughts?”

But even as Dalton became aware of this, it didn’t stop those very thoughts from growing inside his head. The longer Dalton witnessed his memories flash past, the more these thoughts pressed down on his mind like the walls of a trash compactor. And the more they did, the more they also felt as if they were doing so physically. Dalton soon found himself unable to handle the agonizing amount of pain coursing through every fiber of his psyche.

This was torture beyond anything his body or mind could ever comprehend. Oh how at that moment Dalton wished he could just seize his head with both hands and scream at the top of his lungs at the tree to stop whatever it was doing this instant. But the mental pain only continued to drive Dalton mad as neither his limbs nor his voice would listen to his desires for all of this to end already.

Tears flowed from Dalton’s cheeks like two watery centipedes making their way down his face and past his mouth as it screamed, mouthed, or whatever, “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!”

Dalton fell backwards onto the ground, wheezing heavily and his eyes still streaming. He was back where he belonged, complete with his ability to move and speak again, the late afternoon sky above him, his home and neighborhood back in their present-day state… and the tree’s presence towering over him from where he sat.

After everything he’d seen and felt from the vision the tree had given him, it all made sense to Dalton now. He understood why the tree was doing these ghastly deeds – it wanted him to stay with it forever. The flower-induced sleepiness had been its way to make him be with it for as long as it could when they spent time together. Not only that, the tree had determined for itself that Dalton’s friends were being an interference between the two of them, what with him spending more time with them than it now. So it had decided to take James, Hector, and Scott out of the picture.

Dread like he’d never felt before in his whole life washed over Dalton. The thing that stood before him in the corner of the yard was no longer the dear friend he cherished his childhood memories with. An obsessive madness had taken that friend away and replaced it with this monster who had harmed innocent lives with no hesitation, and god knew what else it was willing to do, if it could keep him all for itself, for possibly the rest of his life.

What would become of Dalton’s life under the dangerously besetting presence of the tree? What would the lives of other people close to him become under it? After witnessing the tree’s capabilities and what it was willing to do with them to achieve its goal, Dalton was most certain the answer couldn't be anything pleasant.

Trembling from head to toe, Dalton looked up at the tree and tried to convince it with the best words he could think of in his absolutely terrified state, “Th… This is wrong… You can’t keep me by your side forever at the cost of my and other people’s lives… sometimes you have to let go of certain things and carry on, that’s part of life too… please don’t do this…!”

At this, countless beetles and centipedes crawled out from seemingly every gap of the tree’s roots, and began slowly crawling across the grass towards Dalton. Dalton wanted to get up and away from the advancing bugs, but his immense fear coupled with the visions earlier seemed to have taken all the strength from his limbs. This simply left him unable to do anything but feebly shuffle backwards saying, “Think about what you’re doing, you’re seriously gonna try and keep me until I die? What’s your plan after that then?!”

The bugs just kept on advancing, followed with an aggressive rustling of the tree’s leaves from its branches. It was as if the tree was telling Dalton it didn’t give a damn about any of that, just so long as it could make him stay with it for as many days to come as possible.

Dalton sensed this as well, and dread came at him in much bigger waves than before. The tree’s insanity was clearly far past the point of listening to reason, so it was no use trying to talk his way out of this. Then Dalton remembered one of the things he’d said to the tree earlier while trying to get answers out of it and shouted, “You keep doing this and I’m getting that chainsaw for real!”

This was the last thing Dalton managed to say before the bugs were literally on him. They climbed up every inch of his body they could reach in a nasty swarm, including both over and under his clothes. Before Dalton could do anything about it, his skin was crawling with the most unpleasant sensations of the bugs’ tiny legs and pincers.

“Get off! Stop! STOP!” Dalton screamed, swatting and sweeping his hands at any bugs he could get them on. But with every handful of bugs he got off himself, more kept crawling on. And to make things even worse, Dalton saw out of the corner of his eye more movement at the base of the tree.

Dalton didn’t think he could possibly feel more fear than he was already feeling. How very wrong he was when he saw the thing moving and coming out from between the tree’s roots was a snake. Sporting scales of a similar color to the tree’s bark and a pair of menacingly red beady eyes, the snake opened its mouth to reveal fangs as sharp as needles before starting to slither towards Dalton.

“STOP! NO!” Dalton screamed at the top of his lungs, now beyond scared and unable to even think.