“Dalton? What’s going on?” A voice suddenly spoke.
The crawling feeling of all the bugs on his skin abruptly stopped the moment this voice was heard, and Dalton looked up.
One of Dalton’s neighbors was standing just outside the yard behind the fences, staring at him with a puzzled look. Dalton recognized him from the day he called an ambulance for his friends.
Dalton looked at him, then at his own body – which he saw was now suddenly completely free of the bugs he’d been trying to get off – then back at his neighbor. The utter confusion that this out-of-nowhere, albeit extremely relieving, halt of an escalating situation brought was so jarring, Dalton could only manage an unfocused, “Uhhh…?” in response.
Still puzzled, the neighbor walked over to Dalton and helped him onto his feet, asking, “I heard you screaming on my way home, so I thought I ought to come and see what was wrong – you were on the ground with a really pained expression by the time I arrived, did something happen?”
Dalton searched inside his mind for the right words to say. At the same time he also searched around the yard, unsure if the bugs and the snake had been just a hallucination or not. Eventually, he found his proof in the form of one heart-stopping sight.
The snake had slithered back into the base of the tree, but Dalton could still see its unmoving head poking out from between the roots, with its red eyes staring most intently at him.
“What are you looking at?” The neighbor asked, having noticed where Dalton’s glance was at. He too looked in the direction of the tree, but didn’t appear to notice anything off. The snake’s bark-colored scales had camouflaged it so well in its hiding place, one would have to actively look for signs of the creature in order to find it. Dalton only knew it was there because he’d already seen it slithering out from beneath the tree.
Dalton probably would’ve told his neighbor about what had just happened, regardless of whether he took his words seriously enough. That was how scared Dalton was at the moment. But one almost murderous look from the snake’s eyes made him think twice about that. It was as if the tree was using the snake as a surrogate to threaten Dalton that if he so much as attempted to escape its clutches or do something about it, may it be retaliating against it or getting help, it wouldn’t hold anything back to put a stop to it. And if looks could kill, Dalton thought his neighbor would’ve dropped dead right then and there, which he interpreted through the snake as exactly what the tree intended to do to him if Dalton spilled the beans.
For both of their safety, Dalton put up a straight face and shook his head, then replied in a tone of fake confidence, “No, it’s nothing…”
The neighbor turned his worried glance back to Dalton and said, “You’re most certainly not feeling well after yesterday’s incident, that’s the best I can explain whatever you were doing on the ground. How about you get inside and rest or something? And don’t hesitate to get medical help if you feel worse or sick.”
“Thanks.” Dalton replied, and proceeded to walk up to the front door. But even as he did, and as he took one more glance at the tree on his way in, he thought of those last words by his neighbor and doubted to himself whether any sort of help would be able to do him any good at this point.
Those doubts went on to balloon into a greater sense of doom looming over him, even with his parents’ presence later that evening at dinner.
“You’re awfully quiet today…” Mrs Schmidt spoke to him from across the table. “Is there anything on your mind?”
Dalton looked up at his mother and father. For a split second, he thought since they were all indoors, it would be safe to somehow convey to them what was deeply troubling him. Whether they would believe his story was a matter that could wait. He was way too desperate to rid himself of the tree’s hell before it had a chance to take over his life.
However, that was when Dalton felt a familiar crawling sensation run up his leg under the table, and his heart skipped a beat for the umpteenth time that day. Looking down while pretending to pick up more food from his plate, Dalton inspected his legs. What he saw was a beetle and a centipede that had somehow managed to follow him indoors undetected, and were right now glaring at him from his lap. The beetle silently snapped its pincers at him, while the centipede threateningly waved its feelers in the air as Dalton stared at them in sheer horror.
Under normal circumstances this would’ve been just a minor surprise that could be solved with just a few swats of a hand, or a dose of bug spray. But this was no ordinary situation, nor were these an ordinary beetle and centipede. Between what Dalton had seen the tree’s bugs were capable of, and the way these two were visibly threatening to spring into action the moment he showed any sign of trying to get rid of them, there might as well have been a sniper aiming a laser scope rifle through the kitchen window.
“Dalton?”
“What?” Dalton looked back up at his parents, quickly hiding from them the fear in his eyes. If he wanted them safe, it was best he left them out of this. He took a moment to chew his food, then said, “Guess I’m just way too worried about my friends after yesterday…”
Mrs Schmidt sighed deeply through her nose. “Yes, we understand…” She replied with a tone of great sympathy. “We’re all worried for them, I suppose… but I’m afraid I must say that for the time being, we don’t really have much to do except wait and hope for the best…”
She frowned as if it physically pained her to break that part of the ugly truth to her son, to which Mr Schmidt added, “Experts know best – we’ll let the doctors do their work and bring them back to health in time.”
Dalton nodded, and uttered what felt like the best response that would both not raise any suspicions from his parents and not provoke the bugs still on his lap, “That seems right.”
After that, dinner returned to its casual pace and mood. Dalton’s mood, however, was anything but casual. He was constantly sitting on pins and needles from the bugs watching him throughout and after the whole thing, thoroughly making sure he didn’t “step out of line”, so to speak. Even as Dalton got into bed later that night, he could still hear the soft, subtle skittering of the bugs crawling around the walls of his bedroom in the dark. And despite still being awake when he heard said noises, the experience was nothing short of a nightmare for Dalton.
So imagine how much of a toll Dalton’s mind took when this nightmare continued for countless days, weeks, and months to come. Every day from waking up in the morning to coming back after school, and even sleeping, nothing he did at home was not kept under surveillance by the tree’s many bugs always somehow finding ways to sneak into the house. It didn’t matter if the bugs never did anything threatening, as that was only because Dalton could never bring himself to try anything that would free him from the pressure of these relentless observers. One wrong move and it could be his parents ending up in a hospital ward with life support next, or even one of his schoolmates.
The latter was a result of the tree really pulling no punches anymore now that Dalton knew what it wanted with him, and thus desired to make fully sure Dalton “behaved” in its favor. This even included when he was away from home, and likewise its sight as well. For that, the bugs went so far as to do what they never did before – they continued their watch on Dalton far beyond his home by following him wherever he went.
Because of this, Dalton also found himself unable to pay visits to his hospitalized friends, or even get close to anyone else at school, for that matter. He feared any interaction with his peers that the bugs saw as anything more than just a casual conversation for things like classes would strike them as him trying to make friends with others. As for the hospital visits, those were out of the question for obvious reasons. Granted, Dalton didn’t have a way of knowing for sure whether that really was the tree’s thought process, but after already losing three of his friends to it, he was taking no chances.
And of course, the worst part was how much Dalton felt utterly powerless in all of this. He knew the tree was successfully isolating him from the rest of his world in its scheme to have him for itself, yet there wasn’t a solution to it as far as he could see. Moving out of the house and into another one situated as far away from the tree as possible when he became of age couldn’t be done, as long as the tree kept its sight on him at all times courtesy of its insectile minions. On top of that, Dalton also feared the wrath that the tree might inflict on him if he dared to run away from it in such a manner. That is to say, whatever terrible thing he could be faced with that would give him no choice but to return to the tree in the end.
Similarly, going against the tree was another out-of-the-question option. Already Dalton had witnessed unforgettable terrors more than enough to scar him for life even without doing anything to the tree, other than maybe that one empty threat he once shouted at it. In that case, who was to say he wouldn’t be faced with far worse if he ever attempted to rebel? The tree was Big Brother, its bugs and snakes the Thought Police, and he himself the poor unfortunate souls living under the totalitarian regime with no chance against the almighty oppressor.
Being stuck between a rock and a hard place was not enough to describe this torture that slowly and surely ate away at Dalton’s mental state over time. This was a purgatory more hellish than anything ever written in Dante’s Inferno, one that made Dalton wish this was all just a nightmare he could sooner or later wake up from. A nightmare in which by now he spent every day at school as a loner who could never bring himself to socialize in any way under the eagle eyes of a monster that had him trapped tightly in its clutches. A nightmare in which not even his family could help him out of with their love and care. And how could they ever, when both Dalton and the tree very well knew they’d have an easier time believing in the existence of the Tooth Fairy more than the fact that their son’s “imaginary friend” was ruining his life?
Speaking of, with every day that turned to weeks and every week that turned to months, Dalton found himself looking back longingly at his childhood. Back when life was much simpler and wasn’t under a constant, overbearing terror. Whatever future he’d dreamed of for himself back then, none of it seemed to matter anymore, not when the tree had taken it all away from him. A long-gone life he was never going to get back, or even make up for its loss.
Gradually, this train of thought and the indescribable pain it brought became all that Dalton’s mind filled up with. And with nowhere or no one to vent it out to, all of that pain snowballed into an immense pressure, just as great as – if not more than – the tree’s obsession over him, to the point he just couldn’t stand it any longer. In this insanely anguished state of mind which had built up over nearly a year by the time the following scene happened, Dalton was unable to see anything other than that this was no way for him to live, and he had to bring an end to it as his escape.
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***
After returning home from school on the day he determined would be the day he’d finally see the end of everything, including his unbearable pain, Dalton stepped into his house’s yard. There, he stopped by the tree to have a few last words with it.
“Happy, are we now?” Dalton weakly muttered up at the tree, which replied with a few rustling leaves as usual.
Dalton nodded sarcastically at this, before adding, “Good – of course you’d be happy to have your lifelong friend never leaving your side like he was glued to you or something.”
The tree’s leaves rustled again, this time in a fashion that Dalton could tell was of confusion at his feeble tone of voice and uncharacteristically snarky comments.
“Oh, it’s nothing…” Dalton muttered again. “Just wanted to check. Wouldn’t want a good, sweet mood like that to be rained on by anything, would we? Of course we don’t…” And with that, Dalton quickly marched across the rest of the yard into the house.
The tree, however, was not one to simply gloss over such a strange change in behavior from its so-called “friend”, and sent out the snake from beneath its roots to follow and keep a closer eye on Dalton than the bugs could. Of course, all of this was unbeknownst to Dalton himself, who hastily dropped his schoolbag on the floor the moment he stepped indoors (which the snake had to jerk quickly out of the way to avoid as it silently slithered after him) and kept marching at the same pace across the floor, towards the kitchen.
Dalton did hear the bugs skittering somewhere along the kitchen walls in between his footsteps but he didn’t care – not even they‘d be able to do anything on him once he was done with this.
Before he knew it, Dalton was at the kitchen counter, and before the bugs he couldn’t see where they were at but couldn’t be bothered with either also knew it, he snatched up one of the knives from a nearby knife holder, and promptly went to stab the blade into the side of his neck.
But the tip of the knife hadn’t so much as reached an inch near Dalton’s skin when he screamed in a mix of both surprise and pain, before involuntarily dropping the kitchen utensil onto the floor.
The snake, which had sensed something was about to go awry the moment the tree sent it after Dalton, had braced itself for anything including the worst. Thus, it was able to act accordingly as soon as it happened. Once it had followed Dalton into the kitchen and saw him attempting to put himself out of his near year-long misery, the snake had leapt up and bit down on the hand holding the knife to stop him, and the rest was history.
Dalton looked down at the floor to see both the fallen knife and the snake, the latter of which angrily hissed up at him before taking the former in its mouth.
“You little…” Dalton growled, with no time to even think about how it had sneaked inside under his nose. He then immediately reached for the knife holder again, when he pulled his hand back with a scream – this time one of shock and horror.
The hand that the snake had bitten was rapidly turning to wood even as he reached for another knife. Despite his current state of mind, Dalton stopped right there while his terror-stricken eyes witnessed his soft, light peach-colored skin become stiff, brown tree bark with the change now having spread up to his elbow. And judging by the way he could neither feel or move the turned parts of his arm, Dalton could only assume the flesh, blood, and bones inside were also just as wooden as the skin.
The next second, Dalton heard the snake’s hiss again from somewhere behind him, followed by the feeling of the creature biting him this time on the leg.
He tried to turn around and look at the snake so he could do something, anything, about it. But no sooner had he noticed the same numbness in his wooden arm now felt in his bitten leg did he trip over it and fall to the floor. Sure enough, Dalton rolled up one of his pants’ legs with his still normal hand to see his bitten leg was also wooden up to the knee, in the same way as his other arm.
And it was onto this limb-shaped wooden branch of a leg the snake slithered, glaring at Dalton with pure malice in its ruby-like red eyes. It threateningly bared its sharp teeth as it slithered ever so closer towards his face, like it was non-verbally saying there would be much more of that if he tried again.
Despite his earlier actions, Dalton knew by instinct this was far from what he wanted no matter the circumstances or what had been going on in his head until now. Naturally the tree wouldn’t dare kill him off, so if the snake was to continue, he could only expect to see a fate far worse than death, all while the tree would be able to keep having its way with him. He could most certainly imagine the snake repeatedly biting him until his whole body became something like a humanoid tree. And he was equally certain that his wooden oppressor would somehow find a way to ensure it stayed together forever with itself.
“No, stop! Stop! I’m sorry!” Dalton desperately held both his normal and wooden hand in surrender at the snake. Surprisingly, the snake immediately stopped its advance, but Dalton kept pleading for hopefully more convincing effect, “I’m sorry for real! I acted out of stupid impulse, I never should’ve done that! Please don’t do this!”
For a tense few seconds that felt more like minutes, the snake did nothing but pause where it lay and continue to stare at Dalton. Then to his utmost relief, the moment ended when the snake finally slithered off him and into a corner, still watching him intently. Not only that, but Dalton also heard the unseen bugs skitter off out of earshot. Lastly, he saw his wooden limbs go back to normal, with both the skin and feeling in them coming back at once.
After checking if he really was fully human again and not part tree anymore, Dalton then noticed something he had unknowingly knocked to the floor as he fell down. It was a slightly cracked picture frame of him and his parents, taken during his childhood in front of a nice seaside view.
The second his eyes fell upon it, Dalton felt them well up with tears and an immense explosion of sobs burst out of him. Exactly for what reason though, he couldn’t tell; whether it was how persistent the tree was in keeping him to the point it wouldn’t even let him off himself to escape this torture, or the fact he’d been so shortsighted as to consider THAT of all things as a legitimate solution.
What in the hell had he been thinking? Even if he did succeed in his attempt, would the nightmare have ended too? Or would it have found new victims to latch onto in the form of everyone he would’ve been leaving behind, like his family? Aside from obviously being beyond devastated at his demise, would they be safe from the tree’s wrath? Could the tree possibly unleash its worst terrors on them in its rage of realizing the “friend” it had tried to keep for so long was no more? And even worse, as much as the tree had taken everything from his life and left it with nothing to live for, death wouldn’t do anything to change that. Whether this hell continued or if he just died right here and now, he’d still be left with nothing. It was either ending his precious, one-and-only life on these devastating last moments, or letting it waste away and rot for god knows how many more days to come. Was any of that really what he’d wanted for himself, or had his pain and fear blinded him from seeing the truth?
It was then that Dalton came to the realization he wished he could’ve had much, much sooner; it wasn’t his life he’d wanted to end, it was the thing which had made it unbearable in the first place.
“The question is though, can I end it?” Dalton thought to himself. This whole time the reason the tree was able to keep him trapped in its clutches was because he was too scared of what could come from fighting back. And the reason he was scared was because he more than knew the tree would do the most unhinged acts to stop anyone and anything from getting in its way.
Dalton looked down at his arms and legs, as if frightened that they might turn to wood again the moment he attempted anything at the tree, such as taking his empty threat about the chainsaw in the garage and making it a reality.
“But if I did do something like that, it might just turn me into another tree to stop me, or …” Dalton thought again, when another thought immediately followed after; or what?
Like he’d thought before, the tree’s intention with him was anything but to kill him. Even if it was for self-defense, it wouldn’t do anything to dare kill the one living being that mattered to it, wasn’t that right? So assuming Dalton really did go all out on the tree, it certainly would attack in self-defense, and possibly leave him in a state nobody in their right mind would want to put themselves in… but still, not kill him. And if losing his life was what Dalton feared about fighting back, then by this logic, he shouldn’t have anything to lose and thus, no reason not to try giving his all to end it. His life was already in enough of a purgatory as it was, and he’d also seen for himself through the snake that none of the threats the tree made – or potentially would – at him would be fatal ones.
Dalton inhaled a deep breath from where he lay, took a couple of minutes to adjust himself in the right mindset, and stood up. He didn’t even pay any mind to the snake still in the corner, which straightened up from a coiled position as it got startled by his sudden movement.
Thinking to himself, “It’s do or damned.” Dalton made his way to the door leading to the garage. Of course, the snake followed him and through the door as he opened it and entered, where he inspected a shelf full of power tools on one of the walls.
Dalton inhaled another deep breath, and braced himself. Then quick as a flash, he took the chainsaw down from the shelf and activated it.
At the same time, the snake instantly sprang into motion and bit down on one of Dalton’s legs. He felt it go numb up to the knee again as it turned to wood once more. But not even that was able to stop Dalton now, as he punched the big red button on another part of the wall which raised the garage door. Next, giving the snake no time to slither over to his other leg and bite down on that too, Dalton swung the chainsaw down and sliced the creature’s head clean off.
While waiting for the garage door to fully open, Dalton stared down at the lifeless head and body of the snake pooling red on the gray concrete floor in two puddles of blood. As he did, much to his surprise, he felt his wooden leg gradually turn back to normal, and he was able to move it once more in just a few seconds.
“That’s a small one down,” Dalton muttered triumphantly, “and a much bigger one to go.”
Right then he noticed the mechanical whining of the garage door stop, and looked up to see it now open all the way, leading out into the yard where the tree could be seen standing in its spot, looking more menacing than ever.
But for once, Dalton wasn’t threatened. Rather, it was the tree that ought to be threatened by him this time around.
As if to boost his courage before going in for the attack, Dalton let out a mighty scream at the top of his lungs, then charged straight at the tree, the chainsaw at the ready.
Even as Dalton came running at it, the tree likewise sent out a huge swarm of beetles flying through the air and centipedes crawling through the grass towards its friend-turned-attacker.
However, Dalton wasn’t the least bit stalled by any of this. None of the centipedes either getting crushed under his feet or crawling up his pants to inflict countless stinging bites on his flesh could stop him from reaching the tree. Neither could any of the beetles sinking their pincers into his arms stop him from cutting the chainsaw’s blade right through the tree trunk.
Not only that, but with every tiny bite the bugs left on Dalton’s body, he could also feel the bitten parts turning to wood yet again like with the snake. But he ignored all of it, even the sight of his hands clutching the chainsaw becoming brown and stiff. For no amount of wooden numbness could make him give up on the possibly only chance he had at getting his life back once and for all.
In no time Dalton felt the wooden petrification climb up all the way up to near his shoulders and hips. Any longer now and he was in danger of becoming that humanoid tree he’d envisioned in his mind when the snake had first bitten him.
But the chainsaw never once faltered. It only continued to slice through the trunk more and more, while Dalton kept screaming at it like mad for it to go all the way and tip the tree over already.
Eventually, just when Dalton felt the wood creeping around his neck and nearly choked his screams to a stop, a massive splatter of blood exploded out the deep gash the chainsaw had sliced through the tree. The sheer force was enough to knock Dalton backwards and onto the ground, as well as send the whole tree tipping over the opposite way in a series of splintering creaks.
Dalton remained still with pure bewilderment from where he lay, watching the tree break through the yard fences to come crashing down in the middle of the sidewalk. Only a blood-covered wooden stump was left where the tree once stood.
For a long while Dalton kept lying on the spot in a daze. Right now, his mind simply couldn’t register with anything else, such as all the people coming out of the nearest neighboring houses to either stare dumbfounded at the fallen tree or notice him soaked from head to toe in the tree’s blood and ask him what in the world had just happened here. He ignored every one of the bugs that had been biting his body all over a second ago simultaneously dropping dead and falling off him, or the feeling in his limbs returning as they went back to their normal state of flesh and bone. He wasn’t even aware that the moment the tree had fallen, the local hospital saw a miracle as three teenage patients whom he hadn’t been able to see in almost a year suddenly woke up as healthy as ever from their comas.
None of those were on Dalton’s mind at the moment, which could only bring itself to think of two things over and over again; the tree was dead, and his nightmare was finally over.