He blinked and gulped. The talking wish granting tree breathe so heavily that all the sounds of the Forbidden Forest vanished except for a noise that reminded the old man of mice crawling inside walls. A kind of “KREET, KREET, KREET!” that gave him goosebumps. Sweat formed and fell on the black soil. Worms dug back into the ground. Lightning stabbed the night in the heart but no one would have known if they didn’t keep their eyes opened for the threat of death robbed even the heavens of its thunder.
The man gasped. Through his nostrils and mouth, he took it all in then he took it all out.
“…when did you… begin observing me?”
The tree stopped breathing. A large rain droplet put out the man’s fire. Thunder continued to roar in silence when the wish grantor said, “Since before you were born.”
He felt strange. Even though darkness envelope him, he could still see the mouth of the tree. He wanted to ask more questions than his vocabulary supported. His heartbeat crawled inside him like those rats inside those imaginary walls. What did this thing mean? What is going on? What the heck? What—
He wanted to scream but he could barely speak, “Do you… observe…,” his heart cried with the most delightful fear, “do you observe everyone?”
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“I don’t.” It smacked its bark lips and the birds in its canopy screeched, “Some do because they are freaky like that.”
It grinned again before sticking out its tongue of roots and wrapping the old man’s ankle. The tree whipped the man to his back and said while the tongue slithered into its woodful mouth that looked like a bottomless abyss, “You never answered my question.”
“I’m afraid to.”
“That sounds like an answer to me.”
A thunderous lightning bolt startled old man Rostam. When he came to and glanced back at the tree, the grinning mouth disappeared from the trunk. He saw his cane on one side and his notebook of memories on the other. He grabbed the cane but when he reached for his notebook it got sucked into the ground, page by page. That’s when the old man realized only his arms moved.
The birds in the canopy screeched. A howling wind breezed by his ear and images of strangers laughing and pointing their fingers at him popped into his mind. Eventually the strangers in his head came out of it and now laughed and pointed at his fallen body. He wanted to cry but no tears formed. He tried to scream but his mouth felt so dry he thought a fire burned his tongue mute. He wanted to close his eyes and get away, very far away, but he could only stare at the dancing shadow people pointing and mocking him until one of the silhouettes seized him. And then another. And another. Until the shadows that enveloped him now shallowed him whole.
And like that, the old man that once guided others throughout the world of wish granting trees had vanish from its realm.
Unfortunately for Rostam, this wish granting tree fulfilled wishes through fear.