The Wicked Tree

by girl ben Elohim

You really think the world is out to get you. You get a flat tire on the county highway or your coffee spills and you cry to the heavens about bad luck. It kills me. It really does. You do not know the first thing about the universe having a vendetta against you.

Let me tell you about the Wicked Tree. That is what all the phonies down in town called it anyway. It was a massive oak... easily the size of a redwood... sitting dead center in a stagnant creek where the water smelled like sulfur and rotten meat. It was completely gnarled. Snarled and knobby and twisted up like a bad hand of arthritis. Just totally lifeless looking. But it was not lifeless. I knew that better than anybody.

I used to be a man who lived up the ridge from it. Just a regular old man minding my own business. But that tree hated my guts. I told everyone I knew about it. I sat at the diner and told them how the tree was watching me and ruining my life. They all thought I was out of my mind. The doctors in town... absolute morons... they said it was dementia or paranoia. But it was not dementia.

It was the tree.

Nothing went right for me. Ever. Just chaotic synchronicities and god awful inconveniences all day long. If I bought a brand new pair of boots... the soles rotted completely off in a week. If I patched the roof on Tuesday... a freak hail storm would bust it right open on Wednesday. I would trip over perfectly flat ground. Wild dogs would sit on my porch and howl at my front door all night long keeping me awake. I would find my truck keys buried out in the garden dirt. Total disarray.

I finally had enough. I snapped. I hiked down the ridge and waded right into that foul stagnant water. Mud sucked up to my knees. It was freezing and stinking to high heaven. I looked up at those massive dead branches and I screamed at it. I begged it to tell me what I ever did to deserve such misery. Why did it hate me so much.

And the tree talked back.

I swear to God it did. It sounded like thick wood splintering and ancient rocks grinding together.

"Leave no trace. Take nothing, leave nothing. You were taught this, no?"

I just stood there shivering in the creek. I did not know what to say.

The tree spoke again. "The land remembers. It holds memories. You see an arrowhead, I see an energy of a tool that was used by an ancient human to murder another mammal in order to survive. And you rarely think of this fact. You are in it for the greed. Hoping one day to make millions. You won't. You will make the next man like you suffer. Because I have done my time as the tree, its your turn."

I thought about my house up on the ridge. I thought about the buckets and glass cases inside. Thousands of arrowheads. Pottery shards. Old bones. I spent my whole entire life stripping this beautiful land bare looking for treasure. A lifetime of artifacts just hoarded away so I could maybe strike it rich.

Then I felt my toes stretching down deep into the freezing mud. They started to cramp up and curl inwards. My calves got the worst damn charlie horses I ever got. They kept going down... deeper and deeper until they slammed into the bedrock. My skin turned rough and began to burst open in many places at once. Then it split open further into thick bark. My arms locked up toward the gray sky. My neck violently drew backwards and I permanently looked toward the sky. The sun was in my eyes. But I don't even think I had eyes anymore. I tried to move. Not a single muscle budged a single centimeter. I was petrified stiff. I was the Wicked Tree now.

So here I am. The one standing in the stagnant, rotten water. I am the Wicked Tree. And I am just waiting here... snarled and knobby and bitter... waiting for the next greedy bastard like me to come wandering through the holler so I can get myself out of this damn mess.

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