The fall is cold, as though the seasons have skipped past the fall and straight to February winter. Becca and her boyfriend Damarcus are out late tonight enjoying the crisp cool and the warmth that they make together. They lie on a blanket watching the stars in the rural setting of New Salem, North Carolina. The sky has so many stars, there is no light pollution for miles, and the two love to come out here to be alone and get away from everything.
“Those trees are so weird,” Becca says as she nestles into Damascus’s chest.
“I know,” he says, “there’s like four near my house.”
“How long have they been there?”
Damarcus shrugs and chuckles, “As long as I can remember. Do you remember the first time you saw one of them?”
Becca shakes her head as she eyes the thick, gnarled trunk on a distant hill. It is like a decapitated tree; it has a thick trunk like a tree that had been growing for centuries, but instead of a full canopy at the top, it’s as though the canopy had been grabbed by a giant and twisted off, leaving the trunk twisted and contorted. No leaves or branches grow from the truck, and it looks like a black tangle of thick wooden vines all twisted together into the gnarled trunk. They all come to a sharp point at the tip, like the peak of a dollop of disturbing cream.
“My dad says it’s not a tree,” Becca explains. “The first time I saw one, it was in the playground by my house. I was little and all I wanted was to climb up and sit on that peak. But he saw me running toward it and stopped me. Told me never to touch it.”
Becca stands from the comfort with Demarcus and she approaches the tree slowly, Demarcus not far behind.
“I never wanted to,” Demarcus says. “My brother used to climb them any time he saw them. He’s dead now.”
Becca looks back at him, her mouth open in shock.
“He was a faggot,” Demarcus says. “I shouldn’t say that, he was my brother. He was gay.”
“What happened to him?” Becca asks.
“He let some dudes fuck him to death. It was all over the internet.”
Becca doesn’t say a word and looks back toward the tree. They stand there in silence.
“Will that happen to me?” Becca asks and looks Demarcus in the eyes. “I don’t know why, but I want to touch it.”
He grabs her hand. “Please don’t,” he says softly, pulls her close, and then they kiss and lay back down on the blanket.
The tree is dark black, twisted wood and it begins to slowly unravels. The thick wooden vines of the trunk loosen ever so slightly as the tight point that the vines come to begins to split apart in a slow unwind.
Becca notices the tree morphing first, and she points at it. Demarcus sees it and the two sit with wonder on their faces as the hard wooden, black vines lose their collective being as a nightmare tree. When the vines are no longer intertwined, they all stand straight up like spikes from the earth and the couple looks at them with wonder in their eyes.
“I knew someone who touched one of them,” Becca says with wonder in her voice. “He carved a smile into his face with a box cutter and then shot up my school..”
She says more, but Demarcus isn’t listening. He notices the tips of each spike begin to split open, like the peel of a banana exposing large, thin stamen with red bulbs at each end. He points and Becca looks on silently. The night is dark, but the red bulbs are visible. The couple sees them swell.
Demarcus feels his heart racing in his chest. He is suddenly nervous about what will happen with the red bulbs and he feels nervous sweat on his forehead. Becca is nervous too, but both watch silently as the bulbs grow into plump balloon. They all explode simultaneously – the couple can’t know this, but every one of the nightmare trees around the planet is doing the same thing and they all explode – sending out red pollen like a haze of smoke that slowly settles on the couple.
As the haze falls down over them, Becca’s hand is firmly on the set of keys in her pocket; she had driven the couple to their destination. When the haze settles, Becca produces the keys in a rage and she jams one into Demarcus’s neck. Blood covers them both.
Becca stands over Demarcus as he dies, both smiling from ear to ear.
“It is a privilege,” she says and then she stabs herself in the throat and drags it as far as she can manage before she collapses on top of Demarcus, who is already dead.
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