Tree Novel

Something's different. I can't taste the light. I feel the sun's warmth, but... I'm still hungry. I'm thirsty. And I've felt coldness before but... nothing of this caliber. Everything's white—wait... no. I'm starting to make out images. Movement. Creatures. Giant trees of metal appear to be towering over me like deities. Creatures about my height move on a large stone path, on their hind legs. I don't know how I can tell, but I think they've noticed me. Come to think of it, I've never experienced this before. What is this? Thought? Sentience?

"Sir!"

I turn my neck—I have a neck? What's a neck?—to see another one of those organisms. It seems interested in me.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to come with me," the thing says. These things all have workings of fabric on them—what's fabric? But this one has a shiny medallion on its chest. I've never seen anything like it before. Well, actually I guess I've never seen anything before. He starts making those sounds into a small box. He grabs me by a limb and—what's this?

My limb appears to be soft. Squishy. Like the thing. Like all the other things. I turn my neck down—whatever it is—and see that I too am a thing. I'm rootless. Instead I have two lower limbs holding me up. I stumble around as the thing with the shiny thing on its cloth wear takes me to... whatever it is. It's like the tall, metal trees, but smaller. There are a lot of them moving on the stone path, so I guess this one has that ability too.

One new thing after another, and they end up putting me in a big box. They put some orange fabric on me, and now I'm in an enclosed space. With other organisms.

Tree Novel

J.R. Apple

Chapter 1: Four Months Later

"Another slow night?" Andy asks and I walk in the door at two am.

"Yeah," I say, throwing my trench coat on the kitchen counter and melting into the couch beside him. "Can we watch something other than the news tonight?"

He looks back at me and smirks. "Whatever," he says, throwing the remote into my lap. I gotta go to bed anyway. I turn on Animal Planet.

I met Andy in jail back then. He's taught me everything I know now. Words, what everyday objects are... I don't think he knows I used to be a tree though. He might think I'm mentally challenged, come to think of it.

But he's nice. He told me it'd be hard for me to get an "actual job" with something on my record, but he was nice enough to get me a job where he works. Well, it's not much of a "where". I just pick a street corner or alleyway to stand in until someone talks to me, then I give them a small bag and they give me currency.

He also let me move in with him. He lets me pay for the rent, and he pays for everything else. He tells me New York city is an expensive place to live, but rent is the cheapest thing about living here, so he's actually doing me a favor. I like Andy.

I also like walks. Going outside reminds me of what was. I like finding a patch of dirt next to the sidewalk and just standing there, taking in the sunlight; the wind; the rain. I find that now that I have clothes to wear, nobody in New York really cares if I stand completely still in a patch of dirt.

Sleep also reminds me of my time as a tree. Visionless, thoughtless existence.

***

I wake up at seven am every day to hear the pigeons chirp. I do sometimes get a little tired in the morning, so Andy recommended I go "try the coffee place down the street," and that "I'd know it's the right place because it'll look pretentious as fuck but smell good as shit".