The Tree

Chapter 2

Aleks gasped awake. There was this momentary panic that simply consumed her entire being. This immense feeling of being entrapped, unable to do anything. It was a feeling of anger and panic, sadness and desperation so strong, she didn't think she would ever recover. The relief that she felt afterwards felt like the first breath of air after having been suffocated for an eternity. It was so powerful that Aleks almost passed out from the shock of it. For the first time, in a long time, Aleks let herself truly weep. It wasn't generally hard for her to cry, but she never truly wept. She did not let herself feel deeply when she cried, she was afraid if she did, she would never stop. This time she did. She wept for her past and she wept for the damage she didn't know how to undo.

Once she was able to pull herself together, she reached for her phone to check the time. Several missed phone calls and worried texts greeted her.

"hey you ok?" from Bren, at 9:45 am.

"I'm sorry I wasn't with you yesterday. What happened?" from Bren, at 10:03 am.

"Aleks, please call me back when you wake up. I'm worried..." from Bren, at 10:43 am.

Making her way down the creaking stairs, Aleks looked out the massive window opposite the stairs, at the forest. It was magnificent and most of it no longer belonged to her family, but to the government, as it was turned into a forest preserve. The trees creaked under the heavy wind and the sky was turning a moody grey.

She set her kettle onto the stove and grabbed a frying pan.

"Well, what shall I have for breakfast," Aleks mused. Spinning towards the mirror that was in the hallway right outside the doorway to the kitchen, she pointed the frying pan at herself. "What's the menu look like, eh? Let's see, hm, looks like the chef's specials are eggs, egss, egss, ooh burnt bacon, yum, and eggs! Wow! So many exquisite dishes. Well I suppose it's eggs then!"

A shaky exhale and a cracked egg later, Aleks found herself finally calling Bren. His worried voice was almost immediately heard after the second ring.

"Aleks! How are you? Everything good with you?"

"Bren, Bren, I am absolutely ok! Just got a little too drunk. Ya know how I can't hold my booze," she tried to reassure.

"Uh, ok. I suppose that explains some things. It doesn't explain why you ran out of the woods looking like you just saw a dementor or werewolf tho."

"I did that? Oop, well I probably thought I did see a dementor given the booze. Booze and imagination, never a good thing," Aleks comically shook her head.

"Yeah ok, I figured as much, but just wanted to double check is all."

"Thanks mom!" Aleks teased. And then realizing her eggs were starting to burn, "Yo I gotta skidoosh my eggs are about to get toastier than Satan's children!"

Bren snorted and started coughing. "You do that."

"Hasta La Vista Baeby!"

After she had choked down her half charred eggs, Aleks wandered onto the path that led through the overgrown garden outside the kitchen. The path was skewed to the left and the stones out of which it consisted slowly pittered out the closer it got to the woods. Weeds peeked out between the stones, and the goldenrods hung heavy with aromatic blooms and busy bumble bees trying to get their share of pollen before the storm hit. Right before the entrance to the forest stood an old, mossy stone arch. Two gargoyles guarded each side and the branches of a weeping willow partially obscured the entryway. Alex thought back to whatever it was that she had seen out there last night. She knew most likely what had happened was that she had turned a falling branch from the tree into a human simply due to her overactive imagination and all the alcohol she had ingested that previous night. Shaking her head she chuckled. Spirits lifting she decided that she would go and see that branch. Prove to herself that she was just too drunk last night. She laughed again. A tree branch for a person. How absolutely wonderfully absurd. Almost good enough to write a book about.

"A tree turning into a person. Next New York Times Best Seller right there," Aleks kept chuckling as she picked her way through the underbrush.

Looking down Aleks noticed that there were acorns. Delighted she started collecting them as she went along.

"I wonder if i could make dolls out of them?"

She remembered her Aunt who used to teach her to make little dolls out of random things they'd find on their walks. Once they had glued rocks to make a horse, and Aleks had insisted on attaching leaves as wings. Her Aunt had acted as if Aleks had just proposed how to end world hunger and paraded the little pegasus around the house for hours, until Aleks' mom had showed up and reassured her that that was the stupidest piece of trash she had seen and that Aleks should have been studying math all this time, given how dumb she was on that subject.

No point dwelling in the past though, she decided.

"Now where was that dumb tree?" she wondered right as her shoe crunched down on something. "Oh! This must be my cup."

Looking to her right she finally spotted the tree, but the branch from last night was gone.

"Well at least there's no dead person here," muttering as she approached the tree to inspect it more closely.

Down the center of the tree, just a bit of a ways off the ground, it appeared as though a giant chunk had been ripped out, as if a branch had broken off. As she circled the tree, Aleks glanced into the nearby bushes and froze. There, poking right from under the lowest branches nearly brushed the ground, was someone's leg.