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Thursday 27 October 2011

The Hungry Tree Spirit

My house lies in the farthest part of a clump of woods, right beside Misery Lake. A misnomer since it is one of the most beautiful lakes I’ve ever seen and not the least bit miserable. My fingers, frozen over my typewriter, deserve a break so I walk to my back porch. The dark green of the forest shivers in anticipation, a storm is coming. Dark clouds cover the still waters of Misery Lake, turning the once bright, clear blue into a dark, almost black lake. My feet pull me to a large tree between my house and the lake, and I climb the tree, branches scratching my face roughly. I can feel a cold wind come from the West, where the sun is just now setting. An array of reds and yellows cover the lake like liquid gold, just as rain starts pounding on my face.

The lake ripples softly then, getting more violent, and eventually thrashes about as raindrops lash at it. Closing my eyes as the rain pours on my face and body relaxes me, one thing that never fails. As I open my eyes slowly, long eyelashes save my eyeballs from the water, presenting gorgeous drops in front of my eyes, stuck onto my eyelashes. I get closer to the ground as I climb down the tree quickly, hoping that in the next morning I won’t have an obit saying:
Author found dead in Misery Lake.
Author was found dead at the foot of a tree that lightning struck.
The author will be missed dearly.

I briskly move toward my house, plopping down to sit at the edge of my porch, where the rain almost touches my skin, but shies away at the last moment. My eyes move to the tree I had climbed, barely able to see it with the sheets of falling rain. As my body relaxes onto the porch floor the rain comes down harder. Curtains of rain fall from the black skies, obstructing my view from anything farther than four feet in front of me. I can hear the trees creaking and groaning, like a chorus singing excitedly. The rain isn’t pouring in sheets, nor is it pouring curtains but the whole darn fabric store is coming down. My hands are invisible to my eyes, light now gone from my vision. A hand touches mine delicately, as a gentle voice says, “I didn’t think anyone lived this far in the woods.”

Lightning strikes, it lights up the sky so I can see the face of the speaker. Thunder claps and roars and I jump in surprise. A young boy stands in front of me, young and angelic. His face and body are soaking wet, his clothing sticking to him closely. He reminds me of a lost puppy, his green eyes filled with pain, hunger of some sort. He looks into my house pleadingly, asking if he can dry up inside, away from the cold wind I didn’t feel until now. A shiver runs down my body, but not reacting to the cold wind, something else triggered it. The boy sits in front of my fireplace, beside the typewriter and large pile of trashed stories. “So, you’re a writer.” He says, more of a statement than a question. I answer anyway. “Yes, I am.”
“Could I,” he hesitates, “read something you wrote?” has asks me looking up at me with his large doe-like eyes. I shrug, “You can read anything you find in here,” I say as I sit down the cup of hot chocolate beside him. I sip from my own cup, holding cider, while the teen searches the room. He picks up paper after paper, stopping each time to carefully inspect it and read it. Somehow he gets through my entire pile of balled up papers. He looks at me, puzzled, “You had a fiancé, but you guys broke up… why couldn’t you love your fiancé?” He asks me. I stare at him shocked and bewildered that he could piece together my life from the fragmented things I wrote about.

“Children don’t need to meddle in the affair of adults,” I spit at him. He takes on a look of stubbornness, “I’m no kid. I’m twenty,” the boy, no, man says. I sigh and give up, taking another sip of my cider. “What are you writing about now?”
“I’m writing about a group of teens who combine to take down a powerful leader, haven’t got the details down yet, but I’ll work through them,” I say politely.
“I know what you should write about,” he says looking into the distance, out the window and toward the lake. Rain knocks on my roof, reminding me a storm is still beating on my house. The guy rocks back and forth on his feet slowly. “Did you know that there’s a tree spirit in the tree beside the lake. It’s a nasty old spirit that comes out of the tree, only when it’s hungry to feed on human souls.”
“I hate stories like that the most,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“Waste of a good myth,” he pouts.

He turns toward me and sits in front of me, the long button-up shirt he’s wearing, while his clothes dry, hanging down to his knees. I lean back, meeting his fiery green eyes with my own pale green ones, no match in intensity or shine. He smiles seductively; his pink lips curling back to reveal gleaming white teeth. On his hands and knees he crawls forward until his face is beside my own. “You can love me,” he whispers into my ear, tickling me with his minty breath. He nips at my ear playfully then puts his face in front of mine, only a breath apart. He swoops in to kiss me, his soft lips touching my own. I can feel his soft, black hair melding with my brown hair. He pushes me onto the ground and kisses me deeper, one hand behind my head, the other on my chest right below my neck.

His hair has grown to reach his waist in a matter of seconds, but he keeps me from stopping the kiss with each provocative look and motion. My heart skips a beat when he finally breaks the kiss to kiss my neck, and then back to my lips. He softly bites my lip and blood dribbles into his mouth, his tongue licking up the little bit drawn from my bottom lip. His pointed fingernails scratch at my vulnerable skin. My eyes meet his; I can see the hunger from before rising up in his emerald eyes. This has to be a dream, maybe a nightmare, I ponder. Tomorrow I’ll wake up alone and this’ll be a distant memory I convince myself as I continue to kiss the demonic boy.

My fingers entwine with his as my eyes close. Blood drips down my arm and pools on the floor where I’m laying with him, the strange boy that appeared from the rain storm that still hammers on my roof.
I never knew death could produce such an ectasy of emotions, the pinacle of pleasure. Then all my senses go numb.