Tree

"I was trying to help you." I said quietly. "I was always trying to help you."

"Help me, huh? Is that what you call those shitty blowjobs and overdone dinners?"

"I-," my voice faded as I watched what happened.

The tree branch had come to life. It was insane. I can hardly describe it.

All around my legs were tree branches coming in from the open door. I was transfixed on the scene unfolding before me.

The branches scratched along the floor, wound around the table legs, and started attacking Jack and Roger. The men began shouting which turned to screams as the branches wound around them like vines. The tree branches started stabbing them. The wood tore through their clothes and created huge, nasty gashes in their bodies. I watched with wide eyes as Jack's left arm was torn from his torso. His lit cigarette was still held in his fingers. It was gruesome. There was blood spraying everywhere from severed arteries.

Roger's mouth was wide open in a scream as a thin branch shot up from between his legs and pierced the bottom of his chin. It came up behind his brown rotted teeth, hit the roof of his mouth, then curled out of his mouth. There was a lot of force used as his bottom jaw was ripped from the joints. It was flung across the room. His eyes were so wide all you could see were the whites because they had turned upwards inside his head. He didn't do that himself. I watched with horror and fascination as smaller branches, twigs if you will, worked out of his eye sockets from inside him.

Jack's screams died as suddenly as Roger's. Both of their mouths had been violated with the tree. It writhed like a vine, moving in a serpentine way that was physically impossible. Some of those branches were too large to bend in those ways. I watched, rooted, no pun intended, to the floor as their bodies were ripped to shreds. I felt the warm spray hit my exposed skin then cool when the night air kissed my skin from the open door.

It seemed like the entire act lasted only seconds, but I knew it had taken a few minutes. I heard sirens in the distance and I realized the neighbors probably heard them screaming and called the cops. My smile was macabre as my face was covered from blood misting me. I didn't even feel the pain in my cheek from where Roger had hit me.

There was very little left of Roger and Jack. My Jack. The man I had given my virginity to only six years ago. It was a lifetime ago, I thought. I had loved him, but somewhere along the way my love had turned to hate, only I never realized it until tonight.

Their bodies and clothes were strewn all over the small dining room and beyond into the kitchen in small pieces. The door, I noticed, opened to a wooded backyard. I saw the truck hood in the street lights and the familiar red and blue lights glinting off the paint. I looked down at myself. I was covered in blood, gore, and my own urine. The branches I had watched move in were slowly backing out into the night. One branch that was level with my face lightly caressed my cheek. It left a smear as my face was covered in blood.

I breathed in through my nose and exhaled through my mouth. "Thank you, Grandfather. I will always love and remember you."

In the back of my mind I knew it was him. He had come to protect me and enact his vengeance. The man who had stepped in to help take care of me as a teenager and had taught me many more things that my dad had been able to. The branches disappeared completely and I looked at the table. It was still sitting in the same spot. Jack's box of menthols was sitting there looking surprisingly clean. I had stuck the Bic in my pocket by habit, so I leaned over and took the pack of smokes. I began walking outside as I lit one.

"Stop!"

"Freeze!"

"Miss Waters?!"

I heard three voices simultaneously as I walked outside.

"I'm unarmed," I said and raised my arms. My lit cigarette dangled from my mouth. It moved as I talked. "I'm okay and unarmed. I was taken."

I was surprised to see Detective Fillmore there, but she recognized me when I stepped outside. She came up to me as she holstered her pistol. I told them all, "Don't go in there without those things on your shoes. It's bad."

The two uniformed cops looked at each other then at me. The detective put an arm out like she was going to guide me to her car, but then put her arm back a little bit. She finally saw me when I stepped into the streetlight. "Lord have mercy," she breathed out. She called out to the ambulance that had just arrived.

"I pissed myself," I said to her. "I couldn't hold it."

"It's alright, honey," she said as she walked with me to the ambulance.

I was right that the neighbors had called the cops. They said they had heard screaming like something was being butchered. It was horrific, they had said. The news covered the story for a good month. Detective Fillmore had gotten a call from her friend in dispatch who thought the call might be related to her case because the house belonged to the one and only Roger Simms.

I moved out of the house where grandpa had been killed and got a small apartment near Rochelle and Henry. It was good to be close to my friends. My sisters and I were able to give my grandfather the funeral he wanted. It had all been prepaid by him which surprised us all given how he felt about his own death. He always said it freaked him out to think about it. He was cremated and we put his urn next to our grandmother's in the little monument they had for cremains.

We all kept a little bit of his ashes. I had mine made into a silver heart necklace that I wore every day. My grandfather had loved us all, but told me I was his favorite. In the end, he had died to help me and then came back to save me. I never explained what had happened that night to anyone. All they know is that I disappeared from work. Rochelle walked outside and saw one of my shoes on the ground and immediately called 911.

Kyle, it turned out was, indeed, a marriage and family therapist. He had closed his practice when one of his patients succeeded in committing suicide. Kyle told me after Grandpa's funeral as I stood watching friends and family eat finger sandwiches that it hit him very hard. "I couldn't wake up and face my office anymore," he explained. "I thought I had successfully treated my patient and I got the phone call we all dread." He took a deep breath and looked out at the room. We were in the American Legion my grandpa belonged to.

"I get it, Kyle. We think we helped someone or tried to help only to find out how useless we were the entire time." I put my hand on his arm and rubbed up and down. "I'm sorry it happened."

He looked at me and patted my hand. "Thanks, Monica. I'm sorry about your grandpa, too. Everything, you know. I'm sorry about everything. I don't plan to practice anymore, but I'm a good listener if you need me."

I smiled at him and noticed he had a birthmark to the right of his top lip. Not a dark one, but enough to be noticeable. I leaned in and kissed it. "I think things will be okay," I said with a smile.

He looked at me with surprise in his eyes then put an arm around me. It felt nice and...right.

Rochelle and Henry walked over to us with Little Mel in tow. We all stood together and talked about things that didn't involve death.

The police wrapped up my grandpa's murder. It didn't surprise me, but Roger had been the one who stabbed Grandpa. He was waiting for me, but Grandpa had shown up instead. They matched the stab wounds to the pocketknife Roger carried. Jack knew about it, they said. Roger, oh, excuse me, Dynamite, and Jack had been texting back and forth quite a bit. Neither one used burner phones and they hadn't deleted their text history, either. Not exactly a smart pair of guys.

I was saddened by how Jack ended up. He went from a nice, average guy to a drug addicted, abusive bum.

It took the police a long time to scrape Roger and Jack from the ceiling, the walls, the floor, the table, the, well, every surface in that area was covered in them. Even the seasoned detectives were grossed out by the scene and had trouble stomaching it. They found scraps of clothing and body parts high up in the black walnut that was growing next to the driveway, and never figured out how that happened. Where I had been standing in the dining room was clean. It was like a clear spot had been stamped on the floor where the blood and gore couldn't touch in the shape of my feet. The case will remain open forever because how can I explain that my grandpa's spirit made a tree come to life and wreak vengeance on two evil men?

The house actually belonged to Roger's aunt; she had taken out the mortgage. Roger was a co-signer on it. They found her upstairs tied to her metal bed frame with a gag in her mouth. She died from asphyxiating on her own vomit. They also found that she had been raped and the semen matched Roger's DNA. God, he was evil. I'm glad he died in such a violent way where he felt everything get ripped apart. Same for Jack. Good riddance.

Kyle and I are taking it slow. I said I want to be old school about it. No sex before marriage, hand holding, lots of talking, the works. As a former MFT he agreed. It's been really nice these past two years. I have the feeling he is about to propose. I've stopped smoking and have limited myself to a glass or two of wine with dinner once a week at most. I've put on some more weight and feel much healthier. I know Kyle appreciates the curves I have now rather than bones jutting out of my skin. I smile to myself as I pull in behind the liquor store and see Henry dropping off Rochelle. We both work second shift tonight and I'm looking forward to it.