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| Photo by Pascal Debrunner on Unsplash |
"George, be careful," the father said. "Don't swallow the seeds, all right?"
"Why, Dad?" George asked. He was eating an apple.
"It will cause indigestion. You will feel sick. And," the father replied. He moved closer, a sinister look on his face, "a tree will grow out of your head."
"I'm not a baby anymore, Dad! I'm already six! You can’t trick me!”
"Just go ahead and try it, boy. Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” the father said with a wink.
For a brief moment, George saw a shadow pass through his father’s eyes. It happened so quickly George thought he must have imagined it. His father strolled out of the kitchen, humming a tune. Alone, George looked at the half-eaten apple in his hand. Doubt flashed through his mind but pride prevailed so he chomped down and swallowed the rest of the fruit - skin, flesh, core and seeds. The stem was the only part left.
******
The family were asleep, in fact, the whole world was. George, however, was having a fitful one. He felt movement on the top of his head. Subconsciously, reached up to give it a scratch and fell back to sleep. The top of his head started to throb, as though something was pushing his scalp from the inside.
A nightmare began to form. He was in class and his teacher had put him in a spot.
“Spell ‘agriculture’,” she said, glaring at him, “or else...”
George was perspiring. Sweat poured from the top of his head, trickling down the back of his neck. That was the source of the itch. He reached up and scratched. There was no way he knew how to spell it. He had just started school!
Then, his fingers felt something sharp protruding out of his head. A shoot had pierced through his scalp. He looked at his fingers and stood frozen. There was blood.
“What’s happening to me!?”
The twig grew. He looked at his teacher, who stared back without emotion. Slowly, her lips twisted into an eerie smile.
“You swallowed the seeds, didn’t you?”
His teacher laughed and his classmates joined in. Soon, the combined laughter echoed beyond the class, so loud it could drown out the sound of thunder.
George woke with a start, soaked in cold perspiration. He realised he was in his bed, in the dark. His father’s snoring in the other room gave a strange assurance that it was all just a nightmare.
But the pain remained. He reached up and felt it. The twig had grown thicker, almost like... a young plant.
He felt something else. It felt like folds under his scalp — he realised they were the roots. The roots reached deeper, compressing his skull. He thought he heard a crack, a sound he associated with Humpty Dumpty. His goosebumps rose as he stood up and grabbed the plant by its trunk.
He tried to yank it out of his head but the pain was unbearable. And then, he lost sensations in his legs. He fell. The bed frame kept him sitting upright on the floor. In a matter of seconds, he could not feel his hands, too. He no longer had control of his body.
His voice rose to his throat. He wanted to scream but no sound came out. The roots were feeding off his brain. Instead of flashing before him, his memories faded away as his brain matter became fertiliser. He started to lose consciousness. His world faded away like sand being blown away in a storm as he was transported into a grassland. The plant grew and became a tree. The tree began the conquest of its host, to become one with it, to stay rooted to the ground and immobile, swaying only with the wind in a slow dance.
In a matter of minutes, the human host in a room had disappeared and in its place, a lone tree in a vast grassland.
End
If you are looking for a happy ending, continue here...
A fluorescent blue bird with a patch of yellow perched on George the Tree. It built a nest and generations lived there. One day, a young descendant started pecking on the trunk, no doubt looking for food.
Peck, peck, peck...
And it slowly turns to tap, tap, tap...
"Wake up, George!"
His mother was tapping him on the shoulder.
"You're late for school!"
End
