MicroHorror

“She’s not going to make it.”

“Don’t say that, Charlie,” Jenny said, as they stood outside of Mabel’s bedroom.

“The doctors said her brain tumor is inoperable.” He wept.

Jenny closed her eyes as she shook her head. She quietly left and walked outside towards Mabel’s tree.

“Doesn’t look promising,” she said to the tree, as she stared at the cold grass. She held her face in her cupped hands. “No hope left.”

Then Jenny felt it. Raindrops falling upon her and all around her. But it wasn’t rain, she realized. It was tears from the tree. It was expressing its outpouring of mourning. Even the tree’s bark oozed tears. Jenny cried too as they shared their moment of grief together. She hugged the tree with her long arms and smeared her own tears upon its bark.

She wiped back the damp hair from her face and slowly walked back towards Mabel’s house.

Jenny entered Mabel’s bedroom and slumped down in a chair next to her bed. She took her left hand and held it, her voice silent, not knowing how to say goodbye.

As Jenny sat next to Mabel, she heard an unusual sound. Something was coming up through the hardwood bedroom floor. Large tree roots cracked apart the wooden flooring. They were curled and twisted like antennae and they slid towards Mabel.

Jenny quickly stood up and backed into Charlie.

The roots of the tree sensed where Mabel lay and started to slither between her arms and legs, cradling her nearly lifeless body.

“No!” Charlie shouted.

“Wait,” Jenny said, holding Charlie back.

They both stood there and watched in silence as the tree rocked Mabel to and fro.

Then the tree stopped. It waited there. Holding Mabel.

Jenny sensed it. She saw through her tear-streaked eyes that Mabel was exhaling her last breath. And she knew the tree had sensed it too.

Here was an incredible tree that Mabel had loved all her life, Jenny thought. A tree that had been a significant part of her childhood. A tree that had supported tire swings and tree houses. A tree that had been home base in games of stickball and hide-and-seek. And especially when she felt alone, she would find comfort in being with the tree. Jenny knew about this unusual and sensitive tree. The kind of tree you couldn’t carve words into or it would cry.

A deep silence came over Mabel’s bedroom. Jenny knew that Mabel had left them, all of them, for good.

The tree root clasped Mabel’s limp body as it slid back under the broken bedroom floor.

“No,” Jenny said, her eyes still wet. “Not this way.”

The root continued its trail back to its origin as it tenderly carried Mabel along with it.

Jenny and Charlie ran outside to where the tree had stood for so many years. They frantically dug around its base searching for Mabel’s body.

A small root crawled towards Jenny’s hand and held it. Jenny sucked in a breath.

“Mabel?”

The root nudged her hand.

She realized that Mabel and the tree were inseparable. All those long years formed a bond with no end. One could not go on without the other. Jenny saw that Mabel and the tree had somehow merged together. Each one of them keeping the other alive in some strange way. Even in death.

• Copyright: © 2009 Lorella Mascot