Another attempt at Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge, details can be found here.
This story makes no sense, enjoy!
The Tree of Life
Nothing. Not even a bone. Where the hell was the corpse?
‘For shit’s sake!’ Jacob yelled.
Where there should have been a body, was a mere scorched outline. The whole body had been disintegrated. But how? Why here? Jacob looked around the forest, looking for something, anything at all.
There! He thought, What’s that?
He wandered over to the base of a tree. There was a smoldering object sitting on the ground. A book—no, a notebook. He picked it up and flicked through it. Every page was empty except for the first. Sections of the page were blackened and illegible, Jacob read:
‘…find the tree in the forest of the moon… destroy the tree of life… the music box… not what it seems.’
Hmm, he thought, so this is why he was snooping around the forest. Find and destroy the tree of life, eh?
Jacob set off in search of the mysterious tree. He searched the forest for three hours before he stumbled upon a strange sight. It was a music box.
‘Interesting,’ he muttered.
Jacob fiddled around with the various buttons, switches and levers. But it was no use. The damned thing was broken.
‘Fuck it!’ He screamed. He kicked at the thing in the slim hope of fixing it. Because everyone knows if there’s a problem with technology, you kick the shit out of it.
He dropped to the ground, laid back and stared up at the sky. The stars were out, such a beautiful sight. He closed his eyes, all of his efforts had exhausted him.
Tree of life, he thought, who was I kidding?
Mere seconds after closing his eyes, the ground below him opened, dropping him six feet to land on his ass. He looked up. A rectangular hole had opened underneath him.
It must have been triggered by that bloody music box.
‘But that’s impossible,’ he said.
‘What’s that, young master?’ A voice called, ‘Why have you come to my humble abode?’
Jacob turned around, taking in his surroundings. He was in a subterranean grove, glowing with an eerie blue light. In truth, it was much less of a grove, and more a single tree.
‘I have come to kill the tree of life,’ Jacob stated.
‘Thee hath come to kill me?’ It said.
‘I, Jacob Wold, have come to do the deed described in this here book.’ He thrust the notebook towards the tree, who, unsurprisingly, couldn’t see, as it had no eyes.
‘I am the tree of life, the tree of all things living,’ it said, ‘thee cannot harm me.’
‘You know what?’ Jacob said, ‘Let’s give you a run for your money.’ He tried for hours on end to humble the arrogant tree. However, it was useless, the tree could not be harmed.
‘See, I am the tree of life, thee can do no harm to me.’
‘Yeah, fuck you,’ Jacob said.
Two screams pierced the still air of the grove. The tree screamed in pain, Jacob in ecstasy—he had defeated the tree of life, with but one profane statement! The tree died, as did everything else.
The End?
Word Vortex 