Tree story

I had to write a story from a tree's perspective for English this year, and I thought it came out ok. Its a little long and I'm a bit worried its confusing or boring.

            The ground around me is coarse and moist. Its darkness covers my smooth exterior. My days subjected to this darkness have felt like years, and my sentence of eternity unravels in front of me unappealing but inevitable. I have lost my natural beauty. My branches were stripped from my large body and bark was whisked from my trunk to uncover my smooth interior wood. Men carved my trunk into a shape that suited them, a shape in which I could fulfill my purpose efficiently. I’ve been fulfilling my purpose for three weeks, one day, and five hours. Within these three weeks I’ve almost completely forgotten the park in which I once lived. The wind in my branches and the swaying breeze have all but been forgotten, and as I jog my memory, glimpses of the reflecting pond and the soft sweet grass flit through my arboreal cranium, unable to quench my desire for earlier life. Memory is unable to give me hope or emotions, for my fading remembrances are overshadowed by the unrelenting memories circling my present state. The weight of the body inside my noble trunk never lightens, and my use as a tool of justice does not rectify my feelings of guilt and want. I had always thought my death would come with the fall from my consistent vertical state, yet it seems I live along with my story, one that starts with happiness but ends with tragedy. When I lived upright, vertically, I sat at the border between an antique Southern plantation house and the beautiful park that had been built on the plantation itself. My eternity was a life of placid consistency, where the water painted a picture for me every morning and the wind lulled me to sleep at night. My ending starts here in my consistency, with the Kent family. Owners of the mansion and the surrounding land through inheritance, the Kent family included Mr. and Mrs. Kent, then two children of 6 and 10. The Kent’s land border was me, an old gnarled tree countless years old; a tree which had seen the cruelty of the slaves, the creation of the park, and the growing up of numerous families which had lived nearby. I loved the Kent family as only a tree can. The close-knit family of four would picnic under branches, and I would provide a jungle gym for the two kids who climbed my branches and charted unfound lands from within them. I remember the one evening, their ten-year-old boy Peter carved a hole within some rotting wood in my trunk, creating a solace in which he would sit for hours reading, or watching the sun move in the sky, examining the shapes of the clouds. Good times seldom last long however, and this family was no exception. After a few years that felt like weeks a “For Sale” sign was up, and the family was driving away, leaving the beautiful home to a single, solitary man. Now I never knew the man’s name, and never will know. He changed my existence and my eternity, yet all I can remember is the sickening glean of his large white teeth.  His smile, large and greasy, still haunts me till this day, as it constitutes my first experience with this man. I can’t recall the date on which it happened, all I remember is what he did, how I felt. It was unreal, and for days I disillusioned myself into believing it was just a dream, that my new owner was not a murderer, a criminal.  I remember the night it happened like it was but an hour ago.  He was dragging a large garbage bag toward me, his teeth shining as bright as the moon in the complete darkness. It seemed strange to me that he was out this late, and as the scene unfolded my confusion turned to abhorrence.  When he reached the base of my trunk, he opened the bag and pulled out a young woman of about twenty years. Looking at her damp body I presumed her dead, and as he crumpled up the bag he had used, the blood I noticed on her body grounded my suspicions with horror. He began to drag the body toward the hole in my trunk, the hole my past human friend had once created in me. My purpose began to become clear to me as she neared the inside of my trunk. I was her hiding place, her sacrilegious burial ground.  I looked at her once more. I could the details of her face now, frozen in an eternal silent scream.  Her eyes were still opened, yet the life was gone from them and they were covered by her tangled, bloody mess of hair.  I tried to move, to speak out, yet I couldn’t do anything. The man began to stuff the body within the hole in my trunk, hiding it from view. My silence angered me. I couldn’t stop this exploitation of my body, couldn’t act against this injustice. I felt her cold body pressed within my trunk, and as he walked away, I felt her heartbeat dull and dead, keeping time to a funeral song that would never be played for her. I felt dirty, used, and guilty, and prayed that this would be the only time the man would come. I wished he’d move the next morning, taking his unwelcomed visitor along with him. Despite my desires, I still saw him the next morning, on his daily stroll through the park, as if nothing had happened the night before.  His permanence was made certain a few nights later, as he retreated once again to my sturdy stump, his latest victim in tow.  He did with this body what he had done with the last, stuffing me with as much guilt and human flesh as I could hold. His constant smile sickened me, and behind his eyes no remorse was visible. All his feelings had been passed into me, a silent victim in his cruel game of life. I now could feel both of them, conversing, bleeding, breathing, yet I could do nothing. No one knew what coldness I held within me. What foreboding erupted from my trunk. What death hung in my branches. No one could hear the screams that erupted from inside of me, or feel the chilling heartbeats that kept their rhythm even after life expired. Only I felt blood seeping from the limp corpses, the hollow space in which my innocent human companion once sat now filled with the unknown and perished. The wind through my leaves, the shining sun, neither cooled my feeling of helpless guilt. Who could I tell, how could I show this monstrosity? No voice could escape from the holes in my trunk or from anywhere on me for that manner. As the evening sun dawned on the morning of the second carnage, I felt my branches begin to droop. My leaves wilted in the sunlight and my strong roots withered with melancholy sadness and helplessness.  The bloodthirsty man lived but a few yards away, yet I couldn’t go after him. I couldn’t uproot myself from my grassy stump and tell the world of his awfulness. I was consistent, unmovable, and these were the characteristics he needed for the perfect hiding spot.  He came again that night. He was later than the other two nights, but just as I began to think I was to be spared tonight, I caught a glimpse his white teeth in the darkness and terror rose from inside me. I felt the two bodies within me squirm, there hearts beating like that of a hummingbird, getting so fast and so loud that I expected he would hear them.  I wasn’t surprised to see him toting a bag, but in his other hand was a shovel.  He dropped both by my base, cracked his long, white, sickly knuckles then picked up the shovel and began to dig, scuffing my roots with the metal blade. When the hole was about 3 feet deep and a foot and a half wide, he exposed another young girl; her skull caved in, and dropped her limp remains unceremoniously into the hole. Her back rested against my exposed root, her head hanging dead on her left shoulder. I looked down at her once more before she faded into the dark soil that was piled on top of her. Helplessness so commonplace set in once again, as I felt the bodies surrounding me lying unresponsively against me. I listened to their cries for help, unable to respond.

            “Just a little secret between me and you, aye old-timer?” The murderer’s quip was aimed toward me and made me wish even more that I had control of my branches so I could squash him with a single mighty swing.  He touched my lowest branch, his hands rough and unfeeling on my aging bark.  It was three bodies now. Three. Two were stuffed inside my trunk, one buried under my roots. The stability I’ve always had seemed to be swaying. My beautiful landscape was now morphing into a petty blur, no longer beautiful when viewed through eyes of guilt.  There was nothing I could do and for that I hated my solid stature, my consistent atmosphere condition regardless of what was being done to me. I could no longer take the physical or emotional weight of this dead trio.  I felt my roots start to give involuntarily. Due to age, I was used to this, yet this time it was different. I knew I had to fall, to leave my consistency and expose the atrocity I was now hiding.  With this intuitive notion came my fear of unknown. Where did trees go when they died? No one knew, and though I had seen many a tree make there way from vertical life to horizontal death, I still didn’t know where my comrades had gone. What had happened to them?

            The fall came quicker then I expected, and after a drop that barely lasted seconds I felt the ground vibrate, as pieces of my bark shattered like glass off of my aging body.  It took hours till I was found, but thankfully a young man strolling the park, spotted me. He saw me first and was about to walk away, yet on a second glance he must’ve seen a body for he began to shake, his face turned pale and he inspected me again, making sure his original glimpse was a correct one.  He called the police, at least I assume he did because just minutes later policemen were hacking at my bark and pulling bodies parts out of my trunk.  It was a whir of strangeness, and I felt myself being hauled away by a large truck as policemen raided the southern home to catch the man who had ruined my life.   I was recreated. I was hoping to be something happy and consistent, yet my fate did not take that shape. I was carved into a large oblong box. They died me a deep dark red, the color of dried blood, and as they lowered the body of the one man who ruined me forever, I knew what I was to be. I was lowered into the ground a few days later and there I now sit.  In consistency and justice I spend my eternity and as the days pass I pray for the eternal sleep of the one inside me to take me as well.  But for now I sit in silent consciousness, awaiting the dark days ahead.