06 Jul Seethe
“Seethe”
Written by Samuel Jack Edited by Craig Groshek Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek Narrated by N/ACopyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on CreepypastaStories.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed, adapted to film, television or audio mediums, republished in a print or electronic book, reposted on any other website, blog, or online platform, or otherwise monetized without the express written consent of its author(s).
🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available
⏰ ESTIMATED READING TIME — 13 minutes
Blue. Life is blue. Existence, awakening sentience, all of it is blue. Not black, nor shining brightness or anything, but blue. True blue. Once in a blue moon. That’s a saying, right? The blue of ignorance, wafting like…oh, what are they? Those lovely warbling mountains of blue, whomes? Was that the word? Whomes? That doesn’t feel right, but I can’t think of anything better. So, for now, life was as blue as whomes.
I’m not sure how long I was in the blue place. Something close to an eternity, though the blue has no concept of time. It was just blue, or so I told myself. Yet, over time, the expanse of it all began to separate enough for me to distinguish that there was something…more. With what limited experience I had, I couldn’t make it out. After all, I had existed in nothing but blue, so the presence of anything else was jarring.
Nevertheless, in spite of my lack of experience, the blue began to pull away and shift into what I would come to define as me. Truly and utterly me. Have you ever even considered the concept of you for a moment? To think that there was once nothing, just tides of whomes and emptiness, then there’s you! But not you, per se. No, this was me. I was me.
I am me. Unfortunately, I haven’t the foggiest idea of what that meant, so I carried on exploring this new sense of self.
There wasn’t much I could do at first; that was clear. My motion seems absent. Not necessarily restricted or taken, but nonexistent altogether. There weren’t even the pangs of constriction. It was as if I was fundamentally aware of the lack of something I could never do. Had I been able to move at one point? Of course I could; don’t be ridiculous. I ended up here, didn’t I? I had to be able to move; I just couldn’t now. That was it, I could move here, to the blue, and now I couldn’t anymore! I could feel it easier to make these sorts of deductions, so I forced myself to make more. Perhaps the blue, then? Start at the beginning and work from there, I suppose. What was this blue? It was like whomes, that much was for sure (I’m still not convinced on the name, but we’ll stick to it for now), but what else could it be? Open, vast, vastness, emptiness, adjectives began filtering through my head as I tried to make sense of this thing. Big. Well, that’s descriptive enough. Blue. Evident, now what else? Sky blue. Now, there’s something.
Sky blue. Blue as the sky. In fact, with the world starting to adjust around me, I begin to see the immeasurable infinity of the blue. The specks of white, the glowing…sun! It’s the sun! I’m beneath the sky! I’m outside, outdoors! Okay, you’re outdoors. What do you know about outdoors? Nature? Life? Dirt? Gritty, brown, sandy dirt that I’ve always hated.
Wait, have I always hated dirt? I think I have. In fact, I know I have! I hate dirt! And yet, here I was, surrounded by it. Ugh, it just made my skin crawl thinking about it, the grains of scratchy earth covering me. Do I even have skin? No…no I don’t think so. Not anymore, I don’t think. What a sad thing to realize.
I think I very much miss having skin. The touching of things, the sensations of life, all of it seemed to now be but a distant taste in my mouth. If I try hard enough, I can almost conjure it to my senses. Heat, the warmth of the sun, the dew of the morning. Slicing my hand on a nail. Skinning my knee on the horrid dirt. To walk down the street, brushing my fingertips against…fingertips? What do I mean by fingertips? I don’t have fingertips, that I know for sure. No, no, instead I have…well what are these things called? Bunches? Limps? Bunches of lumpches of brunches of…branches. Branches! I have branches! And leaves and bark and knots and life! Am I…am I a tree?
No, that doesn’t make any sense. Trees don’t think; they shouldn’t think. They’re trees, after all. What good is a tree that can think?
Unless all trees could think. Is that something I should know? How well do I know trees? As far as I remember, trees don’t know much, especially things about trees. Maybe, maybe I’m a new kind of tree? Are there still new kinds of trees? And what would a tree even need to do to be able to think? You would need a brain at the very least. That I know for sure I don’t have.
What do I have for sure? Branches and leaves, noted. Now that I can see them more clearly, I see the fluttering of green foliage as a breeze passes. My aching, gray branches lean from side to side, flowing with the breath of the world. My trunk is modest yet strong. My dense wood held me firmly in place in the horrible dirt. My roots suspended in dark agony as they twisted and cemented in the earth. Deeper and plunging than I knew was even possible. Tendrils amassing a labyrinth under the surface. I coiled through rocks and sediment and…
What was this? I felt my roots coiled through something, yet I couldn’t define it. It was stone, as far as I could tell, yet too fragile to be a boulder or brick. I tried to further my powers of deduction, but even with my newfound abilities, I couldn’t figure it out. But just before I could get a good read of the mystery rock, I noticed my second discovery. Out of the blueness and the infinite curiosity came a man.
Ugly wasn’t a good word for him. It was too kind, too simple. Ugly held the possibility that no matter how he looked, you could trust him, maybe. But this man, just by the look of him, I held nothing but the deepest of malcontent. He had a thick, barrel-like chest and thin arms. His chin, or what I could make out to be his chin, was coated with an unflattering layer of hair. Not enough to be a beard, not enough to be a shadow, but that disingenuous speckling of scruff that makes you itch. He had thick, square-framed glasses that magnified his already shifty eyes into port holes of white and uneasy brown. Even though I towered over the man, I felt intimidated. My newfound senses all rang with the same sensation: danger. That trepidation only heightened when I saw him lift his hand and point something at me. I wanted to run, to scream, to even just flinch. But no, I was a tree, and I had to watch in still horror as his hand lifted, aimed at me, and pressed the trigger.
The spray of water from his hose sent me into an uneasy but relieved shock. Mists of refreshing rain poured over my leaves and removed the fine coating of dirt that had caked on. I took this chance to gain my bearings. The man was watering me, a tree. He feels some obligation towards me, some kind of responsibility. Was I his? Did he own me? The mere thought of belonging to this man sent a creeping uneasiness through my whole body, more than I anticipated. Yet, no matter my discontent, I seemed to be his tree. I didn’t know why that idea bothered me. People owned trees; that was a fact of life. He takes care of me, evidently, and I do as all trees do; sit and do nothing. That was my duty. Do nothing and just let Harrold water me and…
Harrold. His name was Harrold McElmur. I remembered that now. He introduced himself, and we laughed over it. It had something to do with…oh God, think. I force my entire being to recollect, to remember that…that my uncle’s name was Elmur Harrolds. A minute coincidence. We thought it was funny. We laughed. I noted his teeth were the color of weak tea. He invited me in for coffee, and I…did.
I drank coffee. But trees don’t drink coffee. Nor do they laugh or judge or have uncles. The things I’ve done, or at least thought I’ve done, are not the actions of a simple maple. They are the wantings and memories of a person. Of a breathing, thinking, human being.Fear drilled into my strange being as the truth began to dawn on me. I am a person. I am alive! Dear God, I’m a human being; how the hell did I end up here? I needed to get out of here. I wanted to scream, to run, to claw off this wood and bark and reveal the screaming monstrosity I was no doubt underneath.
But I didn’t. I just sat there, being watered, motionlessly in this Hell. I wanted so badly to fall to my knees and weep, for some release from this confusion. Maybe if I forced myself, I could wake up in my own bed, a bed people have, and let all of this be some faraway dream. But, this was no such reality. I just had to sit here and stew. To sit and ponder was my agony, and I had merely begun. So, that was exactly what I did. I just sat there and finished being watered. I watched Harrold walk back through the yard and into…a building? No, a house. I was in his backyard. This man had me planted in his backyard and was none the wiser of my tortured state. Or if he was, he didn’t care.
No, he didn’t know. He couldn’t have known. He was a frightening man, but an oblivious one. I was alone in this. For some odd reason that I couldn’t place, I felt some relief in that fact. No, I felt relief in the realization that Harrold didn’t know. My distrust hit a new depth of curiosity then. Did I dislike this man enough to alienate him, even if it meant turning away my only contact in this nightmarish state? I pondered on this for a good while.
That turned out to be the next thing I realized. As a tree, you have all the time in the world, so waiting is no short commodity. What would have once felt like hours mutated into minutes. So, I thought about this question for a week, a full unbroken week of nothing but Harrold and my distrust. On the morning of that eighth day, I found that infallible truth I knew to be within me. I didn’t like Harrold. Beyond the disliking of his look or demeanor or his unkempt house. I hated him. I hated Harrold McElmur. As a tree, you can’t move or scream or do anything to show that rage. But you can feel. By God, you can feel deeply, deeper than you could possibly imagine. You can feel intensities of emotions that you don’t even know exist. In that wooden purgatory, feeling was all I had. And all I had was unbridled, unmitigated rage towards that man. That I knew beyond a doubt. Now I just needed to know why.
I gauged my surroundings again. As I began to hone my senses, certain realities of my prison began to take shape. The texture of the grass around me, the chill of autumn…no, winter wind, the dryness in the air. The siding of the house, I suppose Harrold’s house, was the same cruel shade of his teeth, a disinteresting amber. Filthy windows and a screen door were my only portals to the world of the disgusting man. I would see him shamble inside every so often, glancing out of windows, sipping coffee, and reading in his corner. He was like one of those German cuckoo clocks, set on that hyper-specific track that gave the impression of humanity. Wake up, look out, eat, and at the same time every day, he watered me with that damn hose.
It wasn’t the act itself that disgusted me; it was my only source of water. But it was how he did it. He savored it. He enjoyed the ritual of being the only one to bring me nourishment. Even though I never saw him say a word, I could just see it. He saw himself as my savior. I wish he’d let me starve. Yet, there I was, healthy in spite of all my best efforts.
Funny, I took pride in being healthy once. To be still and contemplative was a dream, held together by some human desire for peace. I remember that now, that wanting. Always wanting something, that’s what people do. Or, I guess what I did, once upon a time. I wanted the bonus, the shiny corvette, the pretty girl at the bar, the extra mile. I wanted the extra mile that day. Like a foggy picture, I remember it now. I got up early that morning to run my commute, but I wanted to push myself. I wanted it, the idiot I was. Just like I wanted to wave hello to that man…to a man who introduced himself with a funny name.
Reality became more clear. My surroundings almost completely faded from that blue infinity as I reached my seventeenth month in Harrold’s backyard. I could see the ants burrowing in my trunk. I felt the drafts of the unforgiving sun beat on my leaves. Still, I felt my roots tendril around those smooth stones beneath me. Deeper and deeper I burrowed. I harnessed all of my focus for a month straight to feel around them. They bowed and curved, unlike anything I had ever experienced in this life or in the past. They were thin, almost brittle. Several times, I could feel my roots crack through the rock, thereby dissolving the mystery that lay beneath me, bit by bit. Then, after thirty days of stretching and crawling, I identified my first clue. As the realization washed over me, I prayed for Hell, as it had to have been kinder.
In Harrold’s backyard, almost two years from the blue, I held what was left of my rotting jaw.
Though not a sound could be heard, I did my best to scream. I wanted to butcher my throat, shatter the filthy glass in his house and topple the world. I howled like a mad man. I shrieked until I lost all sense of the idea. I screamed for five years. It was ridiculous to say that out loud, but time had lost all meaning now. I screamed for five years, all the while, my cursed roots wrapping around what used to be me, or still was me. Yet, no matter my efforts, I didn’t even budge. For five years, Harrold carried about his business and watered me. There I was, for five years, in sadistic agony as I was nurtured by the man who…I remember now.
I remember everything.
He invited me in for coffee. I recoiled from the stench, but I was polite. I took the mug. Secretly, I wiped my sweaty hand on his sofa. We laughed. He excused himself. The coffee tasted burnt. My tongue went numb. I thought I had an allergic reaction. Harrold watched me on the stairs. I choked to death on his rug, staring at his television. It hummed calmly, quietly, as it was only plugged into a dead channel. Not static or a menu, but just a plain and simple blue.
Blue.
Blue was the last thing I saw in life.
Blue was the color of my face as the strychnine ate away at my lungs.
Blue was the sky as Harrold calmly took my body and dug a hole.
Blue was the ribbon he tied around the sapling he intended to take home.
Blue was the hose he cared for it with.
Blue was the innocence of the tree’s purpose.
Blue was the devouring of myself.
Blue was my misery.
Blue was my eternity.
Blue was the color of my death.
Yet, my leaves are green. My bark is brown and my bones are white. My roots are black and my hatred, oh, my hatred, is red.
With all of my might, I wanted to march into that house. Oh, I wanted nothing more than to claw myself from this earth and do to him what he did to me. I wanted to splatter the walls with his regret and paint myself in my vengeance. To look into his flat, dead eyes as I stripped him, flesh and bone, would be the greatest pleasure I could think of. Yet, nothing changed. It didn’t matter that I knew my state. I was still the tree, I was still the body beneath, and I was still captive to my quiet jail. It almost seemed like an insult to injury. What better way to suffer than being aware of it, still unable to do a single thing about it? At least as a sapling, I held the gift of ignorance; maybe that was better.
Despite my revelations, time marched on. My branches wilted and grew in accordance with the weather. The labyrinth of tunnels the ants dug into my core spread without a word from me. The sun ordained my leaves to blister or dry, never seeming to find that perfect temperature. At noon, every single day, Harrold would water me. Again and again and again, like he was blinking in and out of existence. The momentary pains of seeing him felt seconds apart now, yet centuries long. No, I had to suffer and look at that smug face. I got to see his wrinkles grow and his hair gray. Every so often, a speckling of cuts would spread on his chin as he attempted to keep his semi-beard at bay. It was as if he was a nebulous idea of a man, a mere impression of a human being. If I thought about it long enough, he was about as much of a human being as I was. It didn’t seem fair.
I watched him age. His back bowed, and his muscles grew thin. The grimy man who invited me in all those years ago was almost gone, replaced by a withered husk. Yet, it wasn’t enough. I wanted his knees buckled every time I saw him. I hope his heart gave out every time he picked up the hose. I prayed he would fall down those stairs, and the ants would find him as tantalizing as my bark. Still, my suffering was only a game of waiting. I know that now. It was an absolution in this world that my hatred, my wrath, was not in vain. All I needed to do was do as all trees and buried corpses can do; feel and wait. So, that is what I did; I waited and felt everything.
I felt confused, frustrated, saddened by what he did to me. I wondered why he did the thing he did, if I had wronged him in some way. Perhaps, there was a feud I had never known. There must have been a plan, a plot to assassinate me, something to lead to this, something deserving. But, in all honesty, it most likely was just the way it is. I ran an extra mile, Harrold saw an opportunity, and that was that. An ill-deserved hell, fashioned just for me. Well, if I was to suffer, I’d do it as passionately as I could.
My years were spent crawling my way upwards. I took in all of the sun, water and nutrients this damned corpse could give me, and I skyrocketed. My branches turned into trunks themselves, and I saw over the fence. My gaze saw above the house and the tree line. Still, it wasn’t enough. My trunk spread all throughout the garden, overtaking everything like a parasite. The ants flocked to me, wanting to taste the sweet nectar of seething rage within my trunk. I let them eat. I let them devour me, urging them to gorge themselves on my spite. The birds nested in my malice. Squirrels became intoxicated by my hatred, and I overtook his backyard. This was my domain of misery, and he watered it. I let him feed my rage.
More and more he let me grow, never stopping to think of what I would do if I could just get him in arm’s reach. If only I could form hands out of my form and grab him. But, the tree can wait. While the decrepit, old man hobbled about his pitiful life, I waited for my moment.
My moment didn’t come for almost sixty-seven years. It had been the better half of a century since the blue, and I was still as conscious, even more so. But Harrold, the digusting, murderous pig, was practically bedridden in his old age. I knew he had not much longer left in this world, so I needed to act fast. Luckily, when time had claimed Harrold as its victim, he lost his ability to do what he loved. There was no more coffee in the morning, no TV playing in the background. But, even more, the watering stopped.
I had never felt thirst like this before. For weeks, all moisture drained from me and my wood dried to a brittle chalk. I enjoyed the suffering. Let the pain course through me. Every twinge of misery felt like a small victory as my wood became as delicate as glass. Then, inches from a withered death, in the middle of what could have been a millionth night, I felt the burrowing of the ants’ crunch. My wood cracked against the small kingdom within me, and finally, I toppled into his house.
It was a cacophony of crashing and snaps. Pain seared through my form gloriously, and my branches shrieked in victory. Though I couldn’t have placed the origin, a small fire began to crawl up my side. I let the fire seethe through me and breathe my hatred into his home. Amidst the crackling and crashing, I heard his screams. I had never heard anything more beautiful. Harrold weeped from beneath my trunk. Held in place, trapped in his bed by the massive log crushing him, he could do nothing but wail in blood-sputtering agony. I watched as his lungs failed and he became noiseless, his mouth still mouthing wails. As the fire crept up on me and lapped at the bed frame, I smiled to myself. I smiled because I knew there was nothing I could do. For the last time, we both sat there, still, silent, bound to Hell together.
🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available
Written by Samuel Jack Edited by Craig Groshek Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek Narrated by N/A🔔 More stories from author: Samuel Jack
Publisher's Notes: N/A Author's Notes: N/AMore Stories from Author Samuel Jack:
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Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on CreepypastaStories.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed, adapted to film, television or audio mediums, republished in a print or electronic book, reposted on any other website, blog, or online platform, or otherwise monetized without the express written consent of its author(s).