Free Arjun by Fionn Jameson Page A

disgustingly thick.
    The sudden quiet of the night hit me as abruptly as a drunk driver hits an unsuspecting deer on the highway, and the saw fell from my nerveless fingers.
    Please. I told you to stop, did I not?
    My head spun, and I was so afraid my head would roll off my shoulders that my hands went up, just to hold it in place. No use. I was about to disgrace myself in front of a tree that possessed a very strange defense mechanism.
    I don’t want to hurt you anymore. I don’t like to hurt people. But you give me no choice. I must protect what I can.
    The fact that I was talking to a tree didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was that my stomach had to quit rebelling, that my head had to stop spinning around in manic circles.
    “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I won’t cut you down, I swear!” A few more seconds, and I was going to be very, very sick.
    It was quiet, just for a moment.
    Do you promise? Do you swear?
    At that point, I would have said anything just to stop myself from throwing up the meatloaf I’d eaten earlier. “Yes! Yes, I promise! I promise! Please, just make it stop!”
    And, slowly but surely, mercifully, the world stopped spinning, and my stomach settled down enough for me to take a few breaths that hurt my chest, as if something was stabbing me with tiny needles.
    I am sorry I had to do that. It is...not often that I resort to such violent measures. Usually, you humans turn away when I say no, when I tell you to leave this place. But you’re quite different.
    Snow soaked the knees of my jeans, and I sat back, heedless of the wetness seeping through the denim. “Jesus mother…I don’t know what the hell you did to me, but it worked. Don’t woris h could n’t ry. I’ll definitely go elsewhere.”
    Thank you.
    No. The voice wasn’t in my head, as I’d thought, but in the air around me, carried by the soft, cold breeze that ran along my exposed skin like frozen silk.
    Dementia? Something that I ate last night? Paranoia?
    It couldn’t be. The experience I’d just felt, the sickness that threatened to overwhelm me, made it clear that whoever this person was, whoever the speaker was, he was not a figment of my imagination. For one thing, it was far too vivid, and besides, I’d never really had much of an imagination to begin with.
    “Yeah, sure, whatever.” I felt like I was trying to learn how to breathe all over again. “You know, if you really didn’t want me to cut a tree down, you could have just said so, instead of turning my stomach into mush and my brain into a carnival joyride.”
    Ah, but would you have listened?
    I caught the faint strum of amusement in the timbre I somehow recognized as male. “Hah, most likely not. Then again, I can’t believe I’m talking to you now. If anyone ever walked in on this, they’d probably have me locked away for a very long time.”
    You humans. Always thinking. Always wanting to know more. It was both your gift and your undoing. Why must you always have to have proof? Why must you always have to doubt? Why can’t you just take things as they are?
    A regular old philosopher this guy was.
    “Yeah, well, that’s us humans, all right. Hell, I know people who’d cheat their own mothers if they thought they could get away with it,” I said, wishing I didn’t sound so jaded.
    Once, Christmas had been all about giving cheer, about extending goodwill to the fellow man. Now, Christmas was a businessman’s dream with lots and lots of sales, an abandonment of the ideals we’d once held dear. Almost made me ashamed of the very human race I was a part of. Jolly Old Saint Nick would have been embarrassed to set foot outside the North Pole, that was for damn sure.
    My ass was starting to get numb from the cold, but that all seemed so materialistic. After all, it wasn’t often one got to hear a disembodied voice echoing around them, buzzing in their ears.
    The silence stretched on, heavy, weighing me down.
    “By the way. My name’s Evelyn.