《Come to the Tree》


 Chapter 1: The Tree

    There lives a man in an abandoned school campus. He has walked the empty, pristine, white-tiled hallways for many years, wandering through its several floors to find something, but he does not know what. He spends a lot of his time at the center, where a giant tree has grown, just taller than the school, with its barren branches covering the roof. The bark of the tree is almost an ashy grey and wrinkled like the skin of the elderly, it seems that it has not tasted nutrients or water in decades. However, the tree stands tall, crucified in its tomb, the school campus.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    The man has always wondered what the tree was, what it meant, why it was there, and what happened in the school to be abandoned but the building to still exist. It was a strange place, he noticed. It is one where the sun never shines, drowned by the clouds that often grace the land with their rain. Even the calls of birds are rarely heard, their tone devoid of any comfort.


    The man continues to wander the campus, never leaving and always moving.

 Chapter 2: The Lighter

    Once the man was looking around the principal¡¯s office, or at least that¡¯s what he assumed it to be, which he had visited many times before. He gazed across the bookshelf in the back of the room, behind the large wooden desk. The man never got bored at re-reading the names on the spines on the books, especially when he could swear that he had never seen the names of some of these books on the shelf before. Still, the man does not question the strange nature of the place.


    After scanning the bookshelf, the man turned to the drawers on the wooden desk and sat down on the squeaky office chair in preparation of his upcoming search. He opened the drawers methodically, carefully analyzing the contents in each of the drawers.


    Many of the drawers were filled with old paperwork, detention slips, and some sort of files about the previous students. The man would also read through these files when he was in this office but could never remember the names of the students that were written in the papers, no matter how hard he tried to engrave the words in his mind. Every time he would set the files back in their appropriate drawers, the names were erased from his memory, along with any information he had newly obtained. It was frustrating, but again, he did not inquire too much about this phenomenon.


    As the man continued on his path of searching through the drawers, he found something he vividly remembered not being there before. The drawer he had just opened seems to be a collection of all the items that were confiscated from the students. Inside the drawer were items such as a deck of cards, a dead MP3 player, packs of chewing gum, candy bars, and bras stuffed under all the other garbage.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    There was one item in the drawer that caught the man¡¯s attention, it was a plain, cheap butane lighter that seemed to stick out amongst the confiscated items. When the man picked up the lighter, he did so with unexpected struggle, since the lighter apparently weighed a pound or two by the man¡¯s estimation. When he clicked the flint wheel and button together, he stared at the small flame it produced.


    While impossible for such a small lighter, it produced an incredibly potent orange flame glowing with a purple tint. If a normal lighter could create a simple, dull yellow flame, this flame seemed much fuller and more powerful.


    As the man continued to stare into the flame, he noticed small orange glowing orbs detach from their parent flame and float to his head. At first, there were only a few appearing at a time and would orbit his head. Quickly, however, hundreds of these orbs filled the room and skittered around the air as if they were excited. The glowing orbs around the man¡¯s head were whispering to him tales. They were tales of the students.


    The man saw young, teenage students running around the tree in the middle of the building, laughing with smiles pasted on their faces. He heard all of the gossip flying around the crowds, what the teachers did in their lives, the newest relationships, newest scandals, and rumors about the principal. The man could see couples kissing in the hallways, students passing notes to each other in class or whispering answers, and a few fights in the bathrooms. While it was not perfect, the man felt the youthful spirit of school as told by these glowing orbs.


    Suddenly, the orbs around the man burst into flames, and he swore he could hear screams. One by one, more orbs began to combust. The room turned from a mystical purple dotted with the orange glowing orbs, to those orbs igniting the air and overpowering the purple tint. Then, the burning orbs died off, and so did the flame of the lighter.


    The man tried several times to re-ignite the lighter but would not listen to his commands. Successfully confused, the man returned the lighter to the drawer and left the principal¡¯s office.

 Chapter 3: The Flute

    When the man was walking down a flight of stairs and peered around the corner out of instinctual curiosity, he found a double door that he thought would lead to nowhere, or maybe a closet. The man approached the door and opened it, to find a large auditorium with maybe twenty rows of seats, the next higher up than the one before, and a wide stage at the front of the room.


    Lying peacefully in the spotlight at the front of the stage was a silver flute in perfect condition. The man ignored the rows of seats and decided to first explore the obvious flute, as if it was being presented to him. When he picked up the flute, he admired the polish of the metal, the simple intricacies of the buttons and mouthpiece, feeling out the shape of the object.


    He gently raised the flute to his lips, positioned the hands on the buttons, and began to play it. He did not know how to play the flute, but the sounds just flowed out of him and through the instrument, producing a tranquil melody that broke the dreadful silence the man had experienced for several years. The music was a welcome surprise and he continued to play the flute with reverence, dancing across the stage as if he was a true performer.


    The man imagined himself as if he was playing in front of an audience that filled the rows of empty seats and he was in a green costume. He finished his song and the crowd cheered for him, pleased at his skill. After him came several people dressed in costume performing a handful of classic plays and musicals. There were characters like Romeo, Juliet, Titania, Lysander, Helena, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Brad, and Juliet. The people in these costumes had a passion behind their speech, a genuine pleasure that they were performing these acts, their smiles and laughs appearing real.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    However, once all the acts and plays were finished, and the audience had done enough cheering, the man found himself backstage, where all of the actors were bantering and changing. The smiles and laughs faded for many of them and were replaced with cries or screams.


    There was a group of girls that were getting very passionate in their argument. Most of the girls were telling the others of how bad their performance was, they couldn¡¯t get the crowd¡¯s attention even if they killed themselves. They were shaming them about how they didn¡¯t deserve to be in the play with how ugly and flat their bodies were and how unappealing their voices sounded. The smaller half of the girls were crying and arguing with the others, refusing to let those spoiled witches speak freely of them. Eventually, one of the crying girls slapped another girl, and the two groups started clawing at each other.


    In another corner, there was a group of guys shoving around a smaller student and throwing his clothes on the ground, all the while laughing. One of the guys sauntered over to the man and grabbed his flute. He was belittling him of how pathetic his performance was, prancing around the stage like a fish and tainting the air with his horrific notes. He was poking the man with his own flute until the man suddenly woke up on the empty stage in the spotlight. As he got up, he noticed all the bruises covering his body and small cuts, which let a pool of blood form on the stage.


    The man abandoned the flute and the auditorium altogether, walking out through the double doors.

 Chapter 4: The Rusty Knife

    The man found himself in the cafeteria. He walked along the clean tables, examining their shapes and those of the benches for seats. He found vending machines in the cafeteria and the many bags of chips, bars of candy, and drinks inside, but when he pressed the buttons, they would not budge. He tried to shove his hand through the flap near the bottom to find¡­something, but even the flap would not move. The man gave up on the vending machines.


    He moved towards the back of the cafeteria, where the large displays of empty trays, which once held food to be served to the students, rested. He examined these large metal tables and, again, none of the trays would move. He led himself further back into the kitchen rooms, where there were locked closet doors, sinks, empty shelves, and peering out from under a smaller metal table was a black handle. Pulling the black handle from under the table, the man found a rusty kitchen knife.


    The man studied the beveled edge of the curve along the blade, feeling its dullness on his skin and the cheap handle in his hand. The man passed his index finger along the rust that has formed on the faces of the knife and witnessed the chaotic rust turn into lines, then pictures, and then into reality. The kitchen turned dark, there were two women facing each other, one of which in close proximity to a shining kitchen knife. They were arguing.


    The woman close to the kitchen knife was visibly shaking, her hands and lips trembling, her eyes wide at the other woman. The other woman was especially hysterical, waving her hands in the air while making herself look bigger than she really was. The screaming was audible but distorted. The sounds propagating through the air could only be recognized as warbles and shrieks, nothing resembling language. In those distorted shrieks, however, were fragments of sound that were actually comprehendible. Words like ¡°husband¡±, ¡°wench¡±, ¡°children¡±, and ¡°bastard¡± were isolated in the air.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Finally, the shrieking woman rushed at the shaking one, shoved her to the ground, and grabbed the kitchen knife on the metal table. She stood there, for a moment, relishing the difference in power between her and this teenage child. The woman got on her knees, raised the knife above her head, and swung down. The kitchen knife pierced the girl¡¯s throat, and she looked at her, enjoying the pain in her eyes as her voice escaped her throat as bubbles of blood.


    The woman raised the knife and swung down, again, and again, and again. The woman did not stop the massacre until the girl¡¯s body resembled mesh more than it did a person. There were tens of holes in her torso, her ears and tongue cut off, eyes gouged out, fingers and toes gnarled by the woman¡¯s teeth. Blood pooled around the girl and stained the woman. The woman tossed the knife to the side, stood up, and left the kitchen.


    When the man became conscious of himself again, he was gripping the rusty knife, now covered in blood instead of rust, so was the man. When he looked away from the knife, he saw bodies. Hundreds of bodies piled on top of each other across the cafeteria, even pinned against the walls and hanging from the ceiling. They were all mangled and no square inch lacked at least a speck of their blood.


    The man stared at the knife in his hand again and placed it gently on the small metal table. Almost ignoring the dead bodies, the man shoved them out of his way and approached the cafeteria exit. His hand on the handle, he turned around and the bodies were gone, so was the knife. He left the cafeteria.

 Chapter 5: The Clock

    He sat at an empty desk at the front of a pristine classroom on the top floor and stared at the clock at the top of the wall opposite to him. He watched the second hand move, inciting the minute hand, and evidently the hour hand, to move. There was what seemed to be a struggle in the motions of the second hand. It was a war.


    Dark knights on black horses against an army of steel, an army of hope. The two forces collided, but it was a slaughter. The dark knights pierced through their hopeful enemies and crippled their wills. They advanced further into their formation, but nothing could be done to stop their approach. Their weapons, armor, and bodies littered the field. The man watched the second hand travel around the clock, as well as the slow minute hand. When the minute hand struck 12, and the last knight from the steel army fell, the number 1 from the clock shattered and disappeared.


    Once again, the army of steel came back to the field, but this time, there were more knights. As for the dark knights, there were fewer, but riding meaner horses with larger weapons and bodies. They fought, but the steel knights could not resist the rampage from the dark knights. The minute hand struck 12 again, and the number 2 shattered on the clock.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    This went on for hours as the man simply watched it all happen. The army of steel knights grew and grew, while the dark knights became fewer and fewer. However, the dark knights always came back fiercer, stronger, and bigger. The numbers 3, 4, 5, 6 all fell from the clock, all the way to 11.


    On the twelfth hour, there was a massive Knight in pitch black armor wielding a sword the size of a tree. It was against a sea of knights in steel armor, roaring in the face of its upcoming adversity. It was sad, in a way, for them to always return with new hope and to be crushed over and over again. There was no defeating the dark knights.


    The second, minute, and hour hand all struck 12 and shattered it, along with the three hands. All that was left was a blank quartz clock covered by glass.


    The man looked out of the windows that lined the wall to his left and stared at the tree.

 Chapter 6: The End

    He sat there, on one of the benches, and stared, for the last time, at the tree in front of him.


    Hanging from the tree was a large, blank clock that was nailed into the tree by the rusty kitchen knife. Yet that was not what held the man¡¯s attention, it was the person standing on one of the tree¡¯s branches playing the flute. The melody was simple, two alternating notes in ominous tones. The man saw a clone of himself playing that flute, it was the one on the branches.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    A fire spread out from the base of the tree and enveloped it fully, spreading to the building surrounding it, consuming all. It was everything. It was fire, the clone of the man playing the flute, the clock, and the rusty kitchen knife.


    The man stood from his bench and walked forward. The flaming tree was pulling him with its silent voice. The man slowly walked into the fire, allowing it to devour him. This was it, after all, it was the tree.


    When the man succumbed to its flames, the fire vanished, the man playing the flute, the clock, and the knife all disappearing. Everything was back to how it was.