“Dear God,” Angela Whitaker paused while kneeling beside her bed. For a moment, her posture seemed absurd. The twenty-something had nothing to say to God at the moment. No request. No angry rant. Just disappointment. “Dear God,” she tried again, straining her voice to make it sound as sincere as possible. After a few moments of exacerbated silence, she gave up, muttering, “Forgive me, for I have nothing to say.” With that, Angela crawled into bed like a child, burying herself under the blankets until she had made a warm cocoon around herself. She pulled the sides in close, as if she was afraid of the coolness of the other side of the bed. She lulled off, too exhausted by reality to think.
Angela opened her eyes wide. She stared at the ceiling of her bedroom for minutes, maybe hours. It took her a long time to notice that the ceiling wasn’t really her ceiling at all. It was much too close. Too dark. It was pressing in. She started to panic on the inside, but her body was too indifferent to move. “Stop it, stop it,” she wanted to say. She opened her mouth, but like a fish on land, she could not inhale or speak. The ceiling pressed further down, until it was inches from her nose and she wanted to scream. Someone grabbed her arms and roughly pulled her off her bed and onto the floor. She sighed, knowing in her mind that she was safe. She had to be. She stood up, because the ceiling was gone, and she was really in a Home Depot in the lamp fixture aisle. There were some antique lamps that were overpriced, and some bulbous ones that looked they had come off the set of some Sci-Fi movie that never made it to the theaters. Every lamp boasted a red light bulb, and Angela wondered mindlessly to herself that red must be cheaper.
“Angie, that was close.” Angela turned to her left, where her boyfriend, Kyle, stood with his hands on his knees, as if to catch his breath.
“Thank you for rescuing me,” Angela said, for a moment remembering the terror of the ceiling pressing in above her.
“Angie, that was too close,” Kyle shook his head from side to side, a blank look on his handsome face. His hair was buzzed short the way she liked it, but every time she reached her hand out to stroke his cheek and reassure him that they were fine, he was just beyond her grasp.
“You need to get back to work. Come see me later, ok?”
“Of course I’ll see you later. Angie, I love you.” The words pleased Angela, but left her uneasy as she walked out of the store and into the woods behind her house. It was autumn, and the aspens were glowing yellow, but there was one tree that had already lost all of its heart-shaped leaves. It looked so tragic, standing there naked while all the trees around it were clothed in spectacular gold. “This doesn’t make any sense,” Angela’s mother appeared from behind the skeletal tree. “Angie, how many aspens are there?”
“I can’t count them all, there are to many!”
“Aspens share roots. All of these are just one tree.”
“Then how come only one is dead?” Angela looked behind her and lost her breath. The dazzling autumnal display had been reduced to twiggy trees like the one that had first caught her eye.
“If one is sick,” her mom replied slowly, “they all are sick. They are all one.”
“No, they have to be different somehow!” Angie explained, because of course something had to be unique about them, just like something was somehow unique about her and about Kyle and their relationship.
“This tree is your love,” a voice from heaven explained. “You have brought it to age prematurely.”
“No, it’s thriving, I promise,” Angela tried to weave excuses as if she was Eve trying to sew clothes for the first time after she bit the apple.
“There’s nothing wrong,” Kyle was by her side again, and Angela breathed a sigh of relief and longing. There was something primal about the way she looked at him. Something protective, because they were in danger, and the trees were withering, or just one tree, or something of the sort. “See, look.” He pointed to a green shoot at the bottom of a trunk, and it grew up smoothly, hypnotizing Angela as it’s leaves folded over into some sort of sack. In moments, the shoot began to wail.
“This isn’t right, this isn’t right!” Angela rushed to the sprout that was as tall as she was and peered into the opening between the leaves. Inside was a baby, small and pink and screaming and groping about blindly with little hands that seemed pulled by some magnetic force to Angela’s face. “We must save the baby!” Angela called out to Kyle while reaching in to free the baby from the vines.
“What baby?” Kyle said, pulling on Angela’s waist and kissing her neck.
“There’s a baby in the tree, and it’s making the trees die!” Angela yelled, not knowing how she came to that conclusion, but knowing that it must be true.
“No, baby. Stay with me.” Angela turned to face Kyle who started kissing her insistently on the mouth. She relished the moment with pleasure, but her mind kept screaming. “Save the trees! Take the baby!” She pulled her face away for a moment, gasping as she said, “No, we must save the trees, because they are one!”
“Just like us,” Kyle said darkly.
Immediately, Angela was on her bed, and Kyle was the force pressing on top of her and she needed to save something for fear they would be one and every time he kissed her, she heard a baby screaming, but she wanted to drown it out with their love. Kyle’s hands grasped her hips so tightly, and his shirt was off, and a little voice of reason broke through her head. “This isn’t right.” She rolled over, pushing herself out of his arms and out of the bed.
Angela hit the floor hard. She startled herself awake, rubbing her eyes and looking around the room. It was normal. The other side of the bed was still cold. He wasn’t there, though he had been earlier that week. She shivered, remembering the feeling of Kyle’s heat next to her and how she pushed herself away just in time, and how Kyle put his hands on his knees. “Angie, that was way to close.”
