The Rock Star Who Ate My Heart

Uncut Goodies Part 5: Un-caged Battle for a Soul Long Lost

Even through the rain and cloud-filled dark of the approaching storm, and through the shadow of the valley of dread spreading wide inside him, Danny Blue could see clearly enough the gargantuan tree that spanned a good seventy-five feet around and stood the height of a three-story house.  The size of the oak would have been less astounding had he been looking at the entire tree. As it was, what stood before him was what had been left after all of the tree's upper branches had been sawed off and only the huge stubs of four or five main branches remained. 

        Danny had never been able to imagine precisely how large the tree must have been before it was mutilated in a manner which demonstrated so superbly how inferior certain souls felt before the inexplicability of natural wonder, but he suspected now that its branches must have reached out over a full fifth of the park.  He imagined that had they still been there they might both shelter and somehow restore the thing he had lost along with Valerie.  

        The way it looked now, the entire storm-filled night sky could have been the leaves and branches of the barren tree.  If the branches had been there, he thought, it would look a lot like the silhouette on the cover of the books in his bag.  Instead, he mostly recalled what one of Valerie's professors from the Froggtown College of Creative Arts had told them about the tree during an evening tour of the park and downtown area. It was where, she said, a black man had been hung and burned.

        "The assailants severed his penis and placed it in his mouth, which at the time was not a practice restricted to residents of Froggtown or the Deep South." After the professor said this, Valerie had walked on the roots up to the trunk of the tree, pressed her face against the broad hard belly of it, and said, "That's true. They did kill a man here. They killed several men and women here.  But the tree was always against it."

        A sharp lance of lightning jabbed one of the sawed-off branches of the oak and a broken limb suddenly dangled beneath it.  As Danny Blue waited for it to hit the ground, a strange moan came from the dangling limb.  The smell of scorched flesh overpowered the night aroma of rain and flora and ocean.  He blinked away the water in his eyes as he focused on the form dangling beneath the giant oak. 

        That's not a branch. That's a man. 

        A roar of anguish exploded out of the writhing smoldering body and shot straight into Danny Blue's skin.  The heat and horror of it spread through his blood until it filled him like a madness.  He looked up and down the broad sidewalk for a policeman or anyone who might confirm that he was looking at something real and help him do something for this wretched human gurgling agony and outrage.  Why wasn't he dead?  And what was he doing between his legs?  Trying to force his genitals back into their proper place? 

        This can't be real because things like this don't happen anymore and I'm going to close my eyes, I'm going to close my eyes and count to ten so when I open them the man with his dick cut off won't be hanging from that tree, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I'll do it again and make sure.

        When he opened his eyes, another man stood beneath the squirming form of the one hanging from the tree.  A swirl of dizziness churned in Danny Blue's skull as the wind whipped around him and nearly knocked him to the ground.  From where Danny Blue stood, the man beneath the tree looked almost like a statue with an outline so flawlessly formed that Danny Blue thought he might be exactly that.  Except that he moved and did something to convince Danny Blue he had fallen asleep somewhere and was having a ridiculous frightmare.  If he screamed, he should wake up.  Just as he opened his mouth to yell himself awake, the man beneath the tree slightly bent his legs then propelled himself up off the ground.

by Aberjhani