Excerpt: For Pete's Sake

There was a brilliant flash of light, and suddenly, there was a shiny, red apple, alone on the floor of a bright white room. It was so bright that you couldn't see the corners or edges of this room, and the apple was vibrating. It shook and skittered about on the floor, becoming more eratic as time went on. Slowly, the stem of the apple started growing the branch that once held it. As time went on, the branch grew and thickened, and as it grew, it reached a point where the branch had branched away from a larger one. At once, the other branches sprouted into existence, leafing out. As the tree began to grow in reverse, the branches and apple floated into the air. Soon the lonely apple was joined by a halo of branches growing inward, and many shiny fellow apples. Soon the largest of branches had formed, and the trunk was slowly sliding towards the floor, the branches high above now. The trunk widened as it reached the floor, splitting into huge roots, and then smaller, and smaller roots until a fabric of roots hung below the glassy floor. Suddenly, the tree began to expand, crushing the floor between its roots. The ceiling broke free, and the walls fell away to reveal a stormy desert night. the tree continued to grow, and its roots ground the glass floor to sand, and dug deep within the sand. The apples became figs, which became human skulls. The branches were bones, and the leaves were money. Money from every country, in every size and color, but recognizably money. The skulls on the tree began to chant.

"Be ware, be ware - be warned and wary, there's nothing more scary. Beyond the taste, sweet as honey, is DEATH!" The skulls shouted the last word, breathed fire and the money caught as if it'd been soaked in gasoline, and the whole tree burned. It burned hot with blue and orange flames giving off a great smoke. It was a great bonfire in the desert. The tree burned untill it was nothing but white ash, falling in on it self, cracking and smoldering and smoking, until there was just a stump. Pete aproached the stump, and looked down. The glassy, white roots stretched down into the sand, and he had to stand on them to see the top of the stump. As he laid his feet on the stump, it moved, flattening out underneath each foot. It was lifting him up, so he could see the top. Once he could see the top of the stump, like a large white dais, with smoldering shards pointed towards the sky. Each shard started to rise up, floating away from the stump. Pete could see the ones nearest him, and they showed him a bit of his fractured past. Each playing a memory as it floated by. The tree carried him to the center of its stump, shards flying by on either side, in ring patterns, as if the rings of the tree had separated from each other and shattered into millions of peices. He watched as memories he knew and some he didn't floated by. There were some in which he was to small to remember, and some he thought must happen into the future. He felt a stabbing pain in his foot, and he looked down, and a shard had impaled his foot. It sliced off the end of his foot, and slowly floating upwards, pauses shortly by his face, glistening with blood. Soon more shards were stabbing him from every angle, and the blood fell.

Pete woke up, rubbing his eyes, a prickly sensation all over his body. The sun's nearly at the horizon now, and he wanders downstairs, after putting his shoes back on. He decides to go for a walk. His father's asleep on the couch as he walks up to and out of the front door to the park.