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A short story for my english class inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's slaughterhouse-five |
Tree of Life At the beginning of time god created a tree. This tree wasn’t any ordinary tree though, this tree was magical. We have all heard the old cliché, “money doesn’t grow on trees.” Well, that’s not entirely true. This tree grew money amongst many other things: fruits, knowledge, gold-bars, diamonds, rubies, stocks, bonds, I have even heard that if you tap the tree you get the elixir of life but more recently it’s been oozing oil. Whatever humanity desires the tree will grow. By now you are probably thinking that this tree sounds wonderful, and that you might like to know its location to pick some of its fruits, but I assure this tree is pure evil and you should just forget all about it. This is the very same tree that is directly responsible for humanities downfall. You see, in the beginning man was given paradise. God made Eden just for us, but for some reason I have never really understood, he made it with this evil fucking tree smack dab in the middle of it that grew delicious looking forbidden apples and told the dumb humans not to eat any of them because it would make them smart, but I guess God had his reasons. He is the all-knowing and all-powerful one. So naturally the dumb-bitch Eve eats the apple, just like god knew she would, and in a stroke of his wonderfully white beard he took paradise away from humans forever leaving behind nothing but the evil tree and two dumbfounded humans with nothing else to do but populate the world. The tree, however, flourished from the destruction of Eden. All the life that was around it was destroyed by God’s fury and was left to decompose. This made the soil rich and nutritious which made the tree grow bigger and stronger. It could then support heavier fruits like gold and diamonds and the humans stayed away from it because they knew it was an evil tree so its fruits remained unpicked and the tree overgrown for many years. It wasn’t too long though before the humans forgot the lessons that they had once learned from the tree. Men from all over the world began searching for it. Some looked for knowledge and wisdom, others for immortality, but most of them pursued the treasures and riches the tree promised. Eventually the tree was found. As word spread of its whereabouts the worlds greatest militaries were deployed to capture the tree and claim it for there own people. The soldiers fought hard, they all needed the treasure. Nearly everyone was killed. The tree thrived on the blood spilled. It grew even bigger and stronger able to hold even more treasure than before. Eventually Greece prevailed and claimed the tree for there own. With possession of the tree Greece became rich, powerful, and educated. It was the epicenter of the world. Wiseman like Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato were given wisdom to share with all of Greece that only god had previously possessed. The streets were lined with Gold, no one was hungry, society was run as a well ordered democracy, and people were for the most part happy, even the slaves. It wasn’t all good though. Greece was constantly bombarded with outside threats wishing to make the tree theirs. The blood of those who tried and failed continued to nourish the tree. It seemed that Greece was destined to remain in power for eternity. Eventually the world grew weary of attacking Greece and loosing, so they gave up. Without blood to nourish the tree it began to wilt, but the Greeks continued to pluck its fruits anyway. They tried to think of solutions to save the tree. They killed there own people at its roots, but the small amount of blood from executions couldn’t sustain the apatite of the tree that had become so accustomed to massacres. While Greece was weak, Rome crept in, murdered the Greeks and replenished the tree claiming it for there own. The Romans devised a plan to make sure they didn’t loose the tree like the Greeks had. They needed to figure out a way to protect the tree from being over picked while providing it with the blood necessary to keep it healthy. As a solution, only those who were already rich had access to the tree, because logically the rich would have no need to pick too much because they were already rich. And as for keeping it healthy the Roman’s developed the coliseum, a place where the stupid poor would be too entertained to realize they were getting screwed, and the tree would get plenty of human sacrifices. All was great until the rich who were supposed to be immune to greed, picked the tree dry. To make a long story short, Rome’s empire fell too. Next the Catholic Church took over possession of the tree. It seemed it would be a good fit; the tree was God’s after all. They kept it hidden away by building a fortress around it. They called it the Vatican and it was built of gold from the tree. Keeping it healthy wasn’t ever really a problem for the Catholics because all you had to do was disagree with them and they would kill you at the roots. No one objected to the Church’s brutality for a long time because they were sanctioned by God, at least that’s what they told everyone. But, eventually people grew tired of there bullshit, lies, and hypocrisy just like they did with the other world powers. Even God developed an extreme distaste for the Church because of the things they did in his name. As a joke he cast down a curse on the Church turning it into NAMBLA poster child. After the Catholics lost there power the trees ownership bounced around Europe for a while. Each time possession of the tree changed it left death and destruction in its wake. It wasn’t until the end of World War II that it was dug out by the roots and airlifted to America where it still remains today. This was the real reason for the Cold War. The Russians thought the tree was theirs, we knew it was ours. The dispute over the tree was close to being resolved with an all out nuclear war, which would have been fantastic for the tree! For once, the world chose piece. It’s really too bad, the tree would have been able to hold a lot more treasure afterwards. Now a day the tree is hidden in Fort Knox. It was put there so it would be safe from greed, and no one would pick too much. But somehow, Wall Street managed to convince the government that they needed to deregulate the tree because it would be good for our economy. The Republicans were all for it, and they were in power, so that’s exactly what happened. Once the tree was deregulated Wall Street hired a bunch of illegal immigrants to pick the fruits from the tree, and then called INS so they wouldn’t have to pay them. Eventually, the tree was picked dry. Wall Street realized that they were going to be in a ton of trouble if they didn’t find a way to replenish it, so they started two wars and discovered that by ruining people’s lives with bad loans and derivatives the misery caused helped sustain the tree enough for them to continue to make money. But eventually even that wasn’t enough to sustain Wall Street’s greed and again the tree was picked dry. Who do you think had to pay for it? Us, the poor people! With our hard earned money. This is why the tree is such an evil tree! It feeds off death, misery, and blood, while it makes the assholes of the universe rich, and the poor poorer. I wish it were as easy as just cutting the damn thing down, but this tree has always been here and always will be here. It is not the trees fault that it is the way it is, it’s our own fault that we haven’t yet learned from the lessons of the past. |