Like Humans, Like Trees

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This is my first full lenght short story, and it's actualy a bit long. For anyone who wants to take the time to give a helpfull review, I'd gladly give points. Also for reviews could you addreses the fact that the story had virtually no visuals, and pretty much just story. Thanks very much.

Like Humans, Like Trees

It was a dark and stormy night. The suburban landscape of Sand Lake Hollow was lit in a gray light from the thick, all encompassing rain clouds. It was an odd name for this neighborhood because for one, there was no lake, and of course no sand anywhere. Just grassy hills that held houses, our small freshly paved streets (which were paved on a regular basis because this town had nothing better to spend the money on), and the old pine woods a few blocks from the school. There was only one school here, called Stanley Lanes High School, which again a weird name because it actually held K through twelve. But the point is this is a small neighborhood inside a small town, and nothing ever happens here.

The date was September fourteenth, the day after Paige’s birthday, when it all started. We had celebrated it in her roomy (and basically empty) storage shed behind the hill her house sat on. I actually remember a few years ago when Denny and I had to carry boxes of tools from the shed uphill to the house, their radiator had broken and Paige’s father was the town mechanic, he helped Denny out when he got his long blond hair stuck in the adjustment roller of a rusted bracket. Around midnight after the little party we had, Paige finally asked out Lucas, and he agreed. Denny later punched him in the face since he had loved her for a long time, but Lucas was cool about it and told Paige that he had gotten mugged by some travelers, she said he was brave.

It was two weeks after that incident that the four of us, Me, Denny, Paige, Lucas, and Mori (Mori being Lucas’s dog) decided to take a vacation from Sand Lake Hollow. Actually that exact day was three weeks after our graduation, and we wanted to have a big blowout thing before the group went on their separate ways. Denny and I were staying here; we didn’t mind the humdrum of the place, even liked it. Mr. Walka (Paige’s dad) promised to train Denny under him, and eventually let him run the business. This was mostly because his daughter did not care for repairing things, she always believed if it broke buy a new one, and this town had to have a mechanic, he always half heartedly said that. Paige and Lucas were going up to Seattle to help out Lucas’s dying grandmother, and one day take the place as specified in her will. So this trip, to Olympic National Park in Washington, seriously was the final party, after the trip Paige and Lucas were just going to hop a train to Seattle from the station by the park (they went bag less since they’d just inhabit all of his grandmother’s stuff and inheritance anyway, planned on buying some new stuff).

We were ten minutes from the park when Paige and Lucas started arguing, Denny later told me that Paige told him that they’d been fighting for a few days before that, but hoped the trip would take their minds off of it. It did kind of annoy us a bit, but we let it go and soon enough we were all situated in at the hotel a few streets down from the park, lucky us. Lucas’s grandmother, being a poor widowed thing, sent down the money for a plane to Washington (poor as in sad not moneyless). So we graciously agreed and set off.

Our second out of three nights in Washington didn’t turn out so well. The first was great, we had an awesome day at the park, we stayed up all through the night, and we even drank a little after Denny got this old weird guy to buy us a twelve pack, though by morning nine were still there. Also that morning Lucas freaked out since the airport kennel service told him that they had lost his dog, but thankfully had him returned by that night (the actual one good thing of that night). But around seven or eight Paige and Lucas got in another huge fight and broke up, she told us at dinner while Lucas was in the bathroom, that he was gonna stay here for his grandmother, and that she was going to go home with us. She also joked, through soft approaching tears, that Denny didn’t have to worry about her fathers business because he was still getting it from her dad, he smiled and said that she was more important to him than that. Denny (as probably already mentioned) has always been in love with Paige, he completely and wholly saved himself for her, mostly because love and yet reason another. Oh despite a blazing heart, he’s a pale, auto immune deficiency suffering sickly boy. I mean he’s definitely attractive but, well it’s mostly the love thing.

That second night was also the last time I ever communicated to him again. It’s embarrassing to admit but because she (Paige) was so upset with Lucas, well, she made a very rash decision with Denny; he spent a good part of the night talking with her. They went out to the woods sometime around eleven and, did stuff; he became a man that night.  But he texted me ten minutes before said event, and excitedly told me how he was at least getting somewhere with her, and that he was getting some, good time, with her. Like I said that was the last time I ever talked to him again, because something happened in the forest that night, something awful.

It was four o’clock in the morning (same night) when I decided to go out and see what was up, since he hadn’t texted back since eleven, and I was a little worried, I mean based on Paige and his activity, I figured he just wanted to have some time with her. So I fed Mori while hiding him in the hotel room and headed out. I grazed through the apartment, took a block around the hotel, and glanced for a while in the woods bordering the secluded national park. It was only when I found his cell phone near what looked like a Shady Lady tree, which possessed a heavy branch knocking me down after I clunked into it, that I began to freak out. I started yelling his name, not caring what the couple down the brick pathway thought about it, then it hit me, maybe they’d…

Its two weeks after that night, Denny still has not been found. The police hold onto the fact that the forest most likely houses his body, Paige was cleared after a polygon test, being that Denny ran off through the woods once she told him that she was still staying with Lucas. I myself am quite unsure of what happened, I even accept Lucas as also being cleared, he’s cried almost as much as I have. I depressively cling to him and Paige now, still holding out hope, I’m living with them now. Paige has been distraught, knowing he and Lucas were good friends (a half way façade Denny wore for Paige’s sake) she moved back in with him at his grandmothers house. His grandmother is still doing well so those two are just helping out during their stay, I think more so to keep from thinking about a blond haired lover, and a blond haired friend.

I wake up screaming five days later. I’d been having creepy dreams over the last week, of myself being condemned in the forest, forever lying there unable to speak or move. Only upon the fifth sweat drenching night, that I remember seeing the body. When I was running through the forest looking for Denny, I tripped over some root by that Shady Lady tree, only it wasn’t a root, it was the body of my best friend. Within seconds I’m running out the door, half dressed, towards a local KFC where both my roommates work, when I see them running down the street towards our place. I’m standing in the doorway dumbfounded at the fact that they’re saving me the trip, and Mori is yapping behind me.

Were at the police station, Paige and Lucas, gasping for breath, inform me that the police had found a body in the woods. I decide not to tell them about my dream, since it would only freak them out and cast suspicion on me. They prepare us for the viewing to identify him, and after a gasp and some tears we do. After an autopsy it was discovered that he died by Cyanide, we initially shot glances at each other, then immediately collapsed our faces in regret. Apparently he ate some of a root from a Cassava tree. It’s a tree whose leaves and roots contain a glycoside that creates Cyanide. We don’t why he ate it; no one thinks he would have committed suicide, even if Paige did reject him. We’ll never know why.

It’s been three years; I’m living in a decent sized apartment along the outskirts of Puget Sound. Paige and Lucas are doing alright, they have their ups and downs but I believe that they are in love. I stop by their place at least once every two weeks, talk on the phone every few days. Denny being gone has kind of split our ties a bit, but were good friends, so we keep at it. We also take trips back home every few months, Paige’s dad is doing alright, had to retire with no heir to the business. That’s not all that bad though since a new Auto Parts store discovered our town, we also had his body shipped back here and buried in the local cemetery. The last time we went to see him, about four days ago, we all cried for the first time in a long time, our tears blended with the pouring rain, that dark and stormy night.