THAT THING ON THE HILL

(Warning: Gore, bad words)

Ya hear scientists and suchlike, -ologists of all stripes, they go say they’re reasonable. Ethical. Good. You show ‘em the whole history of their profession, how for every Carl Sagan or Marie Curie, there’s ten Unit 731’s and an electroshock clinic and an Ahnenerbe and a Tuskegee and every kind of secret pervert and sadist and psychopath under the sun, how the AIs they’ve built help our overlordly parasites in grey corporate Olympii suck up what’s left o’ our humanity, how their drugs work only for symptoms and profit, and lot of ‘em would shrug at you and say that an ethics-board’s all humanity’ll ever need to progress into the future, that “reason” and “the scientific method” are the only ways to determine truth, right as they publish a paper of nothin’ but p-hackin' and no control-groups. They don’t know nothin’ what lies beyond. No philosophy, no vision can compare to the dogmas they dare call nonreligious, nothin’ at all can compare to the bureaucratic ecstasy of a calculated, curated list of ways how to never interact with a woman, at all. They’ll put a man into a computer or make a child out of networks and call themselves new Outer gods ‘cause the poor thing’s “alive” and screamin’ for death.

Same with my best friend. My best friend in the whole world. They made ‘im, and they left ‘im alone to die, with as much scientific rigor and candor as they’d fill a mouse with ebola and watch it squirm and seethe on the inside till it bursts, or at least watch till they get bored.

See there? He’s yonder. That sinewy tree-thing. That thing on the hill.

Yeah. You see it. You see its faces. Let’s walk there, I’ll show ya.

I dunno how they did it. Genetic manipulation. Don’t call ‘em wizzes for nothin’. I never heard much o' what it was till the months comin’ up till his death, all bits and pieces he’d recount between hackin’ sobs and drafts of liquor. Such guilt over nothin’, nothin’ his fault, and them scientists who were at fault didn’t give a damn! If I’d had the cash to give my friend to go to therapy, even if it was every last penny I had, I’da given ‘im it all to go. To help ‘im any last bit. Hate myself that I didn’t… all I did was fill ‘im up with more liquor, lend ‘im an ear, thought that was enough. Then…

What was I sayin’?

Ah, right.

See, David Castro was a plant.

I’m serious, asshole! Look! See the face?! That’s him! I got a picture on my phone, look!

Now shut up and listen.

I dunno what the hell they did to make ‘im. I can only describe it like a Wikipedia-page of it all learned second-hand; the actual chemical shit, I dunno. Far as he told me, they took a species of tree from Yemen with the exact same number of genomes as humans. They said to themselves, hey, why not modify each gene in a stem-cell of this plant, and make ‘em exact replicas of human genes? And why not do the reverse to a human egg-cell, turn it into this kinda plant-cell? …gotta hand it to ‘em, this is the crazy shit they likely thought up smokin’ up a storm together back durin’ uni or whatnot. Creative. Sick in the head, but creative. David’d never own up to them bein’ sick in the head. But he’s all done and gone, I’m the judge here and now, and they were sick in the head. The experiment-proposal passed through the ethics-board with fanfare. Same fucks who let that AI-Child get made. This is all ‘fore the Child killed itself, course. “Herself”? See, you’re doin’ the same thing they did.

…They did it. They made a viable egg-cell and sperm each and a viable, uh, ovule? Same difference. Genetic clones, twins, of one another, just with all the letters switched around. One of the scientists on the team who did it, Maria, she took the quasi-human embryo and put it in her own womb. And then she planted the tree in her backyard. Big backyard, I remember they had, went there a few times… she was a real superstar, see, worked on sexual genetics and got a whole buncha prizes for it, bought herself a big house and let her husband and Dave live there.

Now, the tree was just sittin’ in the corner of the yard. Weird lookin’ thing. Small and twisted. Didn’t grow much. Sat there, years and years, without anyone much noticin’, but her, course. She loved that thing much more than she loved David, or her pathetic husband Jan, for that matter, if she could even love a human being. Called it “César”. Watered the thing and fertilized it and cooed over it.

Maria was just always a cold bitch, and Jan a pathetic cuckold. And I don’t use either word lightly. They were unloving and neglectful as they come, in that bourgeois, overrational, unemotional dominatrix and her loserly sub kinda way. Never said they loved ‘im. Made ‘im study, study, study, for what? God knows.

That’s why David loved my family! See, we lived on the poor side of the block. I met him right on the corner that was the borderline between rich and poor, at the then-new playground there. Nine years old, we both were. Shrimpy-lookin’ thing, or so he seemed. Still remember it, clear as day… I was showin’ off my highly misled and definitely misplaced machismo to some gallie I don’t recall, she was all google-eyed towards him and not me, right? So I challenged him to a wrestle. God, shrimp was a lobster! He had me pinned and squealin’ and laughin’ ‘cause it was so funny how a tiny guy like him could overturn me like that. I said sorry, told ‘im he won fair-and-square, we forgot the gal, and we went and he bought us both them colored ice-pops from the truck, back when they still did that kinda thing. I invited him back to my house, and once the bruises and cuts got explained away with concrete, my mom and pop took ‘im in like he was their own, fed ‘im lunch, let us play for hours. When dinner came, mom asked ‘im if he’d like to stay. He turned sore cold. “I’d like to. Mother and Father wouldn’t care.”

Mother and Father. Hooooo… that’s a sign if any of a kid goin’ unloved. Mom called his house, asked ‘er if he could stay, and his “mother” ’d said, “That’s fine. He makes his own food, anyway.”

God. God. Bad omen, there ever was any.

I hate that woman. I hate her.

David ended up practically growin’ up at our place. We’d hit the busstop together, go to school, come back and he’d stay for dinner and just go “home” to study, sleep and eat breakfast. Whole childhood, spent like that, and I think it’s the best we could do for ‘im. Kept ‘im out of that barren house much as we could. We loved ‘im as much as his “mother” didn’t.

It was near his twenty-first birthday, I remember. Summer break durin’ uni. We went to the same one, UoT. I was learnin’ linguistics back then, and he was in, well, genetics-research, bioengineerin’. His mother, he told me, claimed he was “not the same caliber of creative scientific mind” as she was, but that he was “opportunistic like a weed”, so he’d do and he’d do well, or else. I get and got the feeling she was callin’ my family’s takin’ care of ‘im as “weediness” on his part… God. Anyway, we weren’t roommates, but I was in his room or he in mine practically every day. Both got called gay more than once for it by both conservative and even oh-so “progressive” dudes and gals all without a true friend in sight. We ignored ‘em. David was straight as they come, a real, normie kinda titty-lover. I was the real gay out of us two, but I tell ya I wasn’t interested in him that way, nor in any of those assholes at that school. David was always, shall ever be my friend, my brother, don’t you dare get it twisted with your lizard reasonin'.

But Dave was normal! Beer-swillin’, acid-droppin’, weed-smokin’ normal-ass fellow. Didn’t have no trouble with nobody, not even his own parents, much as they deserve trouble. I had to help him open up to others, sure, bein’ stuck with a lady and her dog like that for so long and you’d be quiet, too! But he was a friendly man! Lovely man, in spite of the efforts of his “mother”.

It’s just that… one day, when we were back home… he drifts into my room. Pale and shiverin’ like a leaf… eugh, bad way of puttin’ it. He was right scared, looked ‘bout ready to hurl at any second. I ask him,

“What’s wrong, Davo?”

He just came out the gates swingin’. “I’m… not human.”

“What?” I… certainly felt that kinda sentiment for myself before. Not that I ever believed it for one sec. “I mean, we all feel that way sometimes. Or some of the more aware of us do. Whatchu mean, though?”

  He brought out papers from his bag. I couldn’t make heads nor tails of ‘em, but he went and pointed out all the important parts. He spoke creakily, “Right here. Says, the scientists made a human ovum out of the stem cells of a Yemenese bloodtree, a rare subspecies of the dragon’s blood tree, by manually converting the plant’s genes to resemble human ones. Since they both… they both share the same number of chromosomes and genes, a lot of similar ones, too, we share a lot of DNA with them somehow. And… and then, they took a sample of human cells, and converted them to be like the bloodtree. Look, look at the top…” 

Esquivel, V. & Castro, M. et al. “Provoked transition and transformation between animal and plant cells”.

Castro, M. Maria Castro.

“Your mother? So, what the hell’s all that mean?”

“They… they made two viable embryos. A human child, and a seed. ...I’m that child, made from the tree.” 

I didn’t know what to say. I almost laughed, had it not been the look like death upon his face. He said after a while, “Things… things are making sense now… I’m not my parents’ kid. I’m not a human being.”

I asked him how, but he just shrugged and left. Didn’t see ‘im till a week and a half later, and he was still the same. I was a heavy drinker myself at the time, for my own reasons, and I just let ‘im join in, to soothe his spirits. And it did for some time. But all I ended up doin’ in the end was make ‘im worse.

He failed school, by the way. Just completely broke down. He started locking his door at school to me, to everyone. Said he felt bad. All the time. “Like my joints are stiffening up,” he’d said. I would go to knock on his door, everyday, just to let him know that someone cared. Somedays, he’d ask me for a fifth or a blunt and I’d give ‘em to ‘im. Shouldn’t’ve, but I was a stupid kid. This was caring, to me. But then he stopped letting me in at all. Stopped answerin’ my knocks. Got scared outta my mind, one time, thought he mighta… drunken himself to death, or… overdosed. Called and shouted and pounded on his door. No, turns out he just left for home halfway through the semester. Not-so-fortunately.

It was only later when I found out exactly why.

I was drivin’ by the woods o’er yonder one time. And I saw ‘em. Half-wrenched my neck when I snapped my head back to make sure I weren’t crazy. In a grove of great old oaks. Hadn’t seen the man for months at that point, whenever I went to Maria’s house she just always said with her trademark smug frown, “He’s not here.”

But they were there, together, in the grove, dancin’ mad and naked. His “mother” Maria was dancin’ and yelpin’ like a ragdoll on strings as Dave stood in the middle of the grove like a… statue. I… didn’t stop right away. I shoulda. I shoulda. But I turned around after I’d driven already thirty seconds away, and when I got back to where I’d seen ‘em, they were gone. Even went into the grove itself, and found nary a footstep in the grass. I… dunno what I saw.

So the day after I went and confronted ‘em. I’d riled myself up into a frenzy by then, I was confused and saddened and scared outta my mind and I wanted to know just what in all hells was goin’ on.

I caught them at the right time. Just as Maria grimly opened the door, I saw his fleeting shape in the hallway. “DAVE! Get your ass out here, I need to speak with you.” She just shrugged, casually dropped the door and left Dave to catch it.

Dave looked wizened down to half nothin’, paler and thinner than ever before. Somethin’ was wrong with his skin, on his limbs, on his face. Like he’d been scratching at it, endlessly.

I could only stare at him. “Dave, what the hell is goin’ on? I’m affrighted for ya, mom and dad are affrighted for ya! You lock yourself away, and say nothin’, and I- I-” I didn’t say what I’d seen. For I looked him deep in the eyes, and they were red and wild.

“It’s natural for me.”   

“Goddamn it isn’t!”

“Shh! Keep your voice down. No, no, man, it’s true. I’m a sessile organism. I’m… becomin' my true self. That’s what mom said.”

“The fuck’s that got to do with anythin’? And she ain’t your ‘mom’, you said that yerself!”

That stang ‘im. And that stingin’ face of his hurt me right back. Suddenly, though, he got serious. “I’ve been havin’… dreams, man. Dreams of that tree, in the backyard, comin’ closer, tauntin’ me. Tellin’ me I stole his place. That I was born wrong. And it’s been creepin’, creepin’ towards me. Peekin’ through my window, to remind me whose bed is whose. And he’s right. Momma’s right. I am what I’ve always been, on the inside. I’ve always known it to be true.”

“Yeah? And when did ‘always’ begin?”

He didn’t answer me. He simply stared at me, and slowly shut the door.

Never saw ‘im alive after that.

It was a cold harvest night when it happened.

Screamin', out in those woods. My family thought it was coyotes out yelpin'. But somethin' put me mightily on edge. The call was alone, and somethin' to it had an uncanny tinge, a gross familiarity that I could not, dared not, place.

The "father" Jan reported Dave missin'. After a week. Search-party went out to find ‘im, me with ‘em. I told ‘em I had a bad hunch. Led them to the oaks’ grove, where I’d seen the bitch dancin’ ‘round ‘im.

And… there he was. Not even in the middle, just among the trees. Strung… strung up, like Christ, on a crossbeam. Pieces of bark, hammered into his skin and bone, his skull. Cut and flain in venous pathways, to look like that bastard tree that haunted ‘im. Covered in flesh-carven eyes.

…Didn’t see her at the funeral. Didn’t see ‘er ever again after that. Coward.

I’d kill her if I ever get a glimpse of her. I would. Wouldn’t never be enough, though. But it’d feel damn good.

There were only a few of those scientists at the wake, even fewer at the funeral. One of them cried at seeing the body. The rest had “already done their tests” and were just stayin’ as a perfunctory, and the only ones that even looked at his body did it like they were checkin' out a pinned insect. I asked a few of 'em if they even knew 'im. “I know his mother,” they’d answer.

Buried his ashes, atop that hill in this here churchyard. You go up there, and it overlooks the old playground we used to play at. My Dad damn near had to fight ‘im into it. He’d gone to Maria’s house and followed a stubborn cuckold in, he left and a quivering ball of slime followed him to make sure he was out. Dunno what he did, but it put fear in that slime's lukewarm heart. Artful.

But David’s ashes are buried up there. That tree weren’t there before, though.

The bloodtree’d long-already dwarfed Maria’s house. Anyone could see it, anywhere on the street. Ask anyone down there, they all remember. One day, a few weeks after he was buried, me and my family all woke up to a crowd outside, all pointin’ and shoutin’. See, it wasn’t there. You can still see the deep blasted and rotted pit where it once stood, a deep dragging line full of torn-up, bleeding, pus-filled roots.

It had… moved. A two-ton tree. Climbed up, atop the hill. A monstrous, venous, bloody apparition overshadowin' our world.

We fucked up. We shoulda scattered Dave’s ashes in a sea, where his Twin can't ever get to ‘im. ‘Cause… I think I damned ‘im. I did. I always did. I didn’t help ‘im. Not really.

This son of a bitch, the tree Maria had lovingly named “César”, has eaten David’s soul. I’m sure of it. I’ve damned him to worse than hell.

See here?

Dave’s agonized, obscured face, almost swallowed by the tree.  

He can’t see us.

And this one?

That twisted, uncanny one of orgasmic ecstasy?

That’s Him.  

 He can.