I AM A BLASTED TREE

Three times in my life, something has kept me from dying.

The first time, I'd been left on a steel table in a bloody basin. The abortion hadn't worked. Now they were just waiting for me to stop breathing. This I heard from the woman who snuck me out, endangering her own job.

The second time was in Germany, the Black Forest. I was lost for days. Something, which I am still not fully aware what it was, found me and eventually led me to safety. A ghost? A spirit. Some ancient Teutonic God? Whatever it was kept me alive for that fortnight. It felt like I was being hunted—but whatever this thing was, it sought to help me, not hurt me. Many times I could feel there was something there, right next to me, but I could never see it. In honor of this thing I got my name changed to Jhäeggr (which means, “Hunter.”) Sometimes I feel that it's presence was the only thing keeping me from suicide.

I don't think I'm suicidal by nature. But my life's felt like one long misery. Parts of me were torn off. I have no right arm. Beside this, I experienced severe burns from the saline solution. Extensive scarring has left me quite hideous to behold.

I've tried really hard to be objective. I've seen pictures of John Merrick, the so-called Elephant man. Yes, things could have been a lot worse. I can, at least, look at myself in the mirror without too much trauma. But I expect few others to have such fortitude. I will subject no one to this without good reason.

The third time? Well, I was determined there would be no third time. It was not until I began to climb Mount Washington that I fully knew what I was going to do. It was the storm season. There have been a lot of lightning strikes. Even in the icy fog everything was so beautiful. I was tired of fighting it. When everywhere around you, you see guys with their girlfriends, having such a good time—and here you are, thirty-two years old and you've never even been goddamned kissed—how the fuck would you feel? Answer me that!

I remember seeing some kind of darker shape far above the clouds. It was moving in some kind of way that by no means seemed natural. I saw a tremendous flash of light. I felt electrical pricking all over my body. I felt such a joy—it was finally all over!

Except it wasn't.

I awoke in what must have been the strangest hospital room imaginable. I must have survived. There were no trace of electrical burns. Three strangely clad women visited me in succession. They spoke strangely. They told me nothing, other than that I was the first of many and that they had great need of me.

What they turned out to be had me fighting with all my strength to escape. The third of the women was alone with me. She started to come on to me, a thing you might imagine has never happened to me. She became more and more insistent. But there was just something that was wrong about it. I may have had fantasies of something like this coming true, but the reality was nightmarish. This was not what I wanted.

She was tearing at me and, in a panic I struck out, my left arm flailing. I do have a pretty good left hook.

She fell to the floor. Her face distorted from the blow, and half her face rolled to the side of her head.

It was no human being who had attacked me! I found my way out of the chamber and ran down deserted corridors. I located a door that let me out into a luxuriant green valley.

I ran. I had no idea where I was. At times a bolt of pure lightning would strike from the azure sky. Each time something would appear. I didn't seem to be the target of these bolts.

The first time, a man appeared. He must have leapt an eighth of a mile.

The second time an incredible, bat-winged flying machine appeared in mid-air before crashing. It must have been a hundred feet in length. Men emerged from the craft, apparently not greatly injured.

If I'd thought the flying machine immense, it was as nothing compared to what the third bolt brought forth. The reptilian creature must have towered some five hundred feet in height. Its cry was deafening. Lightning lanced upon the bony plates lining its spine. Pure fire blasted the valley.

I had never run so fast and so far. At last I fell almost senseless by a great white rock. When I came to, I looked at the valley. It nestled between two ranges of mountains. Something did not look right here. It took a moment for it to click into place. The valley extended for what must have been at least fifty miles. But there was no horizon. It just went on an on in a straight line. I was in a gigantic corridor but it was artificial.

Before the lightning had struck me I had glimpsed that dark shape in the sky. Was I in some immense craft? The three women had said I was the first of many. Had I already seen three more? And that gigantic creature? It couldn't be what I thought it was, even though it looked exactly like what I thought it was. And I...and these others? What kind of job would require something like this?

And I knew who they all were. The man whose father had injected his pregnant wife with a serum of alkaline radicals—made him a super human. He had challenged God on a mountain top and been struck by lightning.

An engineer who had created a steampunk flying machine in the Nineteenth Century. He too had challenged God by flying into the heart of the grandfather of all thunderstorms.

The lizard, it seems, had brought his own lightning to the buffet.

Not a hundred feet from me another bolt of lightning exploded. I was thrown against the white rock. My head cleared and I saw a man appear. He was dressed in rags and tatters. He saw me and swiftly approached.

When he drew near, I was shocked at his appearance. His hair was black and matted. His eyes were yellow and watery. His skin yellow, like parchment. I had no strength left. If he meant me harm I could not fight him. He was as tall as the white rock I'd rested against—a giant of eight feet.

“Do you understand the English tongue?”

I nodded.

“I do not know where I am. I thought I was dead. I should be dead. I went out to die. I know the thunders of heaven struck me. I am a blasted tree. The bolt has entered my soul.”

The creature looked into my eyes. Up this close the full impact of who, and what, I was seeing took my breath away. I could well understand how his creator had recoiled from his creation in horror, calling what he saw hideous. The man was indeed hideous. Yet, I could see there that he had chosen the features for their beauty. But that this thing lived had turned its beauty into ashes.

I tried to cam myself. I had no doubt this being could tear me limb from limb if he wished.

“Were you struck by lightning,” I asked. “Your clothes. There are burnt patches.”

“I have wanted to die. For all I have done I deserve to die. I gathered the wood for my pyre. Fire came from above. I felt its agonies. Wilt Thou burn out all the evil I have done? Let its pain grant me redemption and forgiveness. Let me scream in its agonies as that my suffering may surpass that which I inflicted.”

Lost in his soliloquy, the creature looked at me, seemingly for the first time. His hand stroked my face.

“You, too, are scarred. You are like me.” He leaned in close.

“Are you like me in other ways? Did he make you too?” I could not read the creature's thoughts, nor gain insight as to his intentions. Did he think I was a second of his creator's efforts?

The creature shook his head. “No. You have been scarred and flawed, but the hand of God has made you. You need not fear me. Vengeance' has gained me nothing. I took the life of those who had never wronged me. I have suffered and suffered for the evil I did the innocent, who never did me wrong. You have done me no evil.”

He set his hand on my shoulder and it seemed those eyes looked deep into my soul.

“Will you be my friend?”

I admit I was taken back by this request. I knew exactly who, and what I was dealing with here, though it was impossible for me to understand how these things could be. Certainly, to refuse this request would be perilous. But to accept it without being truly sincere, and acquiescing only out of fear would not do. If I said yes, it must be out of a sincere heart, and not just an attempt to escape death. I had already endeavored to kill myself on Mount Washington—if I die now, I would only be gaining my wish, however belatedly.

The fact is, if the story was true, this man might never had had a friend in his entire life. How like him I felt. There was no need to search my soul. Could I deny to another sufferer that which I had so longed for in my life, and never really had?

I raised my hand to his shoulder. “Of course I will.” And I saw how well his creator had made him, for those tear ducts were now flooded.

We talked for long after that. I had often thought of the story. The monster had often been characterized as evil—yet, was it not his creator's rejection of, what was without a doubt his own child, that had resulted in those acts he did? Certainly they were wrong. But the creature had long put such intentions far from himself. Indeed, his resolve to destroy his very own self witnessed to the desire to atone.

“What is your name?'

“Jhäeggr. And you?”

“He never even gave me a name. I was so hideous in his eyes that he could not regard me as a child of his labors, but a deserving inhabitant of the dunghill. Though I am unlike all men, and have none of the rights they may call their own—may a man not strive after such wishes? May a man not try to attain what others have by right? May he not be willing to pay a great price for his freedom, though others are freeborn?

“I thought I should call myself Adam, since I, like that first Adam, was created by the hand of his Father. But I was certainly not made in my father's image, as he was in His. I am truly a monstrous thing. And I should not have been. But was my father not monstrous, who turned away from me in disgust? I was indeed the thing you see, while he was fair, comely and straight. But as I was in visage, he was in heart. So I do my father proud. He has paid for his crimes. I will honor my father, who am so monstrous as was he. I am Victor.”

“That is another way we are alike, Victor. I, too, picked a name for myself.”

“There are many ways we are alike. Our names, which we have chosen. That we have endured terrible scarring. That we both seek a mate and have always been denied. And...you too went out into the frozen wilderness, as did I, to put an end to your life. Why did you seek to do this?”

“I was tired of being alone as I was. Like you, I had no companion—not even friend to lighten my load. You were denied that—but did he not start to build you...?”

“It was all I asked of him. He reneged on our contract. So close it came. Do you understand my rage? Bad enough he brought me into existence and did not take responsibility for me. But to create another, to so lift up my hopes—and then take an ax to her before she had even tasted of life? Hard enough to lose what you did not even know you had—but to see the fruit near ready for the plucking, snatched from your grasp, thrown down and ground down by hateful tread. He declared it was to protect man, he feared what the two of us would do—but what I did far outshone the mightiest of his fears. If anything had ever made me an enemy of the human race, it was that solitary act of murder—torn from my grasp, murdered before she even drew her first breath!”

I had never imagined such depths of feeling. Rage enfolded him like the lightning storm that had embraced me. But in a moment it was gone. And great, wracking sobs overcame him. Though deep down I feared this being and knew not what would follow, I could not deny the fellow feeling. I set my hands on his shoulders. Not even looking at me I knew that never had he had another to suffer with him and be to him a sympathetic ear.

The face that looked up to me was that of a different man. With that deluge of sorrow, and with another to share his grief it was as if he had truly become human. I was not fooled. He had always been human, but enduring unconscionable suffering had driven him near to madness.

He had recovered himself. There was a curious expression on his face. “You, too sought to destroy yourself. But why?”

“I told you. I couldn't endure the suffering any longer. I had no more purpose to live. It was better I was gone. I would inconvenience no one any longer”

Victor looked at me strangely.

“I should never have been given life. By destroying myself I might atone for what I had done. My ashes might then be of some use to at least fertilize the earth. But what would your death prove? You were no blasphemy to life like I was. God had made you. You are lawful life—yet you wanted to destroy yourself. Help me comprehend this.”

“Victor—my own mother did not want me to be. Months before I should have been born, I was torn out of her womb. This I learned long after. If my own mother didn't want me...”

“Why then are you still living if they meant to take your life?”

“A nurse found me. I was on the steel table, gasping out my life. She endangered her own job. She snuck me out of there. She gave me a chance.” I did not like the look on Victor's face.

“And this is how you reward this woman's sacrifice? You were scheduled to die. Your life was spared.”

“Look at me—look at my face! Who will love me as I am? I haven't a single hope in hell of that! Do you think I want to keep on living like this?”

I couldn't conceive how someone that big could move so fast. I didn't see his arm moving. I felt the blow as he back handed me. I must have flown fifteen feet. The astonishment hurt worse than getting struck.

“Your self-pity disgusts me. You think you're so hideous? Look up at the face that a creator couldn't even bear to set his eyes on. Then tell me if you think you're hideous. I am a blasphemy—but you, you're life is lawful. You have not the right to take what God's given you. You would have died had He not put that nurse there. You would have died had not that thing found you in the forest. You would have died had not the lightning taken you to this place like it took me. It took me! It found a use for me! No reason for you to live? You've been given a reason! You're needed for something more important than your own little life. If it wants me, as lawless as I am—how much more you?” Victor's eyes softened.

“I am sorry I was so hard on you. Give me your hand. I'll help you up. Do not despair. Someday someone may find you. I found someone a long time ago. It was her I told my story to. No one before her had ever failed to recoil from me in disgust. She could not be the mate I sought—and yet, what she became—that was so much more. If I inspired her—she in turn inspired me. Each, the other's muse. I will never forget her.

“So if I, who am a monster, was that one time, able to find such a one, dare you think to have less chance than I? Do you think yourself more monstrous?

“Something has brought us both to this place. Chanced us new possibilities. I see it. Can you not see it as well, my friend? Come—let us see what fortune has set our steps upon. There is life in both of us. Let us see what we can make of it. Will you come with me?”

I nodded. Victor was right. Self pity. There was no room for it, not when this great new adventure had opened up the doors. Several miles away I saw another flash of lightning light up the azure sky.