Community Roots
A petty crime, a haunted cemetery, and a healthy dose of body horror.
I pushed a drunkard onto the moving car.
No, I didn’t. It never happened.
The police kept insinuating it, and they pressured the drunk guy until he gave a false statement against me. Then, for good measure, they beat the crap out of me at the station.
Sure, I was drunk that night—but that was it. I even went to the hospital for a medical exam to document the injuries from the beating.
Ultimately, it came down to my word against theirs. We reached a stalemate, and I was sentenced to community service: leaf raking in autumn.
It was pure humiliation. They had us work in small groups in public, a whole shaming ritual.
There I was, sweeping leaves in the town square—the most visible place in our small town—subject to the dead-eyed stares of every passerby. And of course, they made us wear high-visibility vests so nobody could miss us.
I tried to hide my face by wearing a balaclava.
Still, with my distinctive slouch and the way I walk, I couldn’t be missed.
“Ah, Adam! That’s you!” a woman’s voice called out.
I froze. “Uh... do I know you?” I mumbled from behind the balaclava.
“Don’t play games, Adam.” She chuckled. “It’s me—Hanna, your auntie!”
Well, so much for the disguise.
She looked me up and down. “What are you doing here? Sweeping leaves... community service?”
My face burned with shame. “Yeah, I, um... I volunteered to do some public good...” I lied.
Hanna glanced at the two men a few paces away. “No, you didn’t. Those two fellas with you are locals who steal for booze. You’re doing court-ordered service, aren’t you?”
She was right, of course. The guy next to me—Daniel—was performing community service after smashing a beer mug over a waitress’s head, and the other, Robert, got caught stealing two big OLED TVs from the electronics shop. Hardly the company of civic-minded volunteers.
My aunt left with a half-pitying smile. I burned with humiliation.
As soon as she was out of sight, I stormed over to the shift supervisor. The embarrassment made me bold. I begged him to reassign me somewhere—anywhere—away from public eyes. I even hinted I’d get him a bottle of vodka as thanks (more than those two other lowlifes could afford to bribe him with).
He rubbed his chin. “Well... I might have a place for you, but you’re not gonna like it.”
“Trust me, I’ll take anything that’s not in the town square,” I replied.
“Okay. There’s the Kirkut. Nobody’s cleaned it in years. Folks say it’s haunted, and you know how superstitious people are around here... No one dares go there to rake leaves or anything.”
I knew the place—Kirkut, the Jewish graveyard. But right then, I didn’t care. Being far from nosy townspeople sounded like heaven.
“Fine. I’ll do it. Anything to get out of here.”
The supervisor shrugged and drove me out to the cemetery gates. I stepped out of the van, and he sped away, leaving me alone at the iron gates.
I smiled at how I’d managed to avoid the public humiliation.
***
At first, I pushed around the damp, mulchy leaves into sad little piles along the stone path.
After an hour, my back ached, so I sat flat on a bench facing the oldest tombstones.
Behind me was the haunted tree the local kids whispered about. I turned to look at it. Its mid-trunk was hollowed like a screaming jaw. The longer I stared, the more it looked like skin stretched over bones.
It’s just a tree. Don’t get spooked, I told myself.
A scratching feeling made me jump, but it was just the branches above me brushing the back of my head.
For a moment, it looked like the whole crown was slumping over me.
I was dead hungry, so I focused on my lunch, the egg sandwich. As I took a bite, a wayward branch grazed my face. It was clammy and wet, making me flinch.
I was either losing my shit, or the tree was coming alive.
“What the—?” I started as something whipped around my throat, cutting me off.
A branch coiled around my neck, squeezing with relentless force. I clawed at it, panicking.
The tree was alive!
I tried to leap up, but the bench was glued to my arse. I looked down and saw woody limbs locked around my legs. I was a hostage.
Then the leaves came, a tree branch shoving them past my lips, pile-driving them down my throat.
I felt them scratching inside, stuffing me full. Filthy. Dry. Disgusting. The branch wormed deeper into me. It felt like a gastroscopy. I gagged on the damp, earthy reek of rot.
It was agony. My chest burned, and my vision blurred. Just when I was about to black out, the branches snapped back.
I dropped to all fours, puking a slurry of decayed leaves onto the stone path.
I then crawled as far as the cemetery gates, shaking and spitting filth. There, I collapsed against the iron fence. My stomach felt like a sack of mulch.
No matter how many times I gagged and coughed, dead leaves still sat inside me. I could feel them heavy in my gut.
***
I thought about going straight to the hospital. But what would I say? “Help, a tree just shoved a bunch of leaves down my throat”? They’d either think I was crazy or some kind of degenerate with a leaf-eating fetish.
Mortified and gagging, I stumbled home. There, I gulped down a handful of leftover antibiotics, hoping to stave off any infection from all that filth I’d ingested. Then I collapsed into bed, praying I’d feel better by morning.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up drenched in sweat. Half-asleep, I peered at my forearms. Strange, stiff hairs seemed to be growing beneath my skin, all along my arms.
I fell back asleep, too exhausted to make anything of it.
***
When morning came, I dragged myself to the loo, sick, my head pounding like something was knocking to get out.
One look in the mirror, and I was instantly sober.
My reflection wasn’t human anymore. Branchlets were sprouting from my face, my arms, my shoulders.
Parts of my skin had turned rough as bark. Those arm ‘hairs’ I’d seen at night had grown into stiff twigs, with leaves budding from them.
A shoot about six inches long grew from my left cheek, just below my eye, pouring a mix of blood and sap.
My shoulder blades ached. When I turned, I saw more branches growing below my right shoulder, tearing straight through my pyjamas.
I ran my hands over my face, feeling a gory mix of soft flesh and bark. One of the twigs on my cheek cracked off in my shaking hand, leaving a wound that oozed... tree resin.
I tasted acid at the back of my throat and doubled over, spitting out a half-decayed leaf. Yuck. That had to be from yesterday’s ordeal.
None of this could be real. I had to be hallucinating.
I splashed water on my face, hoping to wake up from this nightmare. But it did nothing. It was real.
Outside.
A voice bellowed in my head.
I jumped, my eyes darting around. I was alone in the bathroom, yet I’d heard it clear as day.
Outside! It insisted. The words scraped at my skull like a dagger.
My legs moved on their own.
“No!” I yelled, gripping the doorframe, trying to stop myself.
If you refuse, I’ll make you, the voice echoed.
Barefoot in my pyjamas, I went down the hallway. Or rather, something forced me down there. I was heading for the front door and out.
Outside, the morning light blinded me. The autumn air was ice-cold on my skin. It was 7 a.m. I tried to grab the railing—or literally anything at all—but my legs kept shuffling forward.
So down the street I went, and I can’t say it was a happy stroll. My feet were cold as hell, and every step was giving me chills.
The town streets lay silent save for a few crows pecking at last night’s rubbish. A stray dog sniffed at me and then ran off with its tail between its legs. He knew something was off about me.
I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t; my mouth wouldn’t open, it was glued with sticky resin.
The pile of leaves inside me had become a magnet pulling me past shops and closed cafés, pushing me toward the heart of town—the square.
God, how much would I give to bump into my aunt like I did yesterday? I thought. Fate has a shitty sense of humour.
At that early hour, the square was empty. I was the only man out there. Well, actually a half-tree-freak in pyjamas. Barefoot at that.
My legs stopped in front of two tall oaks, about two storeys high, standing with an empty space between them.
I suddenly realised where this was all going. I knew that something wanted me to take root in that space—I’d bet my life on it.
Walk, it said.
“No! Man, or whatever you are... can we not talk this through?” I said.
No, it said again.
“Please! I beg you! I don’t wanna be a tree!” I pleaded.
But I felt the brute force commanding my legs. I tried to resist, but it only made for a glitchy, halting walk.
Nothing could stop what was happening.
I stepped onto the grass, and my feet fused to the ground that instant. Pain shot up from my toes, radiating through my ankles and calves. I looked down and saw my toes stretching, splitting, burrowing into the soil. In seconds, thick roots burst from my toenails and snaked into the earth, anchoring me.
I tried to scream again, but the thing inside me squirmed deep in my gut, drawing me up. A searing pressure mounted under my sternum, and something sharp forced its way up my oesophagus.
With a wet rip, a slender limb shoved itself out of my mouth and kept growing. It pried my jaws open, dislocating them with a crack.
Dark sap mixed with blood dripped down my chin as the branch shot for the sky. I felt every inch of it ripping up through my throat. Yet the pain was somewhat distant, as if my nerves were numbing out to let the “new me” through.
My throat was a hollow tube impaled by the climbing branch. Yeah. My body was no longer capable of producing sound.
Twiglets sprouted from me, tearing through cloth and flesh. My pyjamas shredded to rags as shoots erupted all over me.
My arms were next. My right forearm split open with a branch twisting upward like a twisted bough. My other hand splayed, fingers fusing into a fan of spiked leaves.
My spine arched, cracking as my torso stretched taller and thicker, ribs pushing out with bark ridges crawling across my chest, forming the new bark-texture of the tree.
Then I expanded, in both volume and size, and kept going.
Fuck off, I thought. Not exactly heroic last words.
After that, my eyes clouded over, turning the colour of moss. For a moment, I lost all sight, and the world went dark and silent.
***
Something new blossomed in the darkness.
I woke up and felt a set of weird new senses.
I was conscious, but it was a calmer consciousness within me, stretching its limbs after a long sleep.
It felt good. Honestly, this was better than antidepressants.
Where moments ago a man had stood, now only a towering tree remained, casting a long shadow in the early morning light. I was planted in the centre of the square, swaying slightly in the breeze.
I felt the morning sun warming the fresh leaves, nourishing my new body. I heard the vibrations of distant footsteps and the far-off flutter of birds. I tasted the mineral tang of the soil through the long roots that had sunk deep beneath the square.
As the sun climbed higher, people began crowding into the square. A baker’s boy on a bicycle nearly ran into my trunk, then wobbled away. An old man walking his dog paused to stare at the massive tree that he swore hadn’t been there the day before.
Before long, the cleanup crew arrived. Two men in orange vests with brooms and rakes in hand. I knew both of those guys from yesterday—Daniel and Robert. My fellow community-service offenders. I hated both of them.
I watched from above, a giant overseeing their labour as they cursed, raked and swept, shoving leaves into bags.
Somehow, I felt a deep and grim satisfaction. Now they were the ones enduring a futile, demeaning task, not me.
“Hey, buddy!” a voice interrupted my train of thought.
“Hey, you! I’m talking to you!” The voice felt almost inside my head.
“Y-yeah?” I answered. Not aloud, but in my thoughts.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“I’m Adam. Who’s speaking?”
“Nice to meet ya. My name’s Bernard, and this other guy next to you is Igor, but he’s not very talkative.”
Yes—it was the tree to my left, speaking.
“It’s nice to have someone new to talk to!”
“Wait, you guys are trees?” I asked.
“Yep, we are.”
“How did you end up like this?” I asked.
“Well, I was doing community service at the Jewish cemetery,” Bernard said. “A few years back. And that tree got me. Igor got caught even earlier, but I guess he’ll open up. He’s super grumpy today.”
“So that’s it then? We’re trees now?”
“That’s it, Adam,” Bernard hummed. “You’re one of us now. You’ll get used to it. I promise.”
“Welcome to the square, Adam.” Igor’s voice finally broke in, low and gloomy.
The wind sneaked through my new leaves, and I remained there, pondering my fate.
***
So there I was—a tree. I had literally taken root in the middle of town alongside my two new friends.
But there were some good things about it.
My humiliation and pain were now scattered across the town like all those dead leaves. The people who had once laughed as I was shamed—well, let them sweep and stoop and suffer under my shadow. Now it was my shit they were cleaning up.
All of a sudden, the tables were turned. This time, I was not the victim.
In the end, I had the upper hand.
Third Eye Horror
© Mac Sitko, 2025
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