Chapter 14: Not-So-Good Samaritan
I ignored the fuming boy. Instead, I warily observed the sight before me, my eyes embedding the grotesque images forever into my brain.
My lips curled into a grim line. I, for the life of me, still could not make some sense of the sight before me. It should have been impossible. However, for some reason, what I was seeing now just felt… right. Like a piece of puzzle, it simply clicked.
Previously I had thought that the man was murdered by the same vigilante that had healed me (the sounds that I heard and the wounds in my palm would be left unexplained, but it was the most logical conclusion that I could reach). However, now I was not sure if said vigilante even existed.
I saw it all now. I finally understood.
Everything that happened to the man was because of the tree.
From afar, it appeared to be an ordinary tree, indistinguishable from the various species that dot the landscape. Outwardly, it looked just like any other ordinary trees. It took an observant eye to notice the slightly more fearsome features of its branches, or the piles of human bones buried in between its giant roots, almost wholly submerged into the shallow crater.
Once one saw through the illusion, it looked absolutely demonic. The evergreen leaves were replaced with crimson ones, as if they were dipped in fresh bloods. Its trunk, used to be light brown now turned dark, so dark it was almost black. On it protruded the tips of ribs and skulls from humans it had consumed. Their faces appeared as knots in its bark – their expression horrified, their silent screams unheard.
I could just imagine it as it waited for unsuspecting humans to pass underneath its branches. When somebody got close enough, it would attack, snatching its prey up with its long, jagged, finger-like branches, and hoisting them, up into its bough. Those branches would pierce the skin of their victims, sucking out all the blood with tube-like twigs.
After the body was drained of everything it could take, the rest would be consumed by birds, insects, and other animals, until only dry bones fell back to earth. By the time most people were close enough to notice the heaps of bleached bones at the base of the tree, it was already too late to escape.
The only reason why I was still alive was because it already caught someone else to be its prey. Somebody had lost his life to satisfy its hunger. A man whom I didn't even know, whose life was so easily discarded like it did not mean a thing, like he was nothing.
But still, unanswered questions continued to ring in my head.
What had happened earlier? The sounds I heard and the sensations I felt were simply unnatural. They were too vivid, too real, as if I myself was the one that tortured and killed the man. Was the tree some sort of vengeful spirit? Punishing people who had done what it constituted as evil deeds, or perhaps randomly fulfilling wishes for vengeance. Although I did wish for him to die in my anger, I did not actually mean it, nor did I want him to suffer from such torment.
Or did I?
As much as I thought the sight before me was despicable, I could not deny that I felt relieved by the man's death. I reasoned that it was because he could no longer hurt anyone again in his violent psychotic episode; and that he did not have to suffer from loss anymore, thus he could finally be at peace. However, more than anything, the way he died really piqued my curiosity.
What lured him into the forest, or rather, how it lured him? How did the tree digest the blood? Did it gain any nutrient or did it simply eat chakra? There were so many things that puzzled me and I wanted to understand. If I were given a choice to redo everything again, I did not think that I would warn the man or even try to prevent his death. I would let things happen the way they were. I would have watched even, just so that I could understand the mechanism. That way his life would have had some meaning, giving a contribution towards science instead of just another fodder who was waiting for his ticking number to reach its end.
In a way the man had already died the very moment he lost his family. It was all reflected on his eyes. Beneath all of his hatred and anger, laid a bottomless pit of anguish, grief, and loneliness. The tragedy that took his wife and son had thoroughly damaged him. He was alive, but he did not really live. He was like a mannequin, human on the outside, but soulless on the inside.
Even watching him now, I felt… nothing. I simply stared at him – or rather, the tree and him – with the same clinical detachment that I might have had when working on my experiments and research. My eyes picked the way its branches leeched the remaining blood from the man's wound, inwardly noting that it would be more efficient if the tree simply sucked the blood out of him until the man died from blood loss, instead of killing him and then drained him, because after death the blood would coagulate and pool at his lower legs and feet as well as lower arms and hands.
The position of the branches did suggest that it was draining the man's blood, which brought forth the question of why it killed him before it had even done consuming him. There was a ligature mark – which suggested death by hanging; which also suggested that I was not hallucinating, which was relieving to know since all symptoms for the past months had indicated that I was suffering from schizophrenia – but there was no rope present.
I wondered if I really was the one who had somehow ended the man's life by releasing the 'rope', or if I was having some sort of mental connection with the hematophagy plant for some reason.
Something was missing, a red thread that was supposed to connect all the clues and the pieces of puzzle that I had gathered. I refused to believe that this was some kind of magic or supernatural hullabaloo. Everything had an explanation, even in this strange world that pretty much ruined my definition of reality. I simply had not found it, yet.
I looked up when a hand touched my shoulder.
"We really need to go now," Sasuke said. His eyes darted left and right, anywhere but meeting mine.
"Yeah."
I needed to do a little experiment first, though.
I lifted my bleeding hand and held it upward – like an offering – towards the nearest tree branch, showing the jagged skin of my right palm. A big red perpendicular mark ran from the flesh on top of my hamate bone into the middle of my forefinger.
"What are you doing?!" Sasuke fidgeted impatiently.
"Making a friend."
I ignored Sasuke's 'you're crazy' look and decided to focus on the task at hand of observing every twitch of movement the tree made. At first there was no reaction, but slowly and steadily, I saw the finger-like branch inched closer.
Come on, come here.
As if hearing my thought, one of its 'fingers' suddenly lengthened and moved in a wide arc towards me.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
TalkingElephant
TalkingElephant Hematophagy is the practice by certain animals of feeding on blood. Since blood is a fluid tissue rich in nutritious proteins and lipids that can be taken without great effort, hematophagy is a preferred form of feeding for many small animals, such as worms and arthropods.
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