The Fall

Everyone wants to know why. Why did he do it? Why did he cut down a tree, that tree? It’s on the news - a tree! On the telly! Not the standard war and shitty politics, today it was a tree that made the headlines, my tree.

Now everyone wants in on it. They’re posting their photos all over the internet, crying and wailing about a fucking tree, when they hadn’t thought about that tree since seeing it once on their rained-out holiday ten years ago. They talk about it like it was their best friend, for fuck’s sake. Liars.

They don’t know. They didn’t grow up round here. It’s not their tree, it’s nothing to do with those glory hunters. It could have stood for another hundred years and they wouldn’t have thought of it ever again. But me? I’ve thought about it every day for months now. Longer, actually. I’ve thought about that tree more than you’d believe, more than’s right. I know that tree. If you cut the back of my hand off and cut that tree down, I know which I’d recognise more. Those leaves, that bark, I know it better than the veins in my body and the dark insides of my guts.

So why then? Why did I cut it? Why did I kill it? Even my mates are asking. The word’s out that it was me who did it. Stealing off in the middle of the night with my friend’s dad’s chainsaw, even though no one saw me. It didn’t help that the police made a show of coming to our house and hauling me away in handcuffs for all the curtain twitchers to see. I felt for my mum, of course, seeing her at the window crying, as the cops drove me away. She won’t be able to face the neighbours, let alone go to the shops, but it’s not her fault. It’s nothing to do with her.

I can’t even tell you what it’s to do with. There was no dare from my friends, although that’s what they’re all saying. ‘I dared him to chop it down,’ they say, as if they were the mastermind and I was just their servant. But it was nothing to do with them, it was just me in the dark and the tree.

It feels like it’s always been me in the dark with the tree. Recently it’s all I could think about. Going to bed at night, I’d be thinking how I’d do it, how I’d cut it down. And then I’d plan. I’d plan and plan and plan. First thing in the morning I’d be thinking about what I’d need, what kind of saw, how I’d get there. I’d think about it on my way to school, during class, even when I was talking to my mates. They never knew what was going on, I kept up just fine, agreeing about whatever stupid thing they were talking about. But underneath I was thinking and planning. I’ve never thought about anything as much - not girls, not video games, not even porn. Just the tree, that bloody gorgeous tree.

Who’d have thought, the first time I saw it on a school trip to the ‘heritage of our area,’ that it’d lead to this? I remember saying that the tree didn’t look as good as on tv, but I was lying. As everyone else went around taking selfies I just sat there, pretending I didn’t care and tearing up one of the tree’s leaves into little little pieces.

What started as a tiny thought, something you have a million times a day but just scroll past, turned into an idea, which turned into a dream. You know, I’d actually dream about it - I’d see it there in front of me, perfect and real, even though I knew it was a dream. I’d want it. It was as good as in real life, not better. Just as good. Stunning, actually.

Everyone knows it’s stunning. They make movies with that tree in it, people love it in a way they could never love me. That tree gets more attention than most kids. They pose by it and protect it and send photos of it in magazines to the posh twats down south, who saw it once on a walk. But they don’t think about it day in, day out like I do. They like it in the way they like ice cream on holiday - something sweet but forgotten five seconds after you’ve finished. It’s not their life. It’s not their every thought like it is mine. I gave more to that tree than anyone on this earth, I reckon.

And what do I get in return? Nothing. Nobody gives me a medal for feeling so much for that tree, for devoting my head to it. They look at me and think ‘piece of shit, what would he know about caring?’ Fuck them. That tree was my life. That tree was mine but no one saw it. Everyone thought it was their’s, as if a pretty photo in a frame proves it, but their love was lukewarm piss in a plastic bottle. Mine was the real stuff.

Mine was everyday and everything. That tree was mine, fucking mine. And I knew the only way to show it was to have it for myself. I had to do away with it, so that last moment when it was whole was mine and mine alone. Everyone thinks I did it as a fuck you to the rest of the world, but no one knows the real truth. How having it there before me, just before it was ruined, was the only act of worship I’ll ever have in my life.

The thing is, I thought that’d be the end of it, when it was finally down. Once I saw them carting off the twigs in binliners, I thought that would be that. They’d build a great bonfire, burn the branches and the ashes would drift off and it’d finally be done. Maybe I’d feel better or sad or something, but I thought I’d be free of the tree.

But I’m not.

Maybe it’s because I left the stump? If I could, if I’d had more time, I would have torn out the roots, leaving not one piece of it behind. Imagine the stuff you’d need to do that and the planning it would take. Organising that would see me through most of my 20s.

But I can’t get rid of it, that feeling under my skin and the never-ending thoughts about that tree. And I don’t know what to do next. It’s still there. That bloody tree is haunting me. And even now, sat in this cell with no windows, all I can smell is woodsmoke.