De Facto Times

There was a tree which bore green fruit, and it was hidden within a tangled and messy woods; its neighboring trees had grown in such a way that it was as if they were intentionally trying to obscure it from sight of passerby, their vines and branches twisting at all the precise angles and their vegetation growing in abundance to smother and eventually suffocate the tree of green fruit. It was allowed no water and no sunlight, and the roots of its neighbors stole any nutrients from its soil, but it grew and grew nonetheless, and, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, it was perfectly healthy and blooming, in defiance of the laws of nature to which all other plants are bound.

Now, green fruit in itself is nothing exceptional, but this tree sprouted every kind of fruit imaginable – apples, oranges, tomatoes, melons, and more, and all of them were vivid green, even when they were ripe. They blended in perfectly with the vines and the leaves and everything else in the forest, and none of its neighbors bore edible fruit, so for the longest time this miraculously bountiful wonder of nature was completely ignored by the world – not even small mammals or insects paid attention to it. It was two hundred years old.

The first creature to ever see the tree was a woman.

Her name was Trin, and she was thirty years of age, and she was struggling. She couldn’t remember exactly how she had found her way into this forest, or how long it had been since she had seen civilization, or when she had last eaten or drank or slept. Her clothes were dirty and tattered, her shoes wearing away, and she was bruised and scraped from charging persistently forward into the forest. She left a jagged path of trampled vegetation in her wake.

Trin was running from her family, namely her father, whom she had just discovered had murdered her mother. There was not nearly enough evidence to warrant her father having legal action taken against him, but she had tried to confront him herself, and it had taken a lot out of her. The argument was still ringing in her ears.

“You will listen to me.”

“Get out, Trin. I swear if I still see you–”

“You can’t touch me. You can’t hurt me like you hurt her. Listen to me right now, Dad, or else–”

“Or else what? You’ll kill me? You? You pathetic nothing of a woman–”

“You can’t ignore me, Dad. I’m your daughter. I know that means something to you. I know Mom meant something to you, and I know it hurts that she’s gone.”

Laughter from her father. “It hurts that she’s gone. Right.”

“You loved her. You love me, and I know you think you hate me and you hate her but that’s not what it is–”

“You think I love you? When have I ever loved you, Trin? It’s really not personal, I want you to seriously think about it. What makes you think that I care about you? Because I never wanted you to think that. I don’t want you to think something that’s not true. It’s harder for me if you think that I ever cared for you or your mother–”

“You’re my father.”

“And you’re my daughter. Now turn around and don’t let me see you again or else I will personally break your neck.”

Trin had fled then and there, realizing her father really meant to harm her and would not regret it any more than he did any of his other evils, and she wept and staggered as she ran through the streets. She had no siblings and no other family, so when she returned home and sank into her chair she shook with the knowledge that she was truly alone now.

Over the next week she had been visited by her friends, who tried unsuccessfully to break her out of her state of shock and guide her out of her house back into the real world. She sat in her chair, face white and arms clenched to the armrests, barely hearing the words of her friends over the cold voice of her father repeating itself again and again in her mind.

“Trin, come join us outside, it’s beautiful outside!”

“Trin, we want to help you, but you have to talk to us. Tell us what’s hurting you…”

“Trin, please listen to me. Listen to me!”

“You think I love you?” said the memory of her father, and those words drowned out anything her friends said in desperation. With no biological family to extend love to her, Trin felt that the many friendships she had made were worthless and vapid, and she could find no pleasure or meaning in them. She felt lonely and completely hollow, and none of her previous hobbies could bring her anything anymore.

So she had fled from her home too, with the same haste she had fled from her violent father, and she had charged headlong into the deep forest to try and lose herself to the shadows and the hungry thick vegetation that swallowed up anyone who went inside. Sure enough, within hours of plowing through the untamed wood, she had no sense of where she was or how she was to survive. She had sealed her fate, which was how she wanted it.

The voice, however, would not go away. “You think I love you?” her father asked her, again and again, and she tried to reply to him. “I know you don’t love me,” she thought, but the memory replayed, and her father asked her that devastating question again and again, and she could not answer him enough for the question to go away. She closed her eyes but still his hateful face appeared in her vision, and when she opened them he was still there, flashing in fragments across her mind.

“Leave me alone!” Trin screamed aloud, but her words died upon leaving her mouth and they were heard by no one, drowned by the stifling silence of the forest.

She wanted it to end, she wanted the pain to leave her, she wanted to forget about her father and her mother and the life she had lived that she felt had amounted to nothing and had caused her to be dragged down into the abyss of pain where her soul now lived and could not escape from. She wondered how long before the forest killed her – perhaps she would encounter some kind of horribly poisonous plant, or be eaten by a ferocious predator as-of-yet unknown to humanity, or would simply starve and thirst until she was done for. Thoughts of death soon left her, though. The memories of her murderous father pushed them away, as they did any hopeful thought Trin dared to accept. There was no peace to be found for her, not even in death. The forest offered her only more pain.

After days of stumbling and suffering and forgetting, she came across the tree of green fruit, and in her weakened state she had no capacity for rational thought or reasoning. She forgot that she had gone into the forest to die, forgot that she had a cruelly conceived past that she was trying to escape from – she merely brushed her hand up against a ripe green orange, and she saw it and felt it, as no one had ever done before. Instinct took over, and she plucked the green orange from its stem and brought it to her mouth, and she took a bite.

Her hunger was nourished slightly, and there was protein for certain in the fruit, so that was healthy. But it was the taste that absolutely overpowered Trin. She knew what she expected an orange to taste like, or a grape, or any other fruit. Any one type of fruit tends to taste the same as any other. But she picked orange after green orange from the branch, and each one tasted different. Each bite tasted different, and each one was the most incredible bite she had ever tasted and was better than the last. 

The first bite of the first green orange sent her eyes widening and drool dribbling down the side of her face, desperate for more. The second bite made her feel weak in the knees. Each bite after that cost her more and more of her resilience and strength, as the pure sensory sweetness overwhelmed her and she became desperate for more. After the fifth incredible green orange, at which point she had taken one hundred total bites from the green fruit overall, all one hundred exponentially increasing in savoriness, it was at this point that she decided she should try other fruit. So she tried the green bananas, the green peaches, the green strawberries, all of which delighted her in new ways, and eventually she had taken at least one bite from every type of fruit on the tree. She felt less hungry, and some of her lost strength had returned to her, but as she sat and chewed on her green blackberry she had a striking realization:

She didn’t hear her father anymore.

His voice no longer echoed through her brain, taunting her and driving her to endless misery. Trin now actively tried to recall what he had said to her, tried to relive that awful memory solely just because she was confused about being apart from it, and found that she couldn’t quite picture the scene. Only blurred bits of it remained, something about him asking her to leave, but she couldn’t really think of it.

What was on her mind now was the sweet taste of the green juice, hundreds of variations of the stuff in hundreds of different green fruits, and she needed more. She laughed aloud, and then took to scaling the tree, picking as much as she could and feasting.

One interesting fact about the tree in question was that it was impossible to trim. Its neighbors ensured that it never grew too large, with them smothering it with their own branches, but the tree seemed determined to completely fill what little space it was allowed. If a twig ever broke off from it, an equally-sized new one would immediately sprout. No leaf fell without another taking its place. And the same, Trin was delighted to discover, was true for its fruit. Whenever she picked a fruit, an identical clone appeared within the second. She laughed when she came upon the bushels of green blueberries and started tearing them wildly from their branches with crazy ferocity, and the ground below her soon began piling up with endless green blueberries, for they would always reappear as soon as they were picked. The tree seemed to be an infinite source of this magical green fruit, and so Trin ate and ate, and never worried about becoming too full or running out or anything else of the matter. She had found a hobby that filled her.

Months went by, and back in her hometown, chaos continued to ensue. Trin’s father had committed suicide minutes after she had disappeared into the woods, and the townspeople were in an uproar in their attempts to find her. She was very well-liked in her community, and everyone knew the tragic details of her personal life and wanted to help out their friend as best they could. When she had retreated into her own home immediately following her confrontation with her father, most people had assumed that she needed and was entitled to some personal space, and had left her alone out of respect and hope that that was what she needed. On the other hand, when she had run away into the forest, no one stayed out of it. Now almost the entire town was charging in every possible direction through the forest, yelling Trin’s name in the hopes that they could find her.

The forest was known for being a ravenous and dangerous place, and the odds of surviving in there were slim, especially as unprepared as Trin had been. But at the very least until a body was found, the search would not stop. She was too important, had mattered too much to the community, and most of the searchers believed that this was the last parting gift they could give to their beloved friend.

Clabe, an old schoolmate of Trin’s, was out one night with his lantern, careful not to lose the path he had cut for himself, but venturing nervously deep into the woods, and the sounds of the night flooded the air around him and made him uneasy. “Trin! Trin! Answer me, please!”

That was what they all were yelling. Clabe was no different than the others, his heart didn’t ache any more than anyone else, though he of course cared deeply about finding Trin. He remembered her faintly from school and was sure that she was a wonderful individual who deserved to be rescued from this terrifying environment.

What set Clabe apart from everybody was that he actually did go crashing violently through the undergrowth at the right time, and, in the faint firelight from his torch, came upon the tree with green fruit, seeds and shells and stems and all the residue piled in mountains around its base, and sitting on them like a throne was Trin, feasting away on some green watermelon.

“Trin! Oh, thank goodness you’re okay! It’s Clabe, I’m not sure you remember me from school, but everyone has been looking for you! This is such a relief. You have to come home with me!”

Trin could barely hear him over the euphoria of her feast, which rang in her ears like a sustained strike of the sweetest bell in the world. She was staring intently at the food in her hands, watching it get smaller and riper with every bite she took, and that was all there was. She could very very foggily hear a noise in the background that rather sounded like a human voice, but she could not muster the willpower to pay any attention to it. Clabe had to physically shake her before she lifted her head and perceived him.

“Sorry?”

“Trin, can you hear me?”

“Yes I can, sorry. What were you saying?”

“I was saying that the whole town has been looking for you; we didn’t even know if you were alive! Are you safe? Are you feeling sick? How have you–”

“Yes, I see. Thank you very much for your concern, but I’m quite alright where I am now. Please tell everyone else not to worry and to return to their lives, and that, with all due respect to all of you, I mean not to return to our town. It was good to see you.”

At this Clabe opened his mouth and closed it again, lost for words, before stammering out in a frenzy, “You aren’t returning to our town? You can’t possibly stay here, we’re in the middle of the forest–”

“Anyone who would like to join me here is more than welcome,” Trin suggested. “Here I have found a tree that yields green fruit, which is of a caliber beyond anything we have ever tasted anywhere else, and it appears to be endlessly bountiful and nutritious. I believe that the entirety of our town could be completely nourished by this tree alone.”

Astounded, Clabe stepped forward and plucked a green grape from an overhanging branch, and he popped it in his mouth and was immediately overwhelmed by the purity of the delectability. He immediately understood why Trin did not want to step away from the tree; he was already nearly overwhelmed by craving for another grape, and then another and then two more and then that would be all. He told himself that was what he would do, and he hungrily reached for another grape, before something occurred to him and he dragged his own hand away.

“We will do no such thing, Trin,” he said sternly. “Your health is visibly deteriorating; your all-fruit diet is insufficient to keep you alive! Look!”

And he gestured down at her body, and she bent down her head, and she noticed that indeed her skin was stretched tight across her skeleton, and her face had turned a sickly green color, hideous and ill-looking, far from the vibrant beautiful green that bloomed from the tree. Her stomach was caving in on its ribcage, but she didn’t feel hungry at all. The pleasure she received from the fruit was so overwhelming she could not feel the pains of hunger or exhaustion even if she tried.

“I don’t feel hungry,” she suggested.

“Nor do I,” Clabe growled. “In fact, I feel as though if I were to continue eating those green grapes, I would forget about all of my physical pains and wants, and be content to wither away and eat them forever.”

Trin heard those words and smiled, because she felt as if that was exactly what she wanted to do. She couldn’t even really remember anything before having found the tree of green fruit, except that it had been racked with pain and discomfort, all triggered by inconsequential and stupid events. The fruit distracted her from that, and the more she thought about it, the fonder she was that that was the case. Relief was what every human spent their entire life searching for, and she had found a surplus of it. Why should she walk away?

“If you do not want to continue eating the fruit of this tree, so be it. I pity you but wish you the best. Know that I will not be moved except by force.” And Trin really hoped it would not come to that.

Clabe did not take it upon himself to physically remove Trin from the tree, despite his personal feelings that it would be the best thing for her. He instead made a marking of her location and reported his findings back to the rest of his community, who were astounded by the news. The majority of them sought out the tree to see for themselves, and observed Trin’s infatuation with the fruit that it yielded, and concluded that there was something sinister about the green fruit that was best avoided. Trin ate and silently watched them draw their conclusions.

Eventually the only people that remained were Trin’s close friends, who begged her to leave. Trin had no interest in doing so.

“You couldn’t possibly understand if you haven’t tried it. Have a single grape at least, Clabe did and he’s just fine. You can’t make up your mind about something that you have no knowledge of at all.”

“That is exactly the reason why we will not taste any of your green fruit,” Azley, her closest companion, retorted. “Have you considered the possibility that perhaps the chemical makeup of the fruit alters your brain? Perhaps it is twisting your mind and body to become dependent on it, like a drug?”

“This is no drug, Azley, it is fruit. Healthy, ripe fruit growing from a non-toxic tree. This is what humans have eaten for thousands of years and become all the better for it–”

“No human has ever tasted fruit like that which you are eating now. The tree you eat from is a natural anomaly, and you have no reason to believe that it is safe to do so. In fact, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that eating from this tree is unsafe. Ever since you have taken your first bite you have been bound to it, unable to tear yourself away from its branches. In the past several months, how much have you slept? How much have you drunk? Have you bothered to stand up?”

“I haven’t had the need.”

“Trin, look at you! You are dying from lack of self-care–”

“This is self-care. What I am doing right now is self-care. This fruit is what I want and what I need. My emotional and mental health is more important than my physical–”

“I would be inclined to agree, except you are going to physically die and that means it won’t matter how healthy you are emotionally or mentally. Trin, stand up. At least do that much.”

But Trin remained stubbornly seated, chewing hard on a green plum and trying not to shriek with ecstasy from it. Since her first fruit, every bite had been more and more pleasurable, with no signs of slowing down. The amount of euphoria she had felt ever since she started feasting was incomparable. Clabe, who was back in town, having done his part, was still trying not to think about that single grape he had eaten, and how delicious it had been, and how badly he wanted another bite. That was the effect that the green fruit had on anyone who tried it. 

Eventually Azley and the other friends left Trin as well, accepting that she would not be convinced. They took solace in the fact that, despite her deteriorating body, Trin was happier than she had ever been in her life and would probably die in a very good mood, and that was a nice thought. But they also couldn’t help but shake the idea that Trin was only thirty years old, and had one of the brightest minds that any of them had ever known. The amount of potential she had was gigantic, and the fact that it was going to be wasted now was a tremendous loss to all of them.

But they pushed that thought away and went on with their difficult lives, while Trin sat still cross-legged under her tree way deep in the forest, pulling off green fruits constantly and eating them, growing weaker and happier with each passing minute. Now her skin was a deep shade of green, an extremely unhealthy shade, and she was nearing death. She didn’t notice, though. The effects of the fruit made it impossible for her to feel her failing body.

One day she was halfway through a truly immaculate green banana when her eyes drooped and she toppled over, and was deprived of the sweet green juice for a good half hour as she lay on her side, barely conscious and almost completely starved to death. In her deprivation, she realized how badly her bones were aching, how parched her throat was and how desperately her body was craving both exercise and actual sleep. Her stomach throbbed with empty pain to the point where it felt like her ribcage was about to collapse in on itself. She realized that as wonderful as the green fruit tasted, it would lead to her death if she stayed with it.

So she staggered to her feet and stumbled back through the forest, away from her one source of true happiness and back to the numerous woes and grievances that awaited her in her actual life, and when she emerged from the forest, a few minutes away from being a corpse, she was greeted by a tremendous cheer from those who saw her, which got louder and louder as more friends of hers realized that she was returning. She was rushed to the hospital, where, over the course of several days, she was nursed back to sufficient health, her body gladly rejecting the disgusting green juice that had comprised the entirety of her diet for too long.

When the time came for her to leave the hospital, she returned home and resumed her old job as a mineral researcher, which she was extremely good at. For one week, she dedicated at least an hour a day to exercise, and she nursed her body back to a good shape. She caught up with the friends she hadn’t seen in a while, apologized for her absence, and also dove deep into the local news she had missed, trying to stay on top of all the major events going on in the world. She had always prided herself on being a very well-informed individual.

More than anything, she tried not to think of the tree. It was mind-blowing to her now that she had spent so much time sitting under its branches doing absolutely nothing but eating. It all seemed like such a waste now, but she had done it, and she didn’t want to fall under the same spell. So she steered her train of thought away from the sweetness of the juice, the perfect ripeness of the fruit, and how low the branches hung, almost crafted specifically to be convenient for picking, and how plentiful they were. She thought not about any of that, and instead focused on her actual life.

One night Trin lay in bed, thinking about what to think about, and suddenly she heard a voice.

“You think I love you?”

It was him, and she sat up straight, terrified that she was about to be murdered. She had of course received the news that her father had killed himself, but perhaps he had faked it, and was about to finish off the only family he had left…

But that wasn’t true. She was alone in her room, and her father’s body was almost entirely decomposed in an unmarked grave. The voice was only in her head, and yet she still heard it as clearly as anything…

Again and again. “You think I love you?”

She fell asleep, and her father was in her dreams, and she awoke and her father’s voice was in her head. Sometimes she could hear it as clearly as if he were standing right next to her, other times it was quiet, like an almost inaudible whisper. But it was always there, and try though she might she could not ignore it.

Miserable weeks went by and the voice did not go away. It lingered, and stayed, and Trin found herself descending down to the same depths of misery that had driven her into the forest to die. This time she spoke to her friends openly about her problem, but found little solace in their advice.

“Give it time.”

“We’re here for you if you need anything.”

“You just have to wait for it to heal, Trin. It’s like any other wound. I know it hurts and you would do anything to be free of it now, but there’s no way. In time, it will be gone, and you will be all the better for having suffered through it. But it’s still a fresh memory for you, and only time will change that. For now, you just have to stick it out.”

But she knew she didn’t have to stick it out, and that was the hard part. Trin found herself gazing into the woods, thinking about her cozy little spot where she starved herself consuming that sweet, happiness-giving green fruit. She tried not to think about it, but every now and then a sliver of the memory of the green juice’s taste came back to her, and that memory sort of drowned out the memory of her father. She thought for sure that if she were to taste the green fruit once more, it would be even more delicious than it had ever been, and the memory of her father would vanish completely. She remembered where the tree was, and was confident that she could get to it quickly. 

But she had sworn off of the green fruit, and she respected her friends too much to go back on her word. So she did the next best thing.

Azley, her closest friend, knocked on her door one day, and let herself in, and found that Trin had killed herself, just as her father had. She was buried beside him, but could not hear him anymore.