The Acacia Tree (My first short story, wrote it for school in seventh grade, it got rejected because of the gore.)
Prologue
My mother strangled me, my father chopped me up, my brother and sister are eating me. This is what I saw as bones abandoned number an acacia tree.
Part 1.
It has been about a week now since our family ran out of food, I heard that some people on the other side of the island are killing each other for food. I wonder how killing each other will help, since there's nothing here anymore. Everyone will die eventually.
Ralven finished scribbling the last sentence in his notebook, then he put his pencil and book back into his small, little acacia wood table. He rushed out of the house, his patent didn't care about him anymore. In fact, they seem to be going kinda of crazy. They kept on talking about "the youngest one" and "food", being the youngest child in the family, Ralven didn't like the sound of that.
The trees covered the sky, only letting a few freckles of azure hue though the bushy tree tops. Ralven dashed though the wood, ignoring anything that might have caught on to his clothes. After the tiny woods slowly cleared up, he arrived in a decent sized clearing. In the center, there was a tree with light grey bark, some of it was peeling off, showing the bright orange wood inside of the tree.
It was an acacia tree, and the largest one Ralven eve found.
Part 2.
Ralven climbed the branches of the tree, the bark feel warm under the
noon sun.
"Hey, why do you think Mum and Dad are acting weird?" Ralven asked the tree.
The tree didn't answer, the only sound it made was the rustling of the leaves.
Ralven didn't care, he shifted a little on the branch, "They say they need food, but isn't there nothing left on our island, everyone is going to die anyways."
The tree rustled it's leaves again, but this time there was no wind blowing.
"Haha, it's okay, you don't need to know. You're lucky though, you just suck up the food you need from the ground." Ralven patted the branch, then jumped off of the tree.
The branch that he was sitting on rustled a little, like it was saying goodbye.
Part 3.
That night Ralven slept on a rock that was close to the seaside, but he couldn't really fall asleep, since he noticed that the lights in his house are still on. Was his family worried? Probably not, since no one really cared about no one anymore, so he was basically abandoned when the food ran out.
The half moon they night was tinted in a bright crimson, it looked kinda of like the wood in the acacia tree. Except the moon is shining,while the tree look so dark and dull, as if it's been soaked in fresh blood.
Part 4.
He couldn't breath. It hurts. Ithurtsithurtsithurtsithurts.
Ralven opened his eyes. It was his mother, except she was holding a fishing wire, and pressing it against his neck. Droplets of blood were dripping down his neck, and into the ocean, vanishing almost instantly.
"Ma......?" Shortage of air rendered Ralven almost unable to make a sound.
The woman strangling him seems like that she already lost her sanity, but being called by her own son made her flinched a bit. Then she was kicked back onto a rock.
Ralven gathered his strength and kicked his mother in the side of her stomach, a cracking sound suggested that he probably broke a few of her ribs. The woman fell back and hit her head on a rock. Ralven grabbed the wire from her hand, and whirled it around her neck. He only knew one thing now:
"I'll kill her, or she kills me." He whispered eerily under his breath.
He pulled the wire tighter and tighter. The woman's lips are already tuning purple, her eyes flipped up, and her tongue, witch turned blue, hanged out. Ralven kept on pulling the wire. It cut into flesh, eventually reaching the veins, blood gushed out and splatter all over Ralven.
The bloody veins, the crackling spine bone, and the vocal code...one by one all of them we're cut though by the wire. Soon only a bit of skin was holding the woman's head in place. Ralven sat, covered in blood, he understood now.
He understood what "food" meant.
"Food, so this is how you get more food!" He smiled a wide smile, though his eyes already lost all signals of humanity.
Ralven stood up, wobbling a little, and walked to the direction of his house. Where his father and siblings were.
Part 5.
In the clearing, under the grand acacia tree, Ralven was dragging something to the tree.
"Look, I went of the other side of the island, there were so many people there! Many of them are rotting already...but I've found some fresh ones." What Ralven was dragging was a middle aged man, with nothing but a thin layer of skin connecting his head and neck.
"Sorry I let all the blood run, but the place was so far away." Ralven said in a sad tone as he cut the man's wrist, and pouring the blood on the tree's exposed roots.
"Did I do a good job?"
The tree waved it branches just as if a gust of wind blew, but the air was still, so are the other trees.
Ralven grinned at the tree like a child who gotten a prize. Then he started peeling off all of the man's flesh, bit by bit, until there was nothing more than a skeleton with a human head left. He climb up the tree, where many skeletons like this one hang. There were men, women, and even children only six or seven, around the same age as Ralven himself.
He threw the skeleton on the tree, hopped down and smiled at it.
The tree's branch lowered, like something was controlling it. The branch patted Ralven's head, then returned to normal.
Part 6.
Ralven lived. He lived happily under the great acacia tree.
Though soon, the number of people on the island was growing less and less, while the number of skeletons grew more and more.
"Hmm...there's no one here anymore, what should I do?" Ralven said as he kicked his legs in the air.
The tree rustled like usual, though this time there seems to be a whisper also, "People......ship......." It whispered.
"What do you mean?" Ralven asked.
The noise of the ocean waves came into his ear, it was odd, since it was a waveless day. Ralven dashed though the wood, and on the azure hued water, there was a silver tinted ship.
Final Part.
A young girl about six or seven ran off the ship, her braided hair waved in the air as she moved. She saw someone, a small boy around the same age as her, peeking out of the trees. The girl wanted to go up, but turned back almost instantly.
Ralven looked hardly human now, his clothes were tattered and caked with dried and fresh blood, his hAir was quiet long, and his eyes gleamed a bloody red under the sun.
"Food...people?" Ralven ran up to the girl.
Then he fell, and went silent. A man was holding a smoking rifle on the side.
"What was that thing, animal, monster, defiantly wasn't human." He turned and looked where Ralven fell, but nothing was there. He assumed he just imagined it.
Huh? Wasn't it a boy? The little girl thought, but she followed the adults anyways.
At the same time Ralven was shot, the skeletons on the acacia tree vanished also, just like Ralven's body. The tree bark seems to glow a even more bright crimson now.
Epilogue.
It has been a week now since we shipwrecked here. Some people are killing each other for food. I'm okay though, since I know that everyone will die.
The little girl with braids closed her note book, and ran towards the clearing where the acacia tree sat.
The tree waved it branches like always in the windless air, and the girl smiled.
"Hey, why do you think everyone's acting weird?" She asked.
The End
