She loved to climb the one in Jamie’s garden area. Occasionally, in her good old kitty days, she’d need rescuing.
This tree wasn’t made of wood. If it was then the wood was made of a spongy, black mucous shooting out from the water and blossoming one hundred feet in the air.
Its towering effect antagonized her.
Where there might have been branches were, instead, darkened shafts of coal about twenty feet in length. It was as if an aircraft’s wings had melted in intense heat. They curved around the midpoint, arrowing back toward the water.
The stem bulged in and out as if it was breathing. Jelly saw the bulge shoot up from the root, causing the water to rupture away. It traveled up the stem and dispersed among the twenty or so branches and died out toward their ends.
Jelly sat perfectly still and took in the sheer size of the tree. She blinked hard, expecting it to move. Of course, it had no such intention. Being an inanimate object, it didn’t care much for the strange being sitting before of it.
Being curious in nature, Jelly wanted to know more. But she’d be damned if she went into the water to quench her thirst for knowledge.
At least the place was quiet, though. The sky acted strangely. The tree added a perversely morbid air to an otherwise wistful utopia. Jelly rolled around in the wet sand and cooled herself down.
“Jelly!”
She jumped to her feet and turned around. A recognizable shape in the shifting sand seat warbled into focus. The contours of a woman named Bonnie steadily approached her.
“Hey, girl,” she finished, confidently striding closer, “There you are.”
Jelly hopped to her feet and meowed back.
“I know,” Bonnie yelled as softly as she could. “It’s nice here, isn’t it?”
“Meow.”
Bonnie let out a hearty laugh and flung her long, brown hair across her left shoulder. “Aww.” She squatted to the sand and held her arms forward. “Come on, pet. Come here and give your auntie Bonnie a cuddle.”
Jelly found the human’s behavior a little strange. Stuck in a strange place and with little-to-no recourse for rescue, Bonnie seemed uniquely at home.
Her demeanor was enough reassurance for Jelly. She hopped along the sand, digging her infinity claws in with each step for good measure, and raced into Bonnie’s opened hands.
She arched her back and held Jelly out at arm’s length against the sky.
“Hey, sweetie.”
“Meow,” Jelly licked her lips and flipped her tail around, wondering when the cuddle would commence. She lifted her right leg for balance.
“God, you’re such a gorgeous creature,” Bonnie said with a deft admiration, her eyes fixated on Jelly’s. “Look at you.”
Then, the cuddle came. Bonnie’s left cheek nestling safely on Jelly’s forehead.
She took a look at the blackened tree to find a waterfall of dark pink liquid gushing from a slit that tore near the top of the stem.
“Oh, look. It’s crying pink.”
Jelly took a look and immediately grew concerned. She dug her titanium claws into Bonnie’s inner-suit sleeve, wanting to be set free.
“Okay, okay,” Bonnie huffed. “Jeez, you’re cranky—”
The middle of the tree’s stem heaved out, as if taking in a lungful of air. A pregnant pause befell Jelly and Bonnie as they waited for it to exhale.
Where would the exhalation come from, anyway? Apart from the slit, there was no sign of a mouth anywhere on it.
The branches slumped down, appearing to weaken as the tree bent back.
“What is that?” Bonnie squinted at the alien object as it gently lilted around.
Then, a deafening blast of sound rippled in every direction from the root of the tree.
Da-da-da-dummm…
“Huh?” she said.
Dah, dah, dah…. dum.
Bonnie clamped her hands over her ears and let out a cry of pain. “Agh!”
SPLASH!
A wave crashed out across the sand. A large fish plopped to the shore and shuffled around in pain, trying to breath. Its rounded lips gaped in and out.
“Meow,” Jelly kicked up some sand as she entered the prone position. Her tail bushed out, ready to attack.
“Jelly, honey, what—”
“Shhh,” Jelly fixated her eyes on the fat, circular fish as it flapped across the sand and gasped for air, “Shhh.”
“Sweetie? How are you saying that—”
“Mweh,” Jelly coughed up a lump of pink phlegm and spat to the sand. She darted over to the fish intending to tear it to shreds.
“No, Jelly. Don’t touch it—”
The fish bounced over the damp sand in an attempt to escape its impending doom. The back end of the blue creature lifted up and shed its skin.
A bony tail shot out and slapped to the ground.
Jelly screeched to a halt, kicking sand into the air with her paws. She didn’t like what had happened and would soon be terrified of what happened next, “Muuuh.”
The creature whipped its tail in retaliation. The end thwacked against the sand sending a shock wave through its bone, shattering its blue, oily skin across its body. The fish’s lips stretched back over its face. A row of sharp teeth jutted out from its skull, as the blue skin flaked away.
It had turned into a bizarre armadillo-type creature. Four small limbs, bent at the middle, with claws.
Jelly widened her eyes in terror as the creature turned to her and growled. A swish from the creature’s tail made sure Jelly took a few steps back, hoping not to get murdered.
The beast crept forward with its chunky feet and slammed its razor sharp jaws together.
Da-da-da… dum… the tree appeared to sing.
Bonnie found the whole spectacle puzzling but wasn’t afraid of the abnormality creeping towards her. She gripped her metal leg and made sure it was armed in case it tried its luck.
“What the hell is going on, here?” she turned to Jelly and raised her voice, “Come here, girl.”
Jelly didn’t hear the command. She froze on the spot, scared that the creature might lunge at her.
The tree heaved and lilted to the left side as if quietly dancing to its own rendition of a classical tune. The mimicry of organs and trumpets came out like a confused amalgam of croaking wood and belches.
Bonnie recognized the attempt, finding the entire scenario eerily reminiscent of Opera Alpha.
“Is that… Beethoven’s Fifth?” she gasped, piecing the tree’s segments of harmonious rumbles together. “It is, it is…” She turned over her shoulder and saw a transparent spacecraft wreckage in the horizon. The ghost of the deserted Space Opera Alpha.
“Huh?”
Jelly, meanwhile, found herself crawling backwards on her hind legs as the recently-evolved beast threw its spindly arms forward.
“Maaw,” she kept her fattened tail up and swinging around. A failed attempted to allay the creature’s desire for feline blood.
The beast growled at her, forcing the air molecules to ripple together and throw her fur on end.
“Meow,” Jelly screamed back and swiped her right claw in retaliation.
So hard was the creature’s roar that the reptilian skin on its face broke apart and slapped against the sand. A gray-colored skull broke forward and shrieked, shedding the rest of its skin. Its skeletal structure fizzed and sparked, cracking onto itself.
The spine curved in the middle and sprung stems either side, meeting around its exposed organs.
A liver.
A stomach.