"A tree, a home and a life. Split in half."


Writing helps people process events and feelings. Written in my Creative Writing Club, this piece helped Svetlana Demchenko process some events in her life. I was moved.

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"A tree, a home and a life. Split in half."

She woke up and sat up on her bed. Last night she had a nightmare, one of those nightmares that can be hard to shake off and wake up from. One of those that resemble a cat's claws or a snake's teeth because the harder you try to escape, the more you find yourself hopelessly trapped. All she remembered from this nightmare was a thunderstorm, overwhelming and never ending. It felt like there's no life after this thunderstorm. And she couldn't remember what was before the thunderstorm. The strangest thing was that the thunder had a metal rattle to it. It was driving her crazy.

It was unusually quiet in her room. Seemed like there was life after a thunderstorm after all. She looked around and saw that it wasn't actually her room. The wallpaper was red, not beige and the sofa was standing on the opposite side. The biggest difference was no black metal dust on her window sill which she used to have to wipe every morning, the byproduct of a huge steelworks in the heart of her city. Looked like her room remained in the dream. Bang! Her neighbor loudly slammed his metal front door, hurriedly leaving for work. She shuddered and decided to leave the house.

Everything outside was different as well. A busier street, smaller shops, cleaner air with no smog and every single person was a stranger. Looked like her city remained in a previous life. It was sultry like before a thunderstorm but everyone was saying that it has been like this for weeks.

She walked in a shop and suddenly saw her local supermarket from her previous life. The same grumpy middle aged cashier with bleached tangled hair, the same cheezy St Valentine cards and souvenirs that were supposed to be removed a week ago. "Do you need a bag?" She heard and wanted to say yes when the vision faded and there were no crumbled pink hearts, and a young cashier with wavy brown hair was smiling at her. She left the shop.

She was walking along the sidewalk when she heard a car driving behind her, the engine humming. For the first time in her life, as the car was catching up with her, she felt an urge to flee and hide, terrorized by the increasingly loud whirring of the engine and the wheels. She remembered now that she was fleeing and hiding from something in her dream, something that made a similar sound. There it meant death if it caught you.

Eventually a thunderstorm did start. This one didn't have a metal clank to it though like in her dream. Still, her heart sank and everything inside her twisted at the sound of it. A lightning struck a tree that was standing alone on a hill. It only lasted a split second. Hesitantly, she came up to it and saw the trunk cruelly split in half and branches scattered on the ground. It looked like the old man from her dream who was killed by lightning during the thunderstorm. He was trying to flee and hide like everyone else but his legs were damaged with arthritis and his dyspnoea slowed him down. She remembered walking by and looking into his lifeless eyes and twisted body. She looked at the tree again and wondered "Is it going to just stay and rot here for weeks like that poor man did?"

She entered a noisy bar, sat down on a new green leather chair and asked for a gin and tonic. She was aimlessly looking around and trying to see at least one familiar face. Looked like everyone she knew remained on the other side. The waiter stumbled and dropped a metal tray. Her hand trembled and spilled her drink. Finally, in the far end of the bar she saw her friend from a previous life sitting on a couch in the dim light and getting hopelessly drunk on whisky like he always did on a Friday. He smiled warmly and waved at her. She found herself driven to him as if he was a light and she was a moth. He was radiating an aura of comfort. He felt like home. "I'm so happy to see you here" she said "I don't recognise anything or anyone". "This is a new world" he said "And there are two kinds of people in this world," her companion slurred, pausing to take another artless swig. "Those who died but remained alive and those who survived but turned into living dead." She looked at him and saw that he looked very much alive and well unlike her. Then he disappeared into thin air like an oasis in the desert.

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Image credit: Anna Skopina

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