Have you ever experienced the typical thunderstorm as your head lay sleepily upon your pillow as a kid? I believe we all have many a time. Were you scared? I’m sure a good portion of you were. Of what though? The gusting winds? The hammering thunder? The epileptic lightning flashes that seep through your windows blinding you as fear seeps into your mind from the unknown frenzy outside? Or maybe its…the tree branches. Rapping against your windows. Watching the dark cast its aura transforming it into a nightmarish silhouette of your worst nightmares, your eyes transforming it to the worst possible thing.

A monster. A monster with long lanky limbs and a deformed grotesque body. Sharp red eyes pierce through your soul as it stares at you, tapping its large pointed finger along the glass of your window sometimes scraping at it, hissing at you as it stares at your feared form hiding under the covers laughing as it watches you shake. You can only think of what it would want with you or do with you. Take you away, kidnap you….eat you even? Digging into your flesh with this sharp jagged teeth. Or maybe it’s a bit more devious? It could tear you limb from limb and wear bones as jewelry. You’re pretty much to scared to think of the horrendous things the branch atrocity could do. But instead you fall asleep as you wear your mind out and wake up to find only a healthy beautiful tree staring at you from outside dripping with water.

Now I thought nothing of it the time the next storm rolled in a few weeks later. I sat and watched TV aimlessly that Friday night, played my X-Box and headed off to sleep looking out the window thinking something was missing…something was off but I shrugged it off and headed to sleep. As my eyes lay shut it hit. Tap-Tap-Tap. The grotesque branch monster. I hid under my covers yet again throwing the invisible imaginary invulnerability shield over me. I shook myself a bit and waited….and waited…and soon enough to my pleasure it tapping disappeared. I popped my head out only to keep telling myself…”Its only a tree….its only a tree…..” as I attempted to fall back asleep.

My eyes closed and sleep fell over me until the tapping returned yet again. But it was different this time. There was no sound associated with this tapping. It was a sharp tapping. One that occurs from physical touch. Physical, sharp, jagged pain tapping into my side. I opened my eyes, the tapping still sticking me in the side. I lay there in shock. In shock at the mass of tree branches sitting in my room. Its red eyes staring at me. Tree branches don’t’ have red eyes do they?