This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/flat_footed_wonder on 2026-05-14 14:39:53+00:00.

---

Long have I enjoyed its fruits.  The sensation of each bite was as invigorating as the first I ever took.  The taste is still a blissful, potent, intoxicating explosion.  That horrified shame I once experienced has been long dead and buried in some crevice of my eternal soul, lost in the infiniti I surrendered for the pleasures of extended mortality.

It's been my life partner for nearly a century.  Born in 1934, I have enjoyed the bounty of youth well into my early hundreds.  My skin supple, my flesh strong, my mind sharp.  This plot of land has been my home ever since I discovered it, and I have never yearned for anything different.  An ecstasy permeates the very air around it, and every day, I get to wake and inhale its gifts.  How could I yearn for anything else?  How could I have known?

I remember that first day vividly on the cusp of the Smoky Mountains, beyond the East Coast.  I was a desperate man, looking for cheap land and distance from people I had little patience for.  On the brink of burning the last of my fuel, I pulled off the main road, down a dirt path.  Trees soon encompassed my beater vehicle, and the road continued down a sudden, side-winding cliffside.  Running on fumes, I let my curiosity follow the dirtway, no point in stopping while I can still go.

The barren drive gave way to a field, the road ended, but I let my car drift through the brush with its final burst of gas.  The gravity of my life must have been weighing my mind down somewhat, for I was numbly bursting through bushes and tall grass for a handful of minutes before I regained concern for my well-being.  In the nick of time, I swerved around a tree and skidded to a halt just past the treeline.

Shaking my head in self-disgust, I looked at the odometer to confirm I had just burned the last ounce of fuel in my car.  Disgust was soon wiped from my thoughts as I looked up out my windshield.

A graveyard stared right back at me.  A humble stone fence guarded its small perimeter.  The canopy of trees leered over the petite guard, but dared not cross it, leaving the bed of the dead open to enjoy the sun unmolested by shadow.  Scattered headstones poked out of the thick grass blanket, appearing as aged pillows stained by past eons known only by those silent few who slept within.

In the midst of this archaic landscape, sat a single tree.  Young, yet to bear fruit, but straight and strong of trunk.  From it sprout nine branches, each identical in girth and extension.  All arched upward, before slanting sharply down, as if recolied fingers.

The bizarre scene was captivating.  I had never seen anything like it.  Exiting my car, I walked to the fence and peered over it, like a child daring to wander onto an adult’s property to retrieve a ball. Mesmerized, I stared at it unblinking.  Before I realized it, I was standing under it.  Its shade was more than cooling; it was blissful, like a blanket of soft, liquid flesh massaging every inch of me in a loving embrace.

I came to my senses after my foot hit a hard block just at the foot of the tree.  The roots had grown over most of it, but I made out what it was nonetheless.  A headstone peeked from under the magnificent plant.  Wooden tendrils had consumed most of it, but I could still examine the last name and date of death:

Handstern

- 1924

The tree had grown from his very resting place.  At the time, I simply thought it was poetically beautiful.  Evening was fast approaching, and the solitude, along with the gravitational force of the bizarre tree, was convincing enough for me to camp out in the graveyard.

The night sky was vivid and bright, and the cold wind was shielded by the tree under which I slept.  My dreams were filled with orgasmic sensations and vibrant warmth.  Never had I slept so soundly and yet experienced so much while doing so.  When I woke, the faint kiss of those dreams was imprinted on my mind.  At first, I was oblivious to the trees' influence and chalked it up to the peaceful, scenic bedroom I found myself in.

Stretching and breathing in the morning air, I realized I was atop an incredible overlook, something the night and forest had hidden from me.  Just past the graveyard was the cliff edge, looking over the immense forest valley below.  I was completely floored by the wonder this location seemed to spring on me from moment to moment.  What are the chances?

I sat there for most of the morning, legs dangling off the rocky overhang.  Existential contentment was an abnormality for me at that time; never had I felt, not just at peace, but aroused by life.  Breathing was invigorating, silence was enchanting, my body pulsed with energy, and my mind was sharp and heightened.  I had never felt more alive, more human, until that first moment here.

Bolting to my feet, pounding my chest in elated joviality, I turned back to my car to assess my supplies, determined to camp here as long as my luggage would allow.  Hopping over the compact fence, I came to a halt beside one of the nine, finger-like branches of the great tree.  I was shocked to discover, upon the very tip of this wooden appendage, a blooming bud of some sort.  A bud I was certain was not there the night before.  Flabbergasted by the speed of this eruption of life, I shook it off as yet another mystery of this oddity of botany.

I decided then and there that, no matter how scarce my supplies were, this was a sign to camp here a few more days.  My rationale at the time was simple: I desperately needed this cleansing of body and spirit before venturing back to the “real world”.  The sluggish banality, quiet desperation, and sullen patheticness of searching for work, let alone the haunting possibility of actually succeeding this hunt, was an experience I was eager to put off.

So, I spent the remainder of the day strolling the vicinity, picnicking under the tree, and occasionally by the cliff edge.  I cannot lie, the natural silence was beautiful, but there were moments where, even in that paradise, my thoughts wandered to places I was uncomfortable with.  At the time.

The first was of my family.  What little family I had was scattered across the continent, but I was leaving a sister and a younger brother up in New England.  Not to mention a potential sweetheart whom I had unsuccessfully and sporadically courted on and off throughout my years in our small town.

I was thinking how pleasant it would be to share this place with them, when I realized I was having a difficult time remembering their faces.  Vague whispers of shapes and skin tones seemed to intermingle and morph in my mind's eye the harder I concentrated.  Alarmed and distraught, I jogged to my disabled vehicle and shuffled through the glove compartment.  Stashed haphazardly under a pack of cigarettes lay the few pictures of home I had bothered to hold on to.  Lifting one of them, I absorbed their faces.  My brother and sister were on either side of me, humble smiles radiating off them.

This reassurance was soon met with a bizarre sense of detachment.  I could see their faces, but I could not retain them.  A smog would obscure their faces the very moment I blinked.  Any mortal man would’ve been shaken by this rapid onset of dementia; however, I was pulled away from these worries by the First Sign.

A rustling from behind me drew my attention.  As I turned, heavy clouds blew across the vibrant sky, shading the graveyard in immense darkness.  Wind raced through the branches and grass, spattering dew onto my face.  Despite the buffeting, my eyes remained unblinking as I witnessed it.

The recoiled branch of the bud creaked and groaned as it adjusted its arm, like stiffened bones being torn from their crypt.  Now arched like a lure, this single branch remained bare, except for its very tip, which bulged with a new, throbbing appendage.  The bud was now a moist, crimson sac, like an over-ripened apple made of flesh, dangled from its wooden umbilical cord.

With a sudden burst, it ejaculated a flash of leaves and flowers.  A rainbow of archaic foliage sprouted its strange patterns, itself in its collective bunches in the shape of a flower.  At the center of which hung the First Sign, and the first of my holy fruit.

I must admit, even with the fragrance of that blooming majesty, it was not enough, at the time, to disway my initial shock and disgust.  From the kaleidoscope of color and leaves, a raw, human head, devoid of skin, hung.  Its mesh of dripping, bloody muscle fibers hung loosely off the skull, barely gripping the agape jaw as it dangled in the wind.  Eyeless sockets dripped crimson, coating the white teeth in a thin red paint.

Long, clumpy hair draped from its cap, with a flimsy braid holding the locks in place, a stream of texture.  What strands weren’t glued together by chunks of wet sinew showed a lush brown color.  Given the head's ravaged state, the hair was the sole indicator of its distant humanity.  A desperate clasp on what individuality one retains before death wipes clean the slate of our flesh.

And clasp it did, for I recognized that color.  Its hints of amber, its braid, even in the dimmed atmosphere, rang an alarm of familiarity throughout my body.  With a shaking hand, I raised the picture I had fished from my car.  My sister, smiling in that eternal capsule, had flung over her shoulder, cascading down her torso, that very braid.

The coinc...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1td07ep/i_found_a_tree_of_life_i_shouldnt_have_eaten_its/