June 2018

crummy if his name was Dave or something else altogether.
At least his name isn’t Geoff.
Regardless, Sean has a boatload of problems and hopes the evil thing that lives in the tree can help
him.
The evil thing that lives in the tree is named Richard. A much more sensible name than Sean. Despite
being distilled evil, Richard already has a leg up on him. Sean knows this, and it rankles him.
Sean is bothered by many things.
To get Richard to come out of his tree, you must perform a special knock. A magic knock. Sean knows
how to do this. He spent a year in Taiwan where one can purchase magic with their green tea; if they seem to
be sufficiently motivated and have an interesting back story.
He pounds on the rough bark three times.
“Hey Richard,” he yells at the tree. “Come on out.”
Real magic is profoundly unsexy and practical. This is the only spell Sean knows and he casts it
flawlessly. A line forms in the tree, taking the shape of a door. After some shuffling, light swearing and the
sound of many locks clicking, the door in the tree opens and Richard peers out.
Sean immediately vomits. Richard is pretty goddamn grotesque. To wit:
If you took every instance of every time a human was cruel and pushed all that petty cruelty into a ball
and gave it a physical form, that would be Richard’s forehead.
Here’s the thing about his nose. If you collected together all the people who had used the term “cold
enough for ya?”, set them all on fire, filmed all the melting flesh and then projected that film onto a circus tent
made from testicle flesh, you’d have an idea of what Richard's nose looked like.
His eyes were ever so slightly too far apart.
So, then. Vomit. It was part of the routine. Both are used to it and Richard politely waits for the
sickness to pass.
“Hello Sean.” He says.
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