“FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! I HATE YOU SO MUCH!” The sentient artificial pine tree screamed at Matt Smith, junior at OSU. Not that Smith could hear it: measuring 12 inches in height from atop a plastic pedestal next to Smith’s living room couch, the tree could think, but not speak.
“OH MY GOD, FUUUUCK!” The tree fumed, blind with fury. “LORD SANTA, PLEASE, PLEASE, LET ME KILL THIS MAN!! I WANT TO KILL THIS MAN WITH PINE NEEDLES! MY NEEDLES!”
The reason for Smith being the target of the tree’s ire had to do with the upcoming Christmas season. While still in November, Smith and his roommates decided to decorate for the holiday early. For the occasion, Smith unpacked the artificial mini pine tree that he bought freshman year during that year’s winter.
“Oh my good FUCKING lord, FUCK you,” the tree fired at Smith as he and his roommates went about setting up decorations around the living room in their apartment. The tree did not appreciate being dressed up before it considered the Christmas season to have really started. “Santa help me, I’m a tree and I am ABOUT to go utterly apeshit.”
The Sundial first learned of this tree when it sent a letter to the editor to the magazine – how, the Sundial has no clue. Such letters usually express concerns or opinions about a subject the magazine has written or will write about, or about the magazine itself. No so here: the tree wrote a letter explicitly about its hatred toward Smith and catalogued its speech across a sequence of events corresponding to that conveyed in this article. In correspondence, the tree allowed the magazine use the material of its letter for publication, much to the Sundial’s surprise. As seen earlier, there was also much explicit language in the letter, mostly directed at Smith, for reason of several occurrences.
In fact, while decorating the tree, Smith spotted something he thought would make for a fun ornament: an empty Busch lite can left over from last night’s movie session. The tree’s entire energy seemed to pause, and Smith’s roommates watched amused, as Smith cheekily placed the can on top of the tree, as if adorning it with a star.
The ferocity and savagery of the tree’s following anger, isolated in its thought-space, was so violent it cannot be put into words. So potent was the tree’s rage, in fact, that it actually burst into flames. Luckily for Smith and his roommates, as they testified, they had a store-bought fire extinguisher on hand to put out the tree. Outwardly, how plastic could spontaneously combust without the tree being plugged into an outlet and also not remotely containing any electric wiring, Smith had no idea, he later told the Sundial.
Not that the Sundial told about him about the tree’s unique existence in return. The magazine would never break journalistic neutrality like that.
The tree now remains in a perpetual state of violence and rabidity, screams tearing out into its own personal hell-void. Smith, rather than being put off by a plastic decoration spontaneously catching fire, has become further endeared to his anomalous property. He said a common habit of his is to lay a hand on the tree as he enters the living room. He has since replaced the can atop the tree with a tiny Santa hat. That was the second time the tree combusted.
–By Pete Muzawla, Staff Writer