Wednesday the Thirteenth or The Day a Man's Life Was Thoroughly Destroyed and he Became a Tree

Do we affect the growth of our cities, or do our cities affect the growth of us? This question can be viewed answered from every angle, and this is one story of how a man's life was drastically affected by his city, a place shrouded in industrialization.

A thick smog covers the city. It makes the street lights look a dirty yellow with a haze of brown around the edges. The black soot is caked on the top of buildings. The cars speed by, driving up and down the roads, vomiting brown smoke from their tailpipes. The buildings are all a dull grey, inside and out. The city is one giant black lung, ding second by second, wheezing for air. The trees are shriveled twigs, huddled together in farms, an attraction for tourists.
It was a Wednesday, the sun was out, there were no clouds in the sky, but even then the people of the city couldn't get a good look at it. A man wakes up, rolls out of bed--rubbing gunk from his eyes with his knuckles. He takes a shower and while washing his exposed body, he sees a blister on his left hand. He touches it, examines it, and tries scratching it off. He eventually occupies his mind with other things.
He leaves the shower and gets dressed. He puts on underwear, a white tank top, black slacks, and a blue dress shirt. As he's buttoning the cuffs he notices the blister again, only this time it's much bigger. At first it was just a small reddish bump, upon his second look at it, it had become a more larger bump, with a thing layer of brown moss covering it. He looks around, his mind flying a million miles away. Should he go to work in this condition? Should he go to the hospital? What type of blister is this? Will he die?
He soon became victim to his clock and forced himself to leave his house. His priorities were out of order. He planned to go to work and then to the hospital afterwards. Upon reaching his front door, instinctively he put his left hand out to open the door. Without noticing it at first, he wondered why his hand couldn't grasp the brass door handle. He looked down and beheld something truly terrible.
His hand, and each of his fingers had sprouted dozens of tiny roots that jutted out in every direction, even wrapping around each other, suppurating a thin ooze. He screamed, naturally and held his hand away from his body.
He managed to open his front door, shut it behind him, lock it, unlock his sports car, and roar it to life. As he sped down the street, his car excreting a black smoke that marked his progress, another terrible event happened.
He held his arm out the window, trying to ignore the smell. The warm stagnant air blowing in between his vegetative fingers created a reaction. The roots quickly fused with his skin, the infection tore through his skin, ripping it apart like wet paper. The newly sprouted roots tore not only through his skin, but through his blue dress shirt. They tore all the way to his elbow and sprouted out into a million different directions. Then, as he screamed in unmitigated agony, the infection spread up to his shoulder and sprouted out like decorative armory.
The man looked up and saw an oncoming car coming to crash into him. He naturally pulled his left arm inside to help turn the wheel and upon doing so saw it was covered in bark, sprinkled with green moss, and accented by bright green leaves. Despite his efforts he was not quick enough to avoid the traffic. He crashed into the car, and not wanting to make an interaction with this other human, immediately exited his vehicle.
He tore down the street at a full sprint, tears flowing from his eyes. That was when he felt it, the click in his hip, then almost instantly another in his knee, and a final one in his ankle. He stopped suddenly, as if his leg were stuck in the concrete, wrapped at the ankle. He looked down and saw his entire left leg covered in bark and green moss, was smashed deep into the black concrete of the street. He screamed and during the height of it he felt a coolness slide up the sides of his neck, up his jawline, and around his mouth. Down it went, into his throat, turning his scream into a cracking wood sound.

The tree was removed two days later. Officials concluded that radicals had planted the humanoid tree in the middle of the road to symbolize industrialization like a speeding car, waiting to crash into nature. No one ever heard from the man ever again, he was announced dead some weeks later, and was survived by his twenty five year old son who lived in another state. He will live on in their memories.

-Sir Jestro