similar to human skin.
There were no leaves – only fruit.
And the fruit… They were shaped like breasts. Warm, full, and disturbingly alive.
Liam felt deeply uneasy.
Noticing his hesitation, the girl tugged his hand and said, “What’s wrong? Are you scared?”
“No,” he lied. “I’ve just… never seen anything like this. Are they… edible?”
“Of course!” she beamed. “You won’t regret it.”
She jumped up, grabbed one of the fruits with both hands, and yanked.
The moment it detached, thick red juice – almost like blood – began to drip from the branch.
“Here,” she said, handing it to him.
It didn’t feel like fruit. It felt like flesh – warm, soft, disturbingly real.
“Eat,” she said.
Liam hesitated. His stomach churned at the thought. It felt too much like… human meat.
“You’re such an idiot,” the girl said. “This is the best thing you’ll ever taste. Give it back.”
She snatched it from his hands and tore into it with her long, dirty nails. The skin ripped open. The pulpy flesh oozed more of that blood-red juice.
She split the fruit in two and handed one half back to him.
“Just try a little. Trust me.”
He shut his eyes and touched the fruit with his tongue.
The taste hit him like a flood. It was divine. Hypnotic.
Liam took a huge bite and began chewing slowly, savoring every moment.
At first, he felt a gentle warmth spread through his whole body. Then his vision blurred, as if a soft veil had been draped over his eyes. It was as though sunlight poured under his skin, thick and sweet like honey, filling him with an overwhelming bliss.
Liam slowly sank to his knees, then collapsed onto the ground.
Time stopped. Space became alive, breathing with fantastic colors.
And then – the slow dissolving of all boundaries. His body, his identity, his consciousness – everything began to melt, spilling out, merging with the world around him. Objects lost their names. A hand was no longer a hand. The sky was no longer the sky. Sounds turned into shapes. The wind became a whisper from some endless depth.
When his eyes finally closed on their own, Liam found himself suspended in a geometric cosmos: endless tunnels of shimmering mosaics spread out in every direction, as if his soul had plunged into the fabric of a living Mandelbrot.
Fractals writhed around him, pulsing with light, gazing at him with impossible, shifting eyes.
Emotions became cosmic oceans – sometimes pure, unbearable joy, sometimes terror and unspeakable sorrow.
Everything was simultaneously magnificent and horrifying.
He heard the music of the spheres, the whisper of all human thoughts. Sometimes, even their voices. But it didn’t frighten him.
At some point, Liam thought he might have died – or perhaps he had never been born at all. First, he sobbed. Then, an indescribable lightness filled him, and he began to laugh. With that laughter, he woke up.
Still dazed, not entirely sure where the dream ended and reality began, Liam ran his hands over his body.
“My God… what a realistic dream!” he thought. “It felt like it really happened.”
He glanced around the room, half-expecting to see the strange girl standing beside him.
There was a strange taste lingering on his lips.
Getting up, he looked at himself in the mirror – and froze.
His lips and chin were stained with blood.
“What the hell?!” Liam gasped and rushed outside to the water barrel to wash his face.
All day, he wandered around in a daze, unable to shake the vivid memory of the dream.
By evening, he remembered the strange seed.
Throw it away? Or plant it? What would grow from it?
As dusk fell, he chose a spot in the garden where the soil was soft, dug a shallow hole, and buried the seed.
Then he watered it with water from the old well.
Soon after, Bertha the snake slithered over and stretched herself out on the damp earth.
Wishing the snake goodnight, Liam went inside to make himself a late dinner.
Two weeks passed.
Every day, Liam watered the spot carefully – but no sprouts appeared.
Then came the full moon.
Liam could never sleep under a full moon. It was like someone had injected pure caffeine into his bloodstream, leaving him wired and restless.
Usually, on nights like this, he cleaned the house, worked on his laptop, or stared at the starry sky through an old telescope.
Tonight, he decided to tinker with the motor on his electric bike.
He worked all the way until dawn, then stepped outside to breathe the cool morning air and watch the sunrise.
What he saw made him stop dead in his tracks.
Where he had planted the seed, a full-grown tree now stood. Exactly like the one he had seen in his dream.
“No way…” Liam whispered, barely able to move his lips.
He stood frozen, staring at the tree, refusing to believe his own eyes.
Finally, he forced himself to move closer. But the closer he got, the more dread seeped into his bones.
There were no fruits on the branches – not like in the dream.
Instead, the tree was covered in… faces. Men, women, children – all with their eyes closed, as if sleeping.
Their skin was pale as wax. Their features frozen in silent sorrow.
Liam stopped several feet away, unable to approach any closer.
These weren’t sleeping faces. They were dead. Horror gripped him. He stumbled back.
“God… please make it go away!” he cried out.
He had no idea how he was supposed to live with something like this growing in his backyard. His mind rebelled against it, refusing to accept.
Maybe he should call the police? Or a priest?
But what would he even say?
“There’s a tree full of dead faces growing on my farm. Yeah, I planted it. Yeah, it came from a dream.”
They’d lock him up in a mental hospital.
He was already thinking about calling a friend to help him destroy it when his eyes caught something among the faces.
A girl’s face.
It was so beautiful that Liam couldn’t look away.
Tenderness and sadness were frozen in her features – a breathtaking, heartbreaking face.
Staring at her, Liam began to believe that among all these dead faces, hers was still alive. Sleeping, maybe. Waiting.
He stepped closer, praying that she would sense his presence and open her eyes.
But the face, like all the others, remained still.
Liam spent the whole day near the tree, hoping for some kind of miracle.
Night fell. Morning came.
He forgot about everything else – his chores, his plans.