After the Tree Falls - Prologue and Chapter One

Last night an attitude, for lack of a better word, took me, which would probably be best named "Writer's Treadmill". This means, simply, that the writer finds himself joying in spending hours writing run-on sentences with little or no meaning whatsoever. However, in some select cases, the author is capable of creating beautiful, if garbled, paragraphs upon paragraphs. I thought I might say it's the opposite of Writer's Block, but the analogy makes it seem that one is forced to write. On the contrary, as I mentioned above, joy overwhelming is more than frequently accompanied by Writer's Treadmill. As such, I've churned out several incomprehensible paragraphs for your readership to slash, bash, and just plain all-around criticize. Here you go.


After the Tree Falls

By Noah Bertilson


This book is dedicated to Erin Blake, without whose encouragement, this work would yet lay in piles of proverbial dust on a trashed computer's hard drive.

00 Prologue

The old tree on Packard Lane never grew leaves, but each succeeding year, its age-warn branches reached visibly higher, probing sightlessly the heavens above, like a blind sea creature, exposed to a blinding light. The greatest oddity of the tree was not this, though, a mere and minor abnormality compared with some of its attributes. One who ventured near it could not avoid but feel that something was there, something great, something powerful. Truly, some who had felt its force thought it to be a satanic force, though there own deeds proved them nothing but hypocrites, and led many to believe it was a force not for evil, but for good.

00.5 Introduction

Jack Jackson was not an ordinary boy, even though this statement carries little meaning. The first problem is that the definition of the phrase, “ordinary boy” is, to say the least, fuzzy. Secondly, Jack more than frequently salted his ice cream. Being a, shall we say, non-generic boy, was not an easy task. Those who have similar roles in this world would concur ardently, if given the chance. On the whole, most are not, however. The closest they manage to this is singularly pointless rants unleashed in ones' head during the washing of dishes, which undoubtedly occupies part of the lives of a good portion of abnormal boys. One critic of normal boys admired the aspects of abnormal boys' lives, saying, “The normality of normal boys is more than frequently boring, if not, considerations made, demonic. The abnormal boy, on the other hand, has room to move about, without infringing on long-held assumptions of perpetual stupidity, to which most normal boys adhere without question or reservation.”
If it were not for society's low view of critics in general, and a more specific, and, some say, icy, view of critics of normal boys in particular, this view would be more widely held and debated. As it is, however, critics in general, not to mention normal boy critics in particular, are almost exclusively thought best prodded with long poles, carefully held by men in radiation-proof suits, if they weren't vaporized by the nuclear blast that necessitated said suits.
Anyway, the point is, Jack was not an ordinary boy. For the time being, your readership will have to be satisfied with this proverbial crumb of information concerning the main character of the proceeding narrative.












01 Ethan Hunter


Ethan studied the problem. His brow, at this time, could be likened to the furrows of a farm, but the author continues to be bewildered that the phrase “a furrowed brow” was invented any earlier than the Third Ice Age. Nonetheless, Jack's brow did look furrowed.

Ethan continued to study the problem. The problem was one of many in a binder that had been crudely labeled “AGELBAR” in none other than capital letters. By deducing, and guessing, somewhat, one might come to the conclusion that the binder contained Algebraic problems. Authors' renown for sarcasm can't have acquired much power as of yet, but you would be right in guessing that, in saying the reader is brilliant, the author intends either to make laugh, or make laughed at.

Ethan continued to continue studying the problem. If the reader, at this time, decides the sole intent of the author is to deride and fool the reader, one would be well-informed to know the author is deeply offended. The author, on the contrary, has suffered such boring and life-threateningly laborious days all his life. The reader would do well to learn tolerance of such occurrences.
Finally, and with due flourish, Ethan wrote the answer, placed a long-tailed check-mark right on its number, and slammed the book with such volume and violence that one could have bet his life that the couch shook.

Several distressed, nay, angered, cries issued forth from other regions of the house.

Ethan, without any delay, leaped dramatically from the couch, landed with a muffled thud several feet from it, and continued to replace his “AGELBAR” binder to its proper place.

Agelbar was the last of his studies for the day. The feeling that surges through a homeschooler, or the author, at least, is one not unlike adrenaline, depending on the situation. If one has profitable, useful things to do after schoolwork, his time will not be wasted. However, if the best you can come up with is to sit at a computer and count the times the Blue Screen of Death turns up, one would be better served to do even more schoolwork, of the type he or she likes worst. Aye, without intending not to do it the next day, too.
Ethan, however, was not one of these persons. His hobbies aged quickly and would, by the majority of those around him, seem dull, but, to him, they meant hours of useful opportunity to build his body, mind, and will.

As the author was saying, a feeling urges through a homeschooler at the point when instinct indicates that his lessons are defeated, as the author would have it, for the day. This feeling is much like adrenaline, the author thinks, in either of the above, but Ethan, as the author made known, is one of the former, and did not, thus, suffer terminal depression and other horrendous side effects.

Ethan climbed the staircase leading to the second floor. The third floor was an attic, but it held more than dust and old things. The attic of this house was Ethan's bedroom.
Though "order" didn't accurately describe it, "slipshod", or "untidy" would come as a specifically wounding insult to Ethan in specific, and his mother, who more than frequently swept in his room. All things considered, that was likely one of the lesser things she did for his well-being.
Ethan grabbed a backpack, which, though battered and dirty, looked, well, loved. For one thing, it was designed for a human of just slightly more than half his height. Its back was still covered in battered and far-curled stickers of anything from cars to mushroom clouds. The latter was less curled than most of them. On several of its varied faces, pieces of duct tape stuck more firmly than some would. On one of its faces was inscribed in faulty, childish capitals, "ETHAN GEORGE HUNTER". The initals, "EGH", had been inscribed in various other pens throughout the backpack, giving it, in some places, the look of an over-opaque watermark on an image that some demonic company in Orlando put there merely for the pleasure of scoffing at the high site visit numbers.
Ethan took the backpack down to the end of the attic and begun climbing a latter. He shoved the trapdoor open with a grunt and a crash, and broke into the blazing sunlight.
In describing the wonders of any scenery, there is reason to believe one should sharpen one's pen. In this case, little seemed to be there, and yet, this scene was envied, if only by various teenagers from Minnesota. In truth, the scene truly had some intrinsic beauty to it. The sands, covered with sagebrush and other shrubbery at varied intervals, was also interspersed with a variety of cacti, the names of which Ethan hadn't bothered to learn. Not at intervals, however, were scattered huge quantities of sand. If one were to attempt estimating how much of any given weight-measurement there was of sand in Arizona or the world, his rude conjecture would likely be off by enough that all he had ever owned could be entirely covered in it. Not to mention his own person, who, guessing such a number, revealed either unequalled stupidity, or an insanity which could amount to little less than the willingness to throw oneself in front of an express train.

Nonetheless, the author will go about to describe something his eyes have never seen.

The desert stretched far beyond Ethan's line of vision. He could see, probably, hundreds of millions of square feet of sand without turning his head to the right or to the left. This spectacle, which might prove alarming, in some instances, could be described as beautiful, though such a word hardly paid homage to its stunning appearance. The shrubbery did make the scene slightly less frightening, but the most beautiful element of the landscape was the sun. The sun was nearing the horizon, and, insodoing, seemed to become brighter. It was actually more likely that, because humans usually locate their eyes on the front of their heads, instead of on the top, the average human finds himself looking, as it were, into the sun's face, in the afternoon, and the sun looking on our long-haired, short-haired, or, in a large number of cases, no-haired scalps, at noon.

This said, it ought to be obvious that Ethan appreciated the landscape immensely. Ethan extracted a pair of binoculars from his backpack and scanned the landscape in a manner which suggested only that he had done it hundreds of times before without much to speak of. This time, however, he sat bolt upright, sighting a cloud of dust rising in the west. It was difficult to spot anything, but, discerning by the fact that it was, in fact, on a road, one would conclude reasonably that this object was typically referred to as a car, automobile, or, in some more rare cases, wheels. As it was, it was much more a truck than a car. Ethan, by this time, had deduced that it was a moving truck, because the sign outside the Parkingsons' old house read in clear, blue lettering, "FOR SALE BY OWNER". He had been aware of its sale for months now, and finally the people were going to move in. Ethan was almost resentful to have the excitement delayed this long, but, seeing this, his heart started doing triple somersaults to "Yankee Doodle Went to Town" at double speed. He grabbed his backpack, almost left his binoculars behind, and leapt down the fairly short ladder into his attic bedroom. Tossing his binoculars and backpack into bed, he raced though the house at a pace which would have nearly inflicted a heart attack on him any other day. His siblings' and mother's calls seemed not to reach him, such was his speed. The likelihood, however, was that Ethan was merely going too fast and loudly to hear anything than his racing heart and feet.
Upon reaching the front door, Ethan slowed to a halt and looked through the eye-hole.

The truck was easily still a mile away.

Meanwhile, his siblings and mother finally caught up with him.
"What on earth was that racket for, bro?" said his older brother, David.
"Ethan, you make way too much noise," said Jane. She was at the age, approximately, when one could ride a dog, but the Hunters had no Saint Bernard. Her hair, which somehow mixed blond and, what has, so many times, been called golden, seemed to have dried molasses scattered at conservative intervals, as well as some stale popcorn hanging from it. The effect would probably have repulsed one not in the family, but Ethan hardly paid attention to the fact. Also gathered were his older sister Susan and his rather young brother, Wesley. He, it could not be argued, had recently devoured at least a half-dozen chocolate-oozing chocolate-chip cookies. His mother didn't seem to think this important, at the moment, and he tottered off to the kitchen wordlessly. Susan seemed more than convinced this mobbing on Ethan was only to ensure he was quickly and painfully hung by the nearest tree.
"What." Susan stated. All eyes focused on Ethan as if Susan had just made a stinging argument that, if answered well, would merit thorough applause. Ethan, not in the least breathless, pointed to the eye-hole in the front door. All of them made for it at once. Jane quickly secured the advantage, however, through teamwork with David. Squinting overly, Jane looked through the hole.
"I can't see anything," she said firmly, looking as if she were the only authority on the matter and it couldn't matter less what anyone else thought about it. Ethan rolled his eyes and threw the door open. His family winced. Eventually, they got used to the light. By now, the truck was roughly half a mile away.
"Oh," said Jane. She rushed to the bathtub.
"Ah," said David. He went upstairs.
"So what?" said Susan. Ethan raised his eyebrows.
"Ok, I was wrong. One of us doesn't live in reality," he said. Susan aimed a look at him which was overloaded with malice, which seemed to necessitate quickly morphing into an annoyed look that wasn't aimed anywhere in particular. She stomped up the stairs, looking furious. Ethan took some pleasure in this, but, by the afternoon, was missing Susan communicating orally to him just a bit.
The Hunter family fell asleep at varying times, and, this night, they somehow all managed to fall asleep before twelve. Though sometimes they got to bed before then, this was something of an accomplishment. In Ethan's bedroom, however, no one was asleep. Ethan's backpack leaned, open, against a support post. The trapdoor to the roof was unlocked. Later that night, or morning, as it was, Ethan got in bed and fell asleep.

Yay! Finished! *dances around*

More coming soon!


!Noah!