In front of the Sunnyside School there's a terrifying gnarled old tree, a tree that always strikes me as morbid and grotesque, and I love how it lives in the small grassy area in front of a school for little kids. This tree has swollen arthritic limbs which take painful bizarre twists, and discolored swollen areas, it looks like it's hollow and has recently consumed a child or small gazelle. If this tree had been outside my bedroom window when I was little I wouldn't have slept for years. This is your standard Evil Tree, Death Tree, or Tree of Sinister Intent. The other day was overcast and gloomy, rain was imminent, it had that pre-storm, howling winds sort of feeling, and as I walked past the school there was this angelic boy standing under the Evil Tree. All the buses had pulled out, clearly he was waiting for a ride that was late. He was looking from side to side with this slightly uneasy expression, not one of worry just yet, but headed in that direction, and it gave me a troubling little shudder of something like pleasure to see a kid standing by himself with that look on his face under the Evil Tree, like the true malign nature of existence was showing itself in the everyday world.