When the alien had spoken to him, he understood. The living really are dead. Trees really do still live once they’ve been hacked into tables.

The boy smiled when the alien comprehended what he had said. Though the boy and the alien’s appearances could be easily distinguished from one another, their minds were the same. They both knew that the living are dead. Though some of those who appeared to be alive had beaten the boy until the boy’s face became hidden with blood, the boy knew that behind their faces there is nothing. The words they threw at the boy did nothing to bruise his convictions. If anything, calling the boy “stupid”, “insane”, or just “crazy” simply bounced off of him as he reapplied the words to them in his mind. Behind their faces--and in their minds--the boy knew they were dead to what he knew is.

So he kept yelling that the living really are dead, and that they are more alive than anyone.

They couldn’t see the life in the trees that’d already been cut down. When they sat around a table, they saw nothing but whatever had been placed on it, or stains and scuffs from the things that’d been placed there before. Only the boy lay on a table and saw what the tree had and could’ve been. Saw the ridges in the table that signified how long the source of what it’s made of had stood. 

But the blood marking his face prevented him from yelling much more at all. They had left long before the boy had been laid down in his house anyway.

While some of the boy’s blood might have dripped on the table while he lay upon it, he did manage to focus on how high the now beat-down tree must have reached. When another person sat next to the boy to ask what happened to his head, the boy only told her about what the tree must have been like. When asked again what had happened, all the boy confessed is that the living didn’t realize they’re dead. They didn’t understand that the table the boy and the woman sat around’s past-life as a tree is still alive. 

Just when the woman began to think that the boy would never tell her what had really happened, he got serious and looked her straight in the eyes. But all he said is that the tree really is still alive. Though now he saw that the woman is as dead as the living.

The woman wept that she just wanted him—her son—to stop acting so crazy and just tell her what really happened. She wanted him to be okay. But the boy just asked if she’d mind helping him wipe some of his blood from the table so he could better see the remnants of the life beneath the table.

Instead she tilted his head upwards and told him that she’d already tried. There were already bandages around his head. The blood had soaked through them. She didn’t want to leave him to go look for more. If he were to not get up from the table the woman wanted to be sitting by him until he obviously couldn’t stand. She needed to know what happened so that she could try to make things right about his not being all right. Because he couldn’t be all right.

Blood continued to trickle down from the boy’s face. In between gasps for breath he kept repeating that trees really do live once they’ve been cut down. The living are dead. Trees can always remain alive once they’ve been torn from the ground. The living really are dead.

The woman had left to look for more bandages.

Only soon the boy could no longer gasp for breath, let alone mention how dead the living are, or how alive the trees that make up tables are.

Yet before the boy took his last breath, he knew that out there, someone or something must have understood. The boy smiled.