I awake to the sound of my parents arguing again.  The shrill pitch of my mother’s voice and the low timbre of my father’s waft up the staircase with the smell of morning coffee and burnt bacon.  I open my eyes and then close them again to keep the morning light from aggravating my hangover.  I can feel the breeze on my face coming in through the open window.  I forgot to close it on my way in last night.  The spring air is warm, and for a moment I can relax while I listen to my curtains flap in the breeze.  Then I have to wince as I hear a thrown dish shatter downstairs.  I swing my legs out of bed and feel my body follow their momentum.  My sister’s voice joins the din downstairs, and I stare at the blank wall of my room and watch as an imaginary paint brush paints a mural across its surface. 
The cool blues of a flowing river and the warm reds and yellows of trees in the peak of autumn fill my mind, and the shouts of my family become a gentle breeze through the branches.  The purple mountain ranges are peaked with white snow, and in their shadow stands a pitiful, broken thing: a bare oak tree.  That’s me.  Each day the wind takes away another branch, and each branch falls to the ground without a sound.  On days when the wind grows especially strong, the tree groans and the bark peels away to reveal the scarred wood beneath.  When a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?  I guess we’ll find out.  I can only imagine it would.  After all that time it must want someone to hear what it has to say on the way down.
Someone screams, and then another dish breaks.  A gust of wind comes through and knocks off a sizable branch, but I don’t have time to watch it hit the ground before the picture melts away and the brush snaps in two. 
I stand up, and the odor coming from downstairs makes me nauseous.  The cold, polished wood of my bed’s headboard on the palm of my hand takes the edge off as I lean against it, but my head is still swimming.  The feeling continues down to my stomach and brings me to my knees.  I grab my wastebasket and begin to vomit.  Another breeze and another small branch falls.  When I’m done, I tie off the bag and open my bedroom door. 
The unfortunate architecture of our house amplifies the cacophany below my feet.  I hold onto the banister as I take each step one at a time.  My legs shake despite the fact that I’ve done this a countless number of times. 
My parents are at the base of the stairs, which means that their argument will be almost over.  At the end, my mother will lock herself in their room, and my father will pound on the door until he gets frustrated.  Then, he’ll climb into his car and burn rubber on his way out of the driveway.
I walk in between the two of them, and my father latches onto me like a leech.  My mother berates him for shouting at me, so he turns and slams the back of his hand into the side of her face.  That’s not usually how it goes.  The wind comes through again and the trunk of the tree groans.  I continue to walk, but my head hurts and I stumble.  I catch myself on the edge of the kitchen counter.  When I look up, my sister is curled up and crying in the corner.  Blood is dripping down her face in a slow stream, and she’s surrounded by shattered ceramics.  The wind howls and the wood creaks.
I walk over to my sister and go to kneel beside her, but my father grabs my arm and throws me against the counter.  The smooth granite wedges into my back and I think I hear something crack.
I look into my father’s eyes, but I see nothing but the crumpled form of my mother on the hardwood floor behind him.  Then I can’t see anything until my hand is holding a knife buried to the hilt in my dad’s chest.  Then I notice his blood reddening his white shirt and sticking to my hands.  His limp corpse slides cleanly off the blade and hits the floor with a thud.  My sister’s face is white and her eyes are filled with fear as she looks up to me.  I look around, and my vision swims as I turn my head.  This is all very unexpected.
But then it wasn’t.  I wake up to the gray ceiling of my prison cell and jump out of bed.  My mind is as clear as the morning air coming in through the barred window of the cell as I climb onto the tank of the stainless steel toilet and look out at the day.  I wonder what the warden will decide to do with that old oak tree in the yard.  I thought they were going to cut it down last week, but it’s still there and—wouldn’t you know it—that looks like a brand new leaf on that branch.