Yesteryear Fiction

Men Like Trees, Falling
By Troy Manning


Standing naked without so much as a fig leaf, the trees were furious with Adam that first fall. It wasn’t as though there weren’t already seasons; was it a fixation with colors that inspired this man and that shameless woman to demand, through disobedience, the suffocation of their chlorophyll each year? How they wished they could return the favor, stopping the circulation of fluids in their bodies. They would watch rapt as their pigmentation went white, and their hair scenically changed color, falling out until springtime.

The rocks that lay dreaming beneath this deciduous discourse awoke and cried out, “Yes, yes! If we could only get only get our hands on those people, the things we would do!”

The less barren bushes were yet in accord, “We would cultivate the soil of those creatures of dust, though they yield bacteria and parasites in the process!”

At this the trees clapped, startling some resting ravens. “I would gladly suffer pain in leaf-bearing for such a turning of tables,” said one of them.

“Tables hewn from flesh and bone, think of it!” exclaimed a second tree.

The ravens grew fearful and flew off as the bitter winds whipped the branches into a raucous clamor.

Eve emerged from the cave sensing much was amiss in the cool of the day. Adam trailed, pale-faced, behind her into the teeth of nature’s rage. She turned to face him. “You’d better let me handle this, Honey,” said Eve, buttoning her leather jacket. “They seem to think this is all your fault.”


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Troy Manning is a graduate of Westminster Seminary California. He has recently been taking literature classes at Cal State University, San Marcos where his stories have been published in the creative writing program's Cat Ate My Chapbook, Fierce Notes 1 & 2, and the Spring & Fall, 2010 issues of Oh Cat