He’d just bought a bonsai tree to have something growing in his room. He wanted something to nurture – not because it implied his psychological stability to women he invited to his place – but because it implied the same for himself, an exhausted and nervous empath with dreams of becoming a kung fu master.
He’d put the plant in the sun on his windowsill. Around him the massive block of flats pressed their gray walls down remorselessly. A Jackie Chan poster fly-kicked into the corner, bright orange Chinese calligraphy scrawled across it.
The miniature tree had a peaceful quality that would loosen the pressure of his existence. He was quite sure it allowed him to feel like he was creating something worthwhile that was beyond himself. Perhaps connect him with those higher frequencies the New Agers always seemed to be preaching about.
That was why he was surprised to see a wooden version of himself emerging from beneath the trunk. At first the lumpy humanoid figure began as just a coincidence, but it grew increasingly more detailed until it was unmistakably a version of his own face. His first reaction was amusement and he showed it off to his friends, anxiously searching their expressions for approval and posting pictures of it on Facebook. But as it grew more and more undeniably like his own body he began to be disturbed by it and started to hide it, even from the occasional woman who came to visit.
When he had sex with it under the bed though he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
One day he pulled it from its hiding place. The wooden figure was kneeling and praying to the tree, his face a rictus of agony. The tree seemed otherwise unaffected by its time away from the sunlight. The frightfulness of the figure was even more apparent when he investigated with a microscope. He discovered to his horror that there were individual wrinkles in the wood and that the mouth seemed to be breathing.
As he watched however, the tiny figure’s expression changed from violent suffering to merry laughter. As he pulled his face away in shock he saw impossibly that another bonsai tree had grown right through the Jacky Chan poster. It was cascading bright yellow blossoms all over his apartment.
He touched his face to make sure it was real, half expecting to feel wood against his fingers. But instead his hand spun and twisted of its own accord. His legs too moved in perfect rhythm, jumping, flying and spinning into a perfect leaping mantis kung fu technique.
As he landed, he looked up. He had the terrifying impression there would be his own giant face looming above him, scrutinizing him nervously like a God over the bonsai tree. But instead he saw himself as a young child, not up but below him, grinning like a madman.
With perfect technique, his younger self kicked him in the balls.
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