A current work by Polymphus. Part Noir, part Black Comedy, part Urban Fantasy and all together very deeply disturbed. It goes a little something like this;
In an ambiguously grey city at an ambiguous point in the late 20th century, there's a tree. Every few weeks, like clockwork, someone will hang themselves from the tree, with little or no provocation. The story follows Winston Stein, a barista who's decided to go looking for answers after his girlfriend becomes the tree's latest victim.
- And I Must Scream: the trickster gets this treatment. He's turned into a blob of featureless flesh and buried beneath the tree so the roots start digging deeply into his body. He can't scream aloud, but his psychic screams start reaching out to those living nearby.
- Arc Words: "Burn the World tree."
- Came Back Wrong
- Dark World: and when it starts to bleed over into the real world...
- Death Tropes: most of them
- Demonic Possession
- Downer Ending: what were you expecting?
- Eldritch Abomination: God. Arguably the trickster to some extent.
- God Is Evil: God, who's willing to imprison someone in a pillar of flesh for the crime of trying to bring hope to humanity. Anyone who tries to end the punishment ends up meeting the same fate.
- It Always Rains at Funerals: lampshaded.It was raining. There's an old Greek superstition about it raining whenever someone dies. Didn't stop it feeling rather trite though.
- Kill It with FireIt ends with fire. It doesn't start so romantically.
- One Last Smoke
- Psychic Dreams for Everyone: everyone within a certain distance of the tree with a certain mindset anyway.
- Psychic Nosebleed: Winston gets one after each dream. They get steadily worse as the plot progresses.
- Precision F-Strike: the Screw Destiny moment.Winston: "Fate? Fuck that."
- Screw Destiny
- Starts with a Suicide: Sarah's hung herself just as the story begins.
- Suicide Is Painless: played straight, but justified.
- The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: dozens of suicides in the same place, over a fairly short period of time? Coincidence. Clearly.
- Your Mind Makes It Real
