The Tree

Once there was a girl named Flora. She was a nice teenager, but one summer day she found a tree that never bloomed. It was the middle of summer, and it didn’t even have a leaf. Flora was confused, she asked herself, “Why does it not have any leaves?”

So Flora came back the next day. Still, not a single leaf on that tree. Then she remembered a song her parents told her when she was very young:

deep in the woods lies

a tree right there the

eleventh time you visit

to check if there are

leaves it comes alive wait

there’s no escape, it’s already

killed you

She thought it was a joke, so Flora kept going back to see if there were leaves. Exactly the eleventh time she came to see if there were leaves the tree came alive and ate Flora right away. She was never seen again.