The Root of Evil

 THE ROOT OF EVIL

Turnips. I’m not going to go on and on about how turnips are evil. Turnips are root vegetables, inanimate objects, hardly sinister. This story isn’t meant to be a smear campaign on the turnip. Sure, this root is not as well loved as the potato, in fact I once read that humans didn’t even eat turnips until some war when real food ran short. This however is the story of a particular batch of turnips, which were infested by evil of a vengeful nature, and in the case of Twig, possessed him to commit murderous acts.

Twig Felderman often complained to his mother that turnips were nasty roots that looked evil, tasted evil, and were for all intensive purposes, through and through pure evil; especially in salads. Twig was of course being hyperbolic, but he had no idea how right he was in this claim pertaining to the small crop of turnips currently growing in the garden in the front yard


Twig Felderman, who’s real name was Harvey Felderman, but due of his thin prepubescent body, he got the name Twig. He was in ninth grade and while not every boy in his grade was big and bearded, Twig hadn’t even received his first pube yet, which was an issue, a major issue. He blamed his vegan parents. Meat puts hair on a man’s chest, not veggies.

Twig and his family had moved to Hilltop in early spring. His parents planned to open the small town’s first Mexican vegan theme restaurant (Vegasaurus Tex) on Main Street. Unfortunately unlike the big city folk, villagers tend to be meat and potato people and don’t much care for parsnip burritos as an entree served by a waiter in a dinosaur outfit.

The first thing the Feldermans did when they arrived in Hilltop (or as Twig puts it "left our friends who will surely forget I ever existed, including Lana Mitts, who I was finally making some head way with, to move to this hick town in this ugly hick house with the creepy apple orchard.") was to uproot those rotten old apple trees to make room for a garden. It is in this garden where the most malevolent turnips began to germinate.

It was a few nights before Halloween when the turnips were harvested. John, Twig’s father, had plucked them out of the ground, gave them a good wash and was slicing them into a salad. He was preoccupied with the financial disaster that was Vegasaurus Tex when he sliced his finger instead of the turnip. Never being a wasteful man, he re-washed the blood soaked turnips and into the salad they went.

Lots of inanimate objects posses evil spirits. This is fact. For instance, there is a chair in the New York Public Library that possesses the spirit of Lucifer’s cousin Agmokorrial the Unholy. To this day the demonically potent chair has caused no evil or mischief of any kind. This is because the sequence of events that must occur for the evil to activate is complex. We’re not talking chia pet here, just add water, no way, no sir. The sequence must be followed precisely. In our case, in the case of the turnips, the process goes as such: The blood from the father of a virgin must spill on plant life of which said plant life’s roots had grown over an unmarked grave of an angry spirit that was murdered on the 20th of October as a harvest moon rises. This is the exact sequence to release the evil, causing terrifying events you will soon be privy to, where as the chair in the New York Public Library remains just a chair.

Twig complained as dinner was served that he hated turnips and that they were evil. This was no shocking declaration. Everyone knew Twig hated turnips, and besides, teenagers think a lot of things are evil; curfews, homework, chores, whoever the latest pre-teen heart throb happens to be. Twig shoveled the turnip salad in anyhow. He had a date. There was this girl, Sally Crickets, known to most as just Crickets. Crickets happened to be the coolest girl in school. Not the hottest mind you, though, she certainly was hot, but definitely the coolest. 

Crickets’ dad was the sheriff, which meant you probably weren’t going to get in much trouble even if you were caught engaging in any trouble making, so long as you were with her. Therefore, Sally Crickets was in a good position as high school drug dealer, babe, mischief-maker and all around popular sweetheart.

Twig liked her and she had invited him on a date. Well, that’s not quite true... Here’s what happened. Crickets was walking past Twig’s locker and said, "You should come to the park tonight, there’s a park party." The "You" being plural, as Twig was sitting by the lockers with two other prepubescent minor-niners (They’ve got to stick together). Twig was going to take this as a date, whether it was or not. He swallowed the salad, kissed his mother goodbye and obeyed the voice in his head that whispered, "bRiNg tHe kItcHeN kNiFe."


For guys like Twig, park parties are complex events. You can’t just be in the moment. Most everyone is older and cooler. Twig does his best to fit in, but the harder you try to fit in the further away you are from accomplishing the goal of fitting in; fitting in is shitty like that.

He circled the party a few times before building up the courage to start to weave through it. He said "Hello" to a few familiar faces, "I’m so drunk, man." or some permutation of such was the most common reply. Finally he noticed Crickets. She was perched atop the walkway of the dam, which sat like a crown at the top of the park. Its messy waters rushed over a falls, congested by old branches and garbage, and spilled into a river splitting the park in two.

Crickets smoked a joint with some other "cool kids". Twig stared... impressed, in love, in awe, only breaking from the trance when he noticed the beginnings of an erection. Twig tucked up and decided now was the time to make a move.

He didn’t make his move right then. He continued to stare for a long time. He revised many versions of the script that would play out. He settled on "Hey Sally..." and would improvise from there. He finally took his first step towards his destiny.

He walked up the steps of the dam and made his way over the walkway. It felt like slow motion. She turned her cute head, her short pigtails sticking out from her knitted toque. She smiled.

The water was loud, thunderous. Twig yelled "HEY!!!" perhaps too loud. Crickets and the other stoners laughed. Damn! He has over estimated the volume of the water.  Twig felt his skin tighten and his lungs fill with embarrassment. In a very cute and within a much more appropriate volume, Crickets said "Hey, man." Her friends tossed the finished joint over into the still collecting pond behind them and watched it get sucked into the falls. They got up, distracted by something further on down the dam. Twig couldn’t believe it. It was just him and her.
"I’m glad you came out tonight, Harv."

Holy Crap! One, She called him Harv. Twig couldn’t believe it. He was under the assumption that she didn’t know his name, and even if she did, he assumed she knew him only as Twig. This was major. Two, she was “glad he came out tonight.” Gee, Ell, Ay, Dee. Glad!

I mean... yeah!
"Glad I am too."
"Okay Yoda."  A choice Star Wars reference, was this girl perfect or what?
"This dam is cool…" he sputtered.
"Yeah, it’s fun to watch the party from up here. I always feel weird at these things. To me it’s more fun to sit up here and watch."

The conversation went on splendidly. Twig concluded that talking to girls was like starting a car in the dead of winter, it’s hard to get it going, but once the engine starts to run, no problem-o.

After talking about the upcoming Halloween plans Twig asked, "Do you have a boyfriend, Sally?"
"Sally? No one calls me Sally, Harv."
"No one calls me Harv."
"Would you prefer Twig?"
"Not really, do you prefer Crickets?"

As he said "Crickets" he could feel something inside him wake up, something insidious, something with the after taste of brimstone and turnips. Before she could answer another voice came from Twigs mouth but it was not his, "cRiiiiCkeTs?" 

This voice reverberated off walls made of lost souls and crackled forth like burning flesh... Twig had heard the voice in his own head earlier that night when he had finished dinner. He remembered the kitchen knife in his backpack. The voice forced out another "cRiiiiicKeTs" followed by a disturbingly evil laugh. 

Crickets was thoroughly creeped out. "Are you alright, Harv?"

"Yes... fine, cool party." Twig felt his arm being pulled by an invisible marionette wire towards his backpack.
"You sure? You kinda look like you’re tweaking out." she pulled out another joint.
"i’M gUnNA cUt YoU" said the voice from inside Twig.
"Not funny." Crickets kept up her cute smile, but there was fear behind it.
"Sorry, that wasn’t me, I think it’s indigestion. I ate a turnip salad really fast for... i’lL BaTh iN yOuR bLOOd, sLuT."

Twig went to turn around totally embarrassed, but was forced to swing right back around by the marionette wires. He grabbed the knife.

"hOw’S jErRY??" Twig felt his tongue lick his teeth.

"What are you talking about?" Crickets’ eyes caught the knife.

"I think... I think there’s something inside me. i’M gOiNG tO SeE iNsIDe yOu."

Crickets had nowhere to run. The top of the dam only led towards the falls. The only escape was blocked by Twig. The turnips salad, specifically the turnip part, radiated a command to lift the knife.

An ongoing echoing of "Shit! It’s the cops." came from below. The teenaged revelers scattered like bees from a shaken hive. Twig did not run though he so desperately wanted to. The second Crickets saw the cops below she cried out “Dad!”

This excited the spirit within the mostly digested turnips even more. Twig was forced to turn and look below, Sheriff Jerry Crickets and his deputy were clearing kids out of the park. Sally cried out for her Dad again. The Sheriff pointed his flashlight to the top of the dam. When Twig’s eyes landed on the Sheriff the light from the flashlight blinded him, fully consumed him...


Like a Polaroid shapes began to appear more clearly as the blinding white fog dissolved from Twig’s vision. He was immediately aware of two things. One was that he was no longer, in any way, in control of his body. He was pretty sure it wasn’t even his body anymore. The second thing was that he was no longer on the walkway of the dam above the park, uncontrollably threatening Sally Crickets with a German kitchen knife by the power of evil turnips. He was now in his high school gymnasium locker room, which he recognized from the layout, although it had a newer paint job, and the mascot was not the Hilltop High Hornet but the Hilltop High Hawk.

Twig was peering into the showers, watching two boys clean themselves. His eyes were focused on their privates. A sight Twig would usually try his best to ignore, because usually everyone’s were hairier and bigger than his, and also because it really didn’t interest him that much. But Twig no longer had control of his eyes. They were staring, unmoving. He felt his hand reach inside his pants when, "Hey, the queer is watching us again."

Twig’s legs got up and bolted. He could hear the guys chasing behind, luckily for him they were naked and needed to scramble into their clothes. Twig kept running. He pushed out of the locker room into the gym, which also looked completely different than it had early that afternoon in third period. It was new, and basketball team running drills all had hairstyles that looked as if they were in the 70’s. His legs took him toward the backdoor and out into the night. He ran.

Despite not having any control of the situation, Twig would have kept running even if he could command his body. He was scared. As he continued down the lamp lit streets he could hear his pursuers catch up. These boys were big. Three big high school boys chasing him through utterly familiar yet foreign streets. The lamps were different, so were the cars and the mailboxes. The entire town looked like it was dressed up for a Saturday Night Fever theme party.  

His legs took him off the sidewalk and through the ravine. Splashing against the flow, which would eventually feed the dam. He could feel the dirty water splash on the feet he was not in control of. He felt his lungs burn, the taste of metallic acid in his mouth hurt his teeth. The boys gained on him.

Finally he ran up a hill and onto the front yard of his house, well, what would be his house. Now it was even more run down.  An empty cocoon. The windows boarded, the paint peeled. The garden he and his family worked so hard to dig had been erased and there stood the ugly apple trees that they removed that spring.

He stopped running. He wasn’t sure if he was stopping from exhaustion or who ever was controlling his body. Either way he was happy to catch his breath, despite the horror of the oncoming maniacs, despite that he was in someone else’s body, despite that he was most likely back in time. A happy thought raced through his brain. The turnips. This must be a hallucination. A fungus or something must have been growing on those turnips and now he was hallucinating. Twig was relieved, until he was punched in the face by one of the big boys. That punch was very real and very strong. Definitely enough force to knock him back to reality, but he wasn’t back in reality, he was curled on the earth, his tongue fumbling with a severed tooth.

The first boy yelled "Hey, queer!" Twig recognized him. The boy was only a bit older than he was, a junior at the most. His eyes! Twig thought they were so familiar. He was reminded of Crickets’ eyes. The name Crickets rang in his head like a bell. He knew who the boy was. It was Crickets’ father, Jerry, the Sheriff, though now he was only 17.

Crickets’ father looked pretty much the same at 17 as he did in his 50’s. The resemblance to his daughter was amazing. Though Sally didn’t have a moustache, their eyes were the exact same, but his eyes weren’t warm, they were mean. It’s a wonder that two things that can look so alike can transmit such different emotions.

Twig wanted to run into his home, it was just a few feet away, but he couldn’t, not that it was his home now, when was now anyway? Crickets’ dad pushed Twig to the ground. The other boys circled around Twig and began the worst beating of his life. Crickets’ dad, the future sheriff of Hilltop, brutally, mercilessly, and literally beat the snot out of him, not to mention other liquids including urine and blood. The only reprise from the beating was when they stopped to shout homophobic remarks. 

Jerry called to his buddy to get a shovel. Buddy ran over to a shed near the house, which no longer existed in Twig’s time. While Crickets stomped Twig’s face with his runners, Buddy dug and dug deeper. A memory occurred to Twig. When they first moved to Hilltop and began to dig up those old apple trees, the ones which silently watched his current pummeling, the ones which would be chopped up and replaced with the garden which would eventually grow turnips amongst other veggies, Sheriff Crickets would stop by often. It didn’t seem weird at the time, small town cops would stop by and get to know new citizens. Twig remembered that the sheriff was very curious about the garden. He visited almost everyday, drinking rhubarb lemonade Twigs mom made, until the garden was complete, then the Sheriff stopped dropping by. Twig had a good idea about Sheriff Crickets’ visits now and decided it wasn’t just neighborly curiosity.

Finally the hole was complete. It was just a conical negative space with walls of dirt and gnarled apple roots. Although not a neat rectangle, Twig knew that this was a grave. The boys rolled Twig in. His bloody and bruised body bounced down and landed face up. Twig couldn’t figure how many bones were broken. He had a raptured eyeball, but from his good one he could see the stars and the rising harvest moon partially obstructed by branches. What a fate, to be buried alive in some else’s body. The future sheriff Crickets looked down, whipped out his dick and hollered, "Just so you remember what brought you here." After his piss he scooped up some dirt and tossed it down. The dirt showered Twig’s face, but it didn’t feel like dirt, it felt like a splash of water.

Twig was no longer laying face up deep in a hole with a broken body. He was no longer being buried alive. Now he was leaning over the edge of the dam. His eyes readjusted. He wiped the numbingly cold water from his face. Just below him he discovered the cause of the splash. Sally Crickets, the coolest girl in school, floated just below the chilly October water. She was dead. Gashes and slashes checkered her face and arms. Her blood bloomed off her in fractal patterns only to be sucked down the rushing water of the dam. Her body followed the blood  and through the chute she went. 

Twig, now in control of his body, and it was his body again, looked to his right hand and saw the bloody knife. He turned and looked down over the dam to the park below. The party revelers looked sick, stunned. Sheriff Crickets a man in his 50’s again, aimed his gun. More screams rose up as Sally’s body came through the chute and got caught on an old branch half way down the falls. She was propped up like a puppet, water rushed over her body. Sheriff dropped his gun. He fell to his knees and wailed. The voice from within Twig bellowed. "hELlo CRickEtS! rEmEMbEr mE? jUsT A LIttLe sOmEtHinG sO yOU cAn rEMEmBeR WhaT BrOuGhT ME HERe" The voice shook Twig as it laughed an unholy putrid laugh.

Twig was in control of his body and decided to act upon the first thing that came to his mind. He jumped into the chilly water, it took his breath, then funneled him towards the chute. He went over and got caught in the branch in the falls. He was stuck over Crickets’ dead body. The icy water squeezed him all over, but all he could think about was the root of evil. Turnips.




Next Chapter: The Doll and the Pig Nosed Girl