My entry for the 2026 Writing Jam. Was a bit late to the party, so this was written in about a day. It's been fun to have the challenge though, as I've been wanting to improve my writing pace for ages now. Glad to have something new to work on, I feel I don't get to write short stories as often as I'd like.

Prompt: Distance (technically it could be Field too I guess? Not what I had in mind while writing it though)

I should have never cut down that fucking tree.

That day was full of shouldn’t haves though. Like how I shouldn’t have gotten piss drunk. How I shouldn’t have then fished for my keys, taken my truck on the highway and totaled it somewhere miles off road. But I did. I did all of those things. Several shouldn’ts between me and this whole mess.

I turned around. I could still see that stump on the horizon.

By the time I’d woken up, my body was wracked with the eight beers I’d crammed into my stomach, two more dangling from the plastic ring in my hands. Perfect blue skies, a gentle breeze, knee-high wheat that stretched for miles in every direction. Wherever I was, it was close to a child’s version of Heaven, if not for the lonesome, red truck spilling smoke just a few yards behind me. I also don’t think they let drunks into Heaven. At least, that’s what my Mamaw told me.

To say I was thirsty was an understatement. Dehydrated was better, but not entirely right. Dying. That one works. My red truck was my dried up oasis in that regard, as the inside had little to offer me besides the smell of chewing tobacco, dried leaves and warm alcohol. At most, I could have tried and licked the condensation off the bottles, but most of the cold had soaked into the cardboard carriers by then.

There was enough clarity through my hangover to know I was in danger. You hear stories about dying of dehydration, but you’ll never really get it until that sensation is stuck to the inside of your mouth. Swallowing foam and spit at some hope it’ll go away. To my (debatable) luck, in the void that was wheat and soft, blue horizons, a black shadow stood out like a lighthouse in the distance. One I’d inevitably beach myself on.

Plucking a fire axe from my truck, I wandered through my inebriation, eventually stopping in front of a Jadewillow tree. My head had barely been on my shoulders as I swayed like a cartoonish drunk, raising the axe over my head. I had just enough wherewithal to know what I needed more than anything was inside that tree.

Jadewillow were an urban legend as far as I was even aware. Locals spouting off about some strange, black tree that would pop up in the grasslands. Zealots barking about how sacred it was and to not touch it. A ‘Swiss Army Tree,’ some of the truckers had called it.

Stripped bark that worked better than gauze. Splinters that could pin hundreds of pounds to a wall. Branches that bent like string and tasted like taffy if you bothered to chew. None of these things mattered as much as the sugary sap inside. I wanted my relief. I need my relief. So I got it. Fifty haphazard, drunken swings later and the tree was brought down across its midsection, leaving behind a ghastly stump to skewer anyone that tripped past it.

I gorged myself after that. More plump and stupid than I was before as I drank from the tree’s bottom, coddling it like a bottle. My face was soaked in sap as I stared out into the wheat and blue, feeling the weight of the Jadewillow in my lap. It would have been suicide to wander aimlessly into such a color, so I made sure I wasn’t alone. For the past few days, I’ve been trudging along. Axe in one hand, a ‘Swiss Army Tree’ in the other.

I looked over my shoulder. The mangled stump was still there.

In my hangover, I’d forgotten the rest of the Jadewillow’s legend. They were cursed. The kind of tree you’d be better off curling up under to die than to use a single leaf on its head. Even the birds and bees that nestled in its head were off limits. What the curse was, exactly, not even my sober self could tell you. I bore something terrible, all the same, as I quite literally hauled the tree’s carcass over my shoulder.

There was seemingly no end to this field. Blue horizons shifted as the days went by, the sun beating me over the neck until I felt a sunburn peeling my skin away. With each layer it took, I swore I could almost reach in and snap my own neck. I’d have almost preferred it if I could. I was drenched in sweat, constantly stopping to indulge myself on more of the Jadewillow’s sap. The wetter my shirt became, the more I drank.

It’d been weeks now, surely. Many days had been sleepless, myself wanting to put as much distance between me and that stump as possible. At one point, I’d haphazardly walked through two nights without as much of a wink before eventually passing out. Whenever sleep did take me, all I’d dream about was that field.

I’d turn around. I’d see that stump.

Then I’d wake up, almost drowning in sap as it puddled around the tree. I’d look out into the sunrise. I’d see that stump.

No matter how black the nights were, the tree was blacker. It was like someone had cut a hole into the world and placed it into my hands as I stared at the rotting tree. The cold sweats from my dreams were probably the only time I had any respite from the heat. It hadn’t rained in days. Not even the gentle breeze was comforting anymore, as it felt like someone was opening and closing an oven every time a gust came. Yet the wheat was chipper as ever. It even seemed to grow by an inch or two in the time I’d been lost.

One afternoon I’d woken up later than intended, stewing in the heat. My body had been cake in not just the sweat of a nightmare, but in bugs. My best guess was that a nest of some sort had been made in the tree’s canopy, left undisturbed until now as the branches had lost most of their foliage. Either that or they had been inside the tree, which made my stomach churn. The stink of dead bugs could not be understated as I scraped them off in clumps, stomping them into the dirt for good measure.

Each one would explode into a colorful pink, not unlike the sap within the Willow. I felt so empty, so hollow, watching a mix of blood and sap leak from every bite I itched. I indulged on the Jadewillow for maybe an hour after that, just baking in the sun.

I burped. My breath hitched. I looked over my shoulder. The stump was there.

The wheat field itself was about as eventful as wheat could be. Besides the blue sky and the stump that always seemed within earshot, there wasn’t much to break the monotony. Until I tripped over a riverbed. You could’ve fooled me that it ever was one in the first place, but the gash this trail of dirt left across the wheat field was unmistakable. As for where the water was? The crack in the ground made that much apparent.

‘Crack’ was a generous term. It made the line in the dirt seem timid, feeble. Nothing more than a blemish to join the likely thousands of others. No, this was a tear. A ravine in its infancy. Just big enough to be a problem, but small enough to forget.

I’d honestly been so lost in thought that I hadn’t noticed the ground’s sudden nudity, how it dipped down. Once I found my footing, I was left with the Jadewillow, wedged sideways in a crack just big enough to fit it.

I wasted very little time trying to dig my fingers around it in a way that was comfortable, viewing the crack as a minor inconvenience at worst. That was until the cold hit my fingertips. With how spiteful the sun had been, a sensation like this stood out as terribly as a holly leaf caught in your heel. I, frankly, almost hesitated. Then I basked. I let myself just sit, letting the cold air from the crack hit me. I might have stayed there longer, had I not actually looked into the crack itself.

All I saw was black. Even as the sun hung like a lamp overhead, the light only went so far before total darkness swallowed everything. Now it was reaching up for the Jadewillow. What had been a moment of leisure had become a ticking time bomb as I realized that—while I was safe—the Jadewillow was just slim enough to fall in. How far in? Enough to scare me. Enough for the ground to try and take my sap.

I dug through the dirt around it, trying desperately to get some hold on it. I dug so much that my fingernails began to bleed, staining the dirt of the riverbed in red. A breeze came the more red painted the ground, with the wheat almost seeming to shiver the more I tried. I felt myself getting dehydrated. I wanted my sap. I was thirsty. That breeze came again.

Despite a few close calls, the tree pushing an extra inch or two into the hole, it was eventually mine again. I sat there on the edge of the riverbed, staring at the place where the Jadewillow had been stuck. It was riddled with scratch marks and blood, as if something terrible had happened to a wild animal. If anyone were to pass, they’d have assumed the hole responsible. Me though? All I cared about was drinking. My face had been dry for hours and I made sure to smear it in the pink sap.

For a moment, I thought about simply following the river. No better trail than what was once a water source. It had to lead somewhere. Yet the idea of standing near that crack, following the cold. Nothing sounded less appealing to me at that moment.

I took a breath. I looked past the riverbed, over the wheat and into the blue. The stump was watching.

Things reached their threshold for the worst when one of my legs gave out. The aching could only go on for so long—Lord, a month by now—before there were repercussions. This came to me in the form of an audible snap as I doubled over. There I sat, stuck in the sun and trying to take shade in the wheat, as I stared at my mess of a leg. When the nausea and vomiting finally stopped, I took to nursing on the tree again.

I’d been ready to simply give in, to lay there and die, until a strip of bark broke off in the sun. Taking a bite of the thin branches (they did indeed taste like taffy) I put together a makeshift brace for my leg using parts of the Jadewillow. It was nice to accomplish something, anything, in a situation like this. I took that joy in stride as I hobbled for maybe half a day before my other leg gave out.

There was almost a moment of respite amidst this mess, as the next morning was met with clouds. Honest to God clouds. As I began to limp, I anticipated every rumble over my head, hoping for rain. And rain it did. I let my arms go slack as I dropped the Jadewillow by my side, its stiff carcass nearly breaking as it hit the ground. Both my legs screamed at me as I stood my ground, waiting for relief to hit me. For every inch of dirt to slide off, for every patch of sunburn to be quiet.

The rain came. It hurt. A lot. It didn’t exactly hit me what was going on until the seventh or eighth drop, but the rain was burning. Once the downpour had really started, it was as if someone had tipped a pot of boiling water over my head. A crude joke. I scrambled helplessly to my Jadewillow as I tried to painfully trudge it up from the scalding mud. I eventually managed to stand it over me, trying to block out what I could with the dying canopy over my head.

It worked. Somewhat. Not enough to keep my knees safe as the skin on my already broken legs began to fall apart. Thunder rang out overhead again as a strange smell drifted in with each sound. I remember this smell. I’d only ever smelt it once in my entire life. Folks had a tornado scare a few years back. Living out in the middle of flat nowhere tends to put you at risk for this sort of weather. Things got bad enough until the air was rank with this electrical odor. Not long after a lightning strike ripped through the air and killed one of our cows.

A memory of cow milk rolled off my tongue as that smell got stronger, to the point I could almost gag on it. The hair on my bloodied legs stood on end as a loud crack broke over my head. The sensation of pure force coming down on you is something else, though I was thankful to say I remained generally untouched. The same could not be said of the Jadewillow.

As I sat there in the mud, I looked up in horror as my Jadewillow had taken the full brunt of the lighting. A crack had nearly ripped the entire thing in half, stopping just shy of the bottom. The dead leaves atop couldn’t withstand the sudden heat and burst into flames, sizzling against the rain.

With each leaf that turned to ash, a pound of rain took its place. Suddenly it wasn’t just my legs that burned. It was my finger, my elbow, my shoulder, my scalp. My face. I stared up into the quickly withering canopy as I let the rain come. Pieces of me fell away, mixing in the dirt as the puddle I sat in turned red. It'd be a pond in no time. As my only source of safety slowly crumbled in my hands, I looked out in the distance where the wheat met the horizon. 

There it was. That stupid fucking stump.