For Shits and Giggles [2024]

Chapter 12

Nathan, a Pleasantwood Café regular, strolled into the café where Santiago and Gracie were deep in conversation. Gracie knew Camilo would freak out if he saw them like this, but fortunately, Camilo was busy with work today. His jobs usually came from the ChoreBunny app, and today he was helping a small family move—a task that would take at least a few hours. Gracie appreciated the break.

It had been a couple of days since the incident with Felix, and no one had seen him since. In the end, it was Fior who moved out of their home. It was too big and contained too many painful memories. She didn't want to risk Felix trying to coax and plead with her, so she kept herself hidden away in some hotel. Her last text still sat in their group chat:

Baking Bestiesss 🧁👯‍♀️: Paola (07:29) Hope ur safe girl love u

Baking Bestiesss 🧁👯‍♀️: Fior (07:33) I'm safe. Recipes are in my blue journal, shelf under the cash register.

Baking Bestiesss 🧁👯‍♀️: Gracie (07:33) Miss you Fi !! 🙁🙁🙁

Nathan had just ordered the last slice of honey lavender cake from the batch Fior prepared earlier in the week. He ate it happily at the counter, swinging his feet. After the Tree, it was all Nathan could eat: cakes and candies, anything processed with entirely too much sugar.

At first, it seemed like one of the more enjoyable and innocuous effects of the Tree. All Nathan had to do was gorge on too many desserts and then suffer through the occasional stomach ache. Surely it was worth it. But that sentiment was very short-lived.

Shortly after the Tree appeared, Nathan realized he couldn't stomach anything else. He could no longer physically enjoy his favorite foods: not pizza, nor burgers, or wings, or fried rice. Protein, fruit, and, God forbid, vegetables all had putrid tastes, smells, and textures now (he once described a fresh head of cabbage as smelling and feeling like a rolled-up, soiled diaper, with accents of rotting egg). The few times he was able to force actual food down his throat, he immediately convulsed and threw up pure bile and blood. His aversion to water had become so severe, comparable to that of those with rabies, that juice, slushies, and milkshakes were his only hope for hydration. Hospitals did try to administer IVs for nutritional support as well, but it was an impractical solution. Nathan refused to keep still for long, his body forcing him to seek the next sweet treat like a ravenous zombie seeking its next victim. He was violent, irrational, and uncontrollable.

A 64oz vanilla milkshake (with rainbow sprinkles) managed to calm him right down.

Nathan's life had become a perpetual, cyclical hell. In the first few weeks, scurvy develops; then come the effects of long-term malnutrition. The weakness, the shivering, his body freezing cold even on the warmest of days. He lives out the rest of these days immobile and in pain. Sometimes it's metabolic collapse, other times it's a diabetic coma. Either way, Nathan's ending is always the same: slowly rotting away from the inside out. His fingernails turn black and begin to peel off. His skin becomes dry and cracked, with deep fissures that bleed and never fully heal. Swelling in his legs and feet make any sort of movement unbearable; painful ulcers cover his mouth and entire body, making even lying still excruciating.

Whenever Nathan inevitably dies, he comes back the next day physically as healthy as a horse—just to start the agonizingly slow deterioration process all over again.

Gracie stared at him absentmindedly from across the café, wondering if Nathan had been murdered recently or if the curse had just run its course. He looked fresh, rejuvenated. None of his teeth were rotted or missing from his mouth, and he did not smell like decomposing meat.