She stands high above the rest of the trees. Above her followers. Above the giant bonfire burning behind us. And, of course, high above us. Her branches spread and twist, intertwining with the trees closest to her. She moves. It's slight. Like she's readjusting in her seat. It's not a trick of the eye, and it's not the wind. It's not just her branches, either. It's as if her bark is crawling alongside the body; never content, but never able to do much more. She wants to break free. Every moment. Of every day. She wants to jump out of her skin. Literally. Yet, she dares not ask.

The cultists murmur. In spite of what the area they've made for themselves here, this isn't where they live. They're normal people. Teachers. Accountants. One of them, I think, is a priest of a local parish. The hoods do little to protect their faces, and they do little to try. This is where they feel safe. These are the people who understand them. This is their family.

And that is their Goddess.

My knee hurts. They threw me on the ground harder then they used to. They've come to remember me as Bobby's friend, then, in spite of what I tried to tell them. Dee, on the other hand, is merely pushed to her knees. They don't know her. But they do seem to know she isn't quite like them. Human, I mean. It worries me. It worries her, too. What good is a human body to her if she can't go on living a human life with it?

I want to tell her: 'One step at a time. We'll figure it out.'

She wants to tell me: 'I need go back in the tub.'

"This has all happened before." the Great Tree speaks. Her voice rumbles in my ear. I feel the ground shake with every syllable.

"It's not the first time you've got me on my knees, I'll admit." Bobby grunts, his face still in the dirt.

"Long ago, as they eventually shall again, the stars died." the tree says.

"Oh. This again." He's visibly less enthused to get back up.

"And it will be again, and again, and again." she says, the faint mockery in her tone not escaping any of us. "That's the point, as I said. The stars die. The universe withers in the darkness. It feels alone. Its own emptiness eating at it from the inside. The vast nothingness begins to crack."

Before all this, she was known Clara. A school teacher. That's what Bobby told me, at least. She lived out in the country, in a house in the middle of nowhere. No kids. No husband. No family.

"And through the cracks, we shall come again. First, there will be The Music."

She died in a home invasion gone wrong. When she came back, she did not come as a tree. She was an electric keyboard.

One of the cultists is singing.

"Second shall come The Dancer. Her motion shall lose itself in the melody of creation and construct the strings that tie all living matter."

The keyboard got broken when the band member who owned it got high and used it to smash his friend's head in. So, she came back as a flickering light in a nightclub.

I can see the shadows of the few dancing around the bonfire.

"Then is the time of The Soundless Water. It will follow the strings and pool itself into the dips in reality. From it, the new stars shall be born."

It was only on her third return that she found herself in a tree.

The cultists approach us. Someone's standing directly behind me.

"The stars shall have their Children — such as me — and let them flow further down The Soundless Water. They will end up on the riverbanks and from their seed, planets will grow. Those that drift too far will lose themselves, shatter in a million pieces, and become mere comets, drifting through space."

I pity her, in a way. The thing about trees is that they have no real nervous system. She's not controlling a brain. In fact, she's not in direct control of that tree at all. I've got no idea where in it she even is. I don't think she does, either. Her electric impulses trigger the tree's reaction to stimuli. A million of those per second gives you the wrong impression; or the right one, depending on who you ask. The simple reality of it is that the tree is a slave, forced to dance to her whims. It is probably as miserable as she is.

Someone is literally breathing down my neck. They're tying my hands together. Bobby and Dee's, as well.

"And now, millions and millions years later, The Werewolf shows his face. As he always has. As he always shall. A small pebble in the stream of creation. Less than human, but more than can be perceived. Behold, my friends. Behold The Werewolf."

They drag Bobby up to his feet.

"Hey. 'Sup." he says.

"You had not announced yourself." Clara says.

"I wanted to make it a surprise. Hope you're not mad."

"My mood will depend entirely on what you have to share with me."

He chuckles. "But all of this has happened before, right? Shouldn't you know?"

"There's always the faint hope you'll impress me." the tree attempts to sound as disinterested as she can.

"I always aim to."

"That says more about your competence than it does your intentions. What do you want?"

"Nothing. Just talk. Did you hear that they're expanding those apartment on the Moon? Isn't that—?"

Something shuffles in the treetops. The cultists smack Bobby in the back of the head, propelling him back to the floor.

"Jacob." The cultists pull me up as the Great Tree turns her attention to me. "It has been a little while since you've graced me with your presence."

"I'm not exactly known for my grace." I say.

"It's an expression, smartass." whoever's holding me whispers in my ear.

"He knows it is." Dee murmurs.

"What is this, Jacob?" the tree asks me. "Who is this young thing you've brought along?"

"I can speak for myself, you know." Dee intervenes.

"You will speak when spoken to." the robed figure standing above her warns.

"Keep it cool, kiddo." Bobby grunts, still recovering from that shove.

"What. Is. This." Clara's losing her patience. Not that she's ever been known to have a whole lot of it, anyway.

"We're here to kill you." Dee says.

"Dee!" I shout.

"Juice has a syringe with a special poison in his back pocket. He was supposed to inject it into you while that wolf-headed freak kept you busy." She yawns. "You'd only start to notice symptoms over the next few days. By the time you started to rot, you wouldn't connect it to Bobby."

Something pulls me by the hair. The tip of a knife now stands firmly pointed in my neck.

"Settle down." Dee's not finished, it seems. Great. "To be perfectly clear, Bobby pushed us into doing this. We were gonna be betray him from the get-go."

We were?

"You. Cheeky. Little. Bitch." Bobby's now wailing on the ground, but there's not much he can do. Looks like he had his feet tied at some point, as well. "Clara, she's full of shit!"

"I'm not." Dee's gaze is pointed firmly at the Great Tree. Wherever Clara's spirit is hidden, it feels like they're staring each other in the eye. "Just check Juice's pockets."

"You came to me for help!" Bobby shouts.

"Yeah. Not to hurt anyone." she turns to me. "Let me and Juice go. Do whatever you want with 'The Werewolf.' We're not enemies. We want no part in this."

Bobby's laughing. "Great work, Juice! You really know how to pick 'em!"

"The hell's that supposed to mean?" I ask.

Dee sighs. "We're not fucking, don't worry."

"Oh, don't worry. Juice isn't into necrophilia. He's still smart enough to realize you're a rotting corpse. The question is, are you?"

"Fuck you."

"I'm just saying—"

"Shut up, Bobby." Probably the one line that will never work with him.

"—I'm just saying that she doesn't quite seem to understand how life after death really works. Bit deluded. You see it all the time. Really, Juice, I wonder why you didn't sit her down and—"

"Enough!" Clara's voice booms once more, silencing even Bobby, for once. "Get him over here."

The cultists drag him closer to the tree. I feel a hand reaching into my pockets. They find the syringe in no-time.

"I'm guessing," Bobby sighs, "there's no use trying to tell you that's Juice's insulin?"

"Unless the use of it is to make me angrier, no. I don't think so." The bark of the tree shifts ever so slightly. "Frankly, at this point, I'm just curious as to why you'd do something this stupid."

"Oh, that's easy. I don't need you anymore."

"You never needed me. You needed them."

"Then, I don't need them anymore."

"You stupid little thing. Of course you do. You've got nobody else."

"There's some things one able body's enough for. Digging up a grave, for instance."

"Your own, evidently." A crack, as one of the branches moves slightly further than the other ones. That one must've hurt her, but she did it anyway. "You broke the truce."

"You were never a fan of it, anyway." Bobby remarks.

"I was never a fan of you."

"That's a lie."

"A lie you can take to you grave, then."

"We both know I'm not going anywhere."

"Not much you can do if you wind up as a broken radio on an Indian flea market." The Great Tree can't help but laugh.

"That won't happen. I'll stay like this forever." The Werewolf says.

"Nothing lasts forever."

"If the torment of existence can, then so can I. So can this. It's just about finding a way. And I've—"

"Get rid of him."

"Wait—"

There's no use pleading, though. One of the cultists is already charging at him, pole in hand. The moment he turns around, it's already hit his chest, passing through him, and lodging itself in the Great Tree. He falters immediately. It must've broken through the pacemaker.

The Werewolf is gone.

"That was pathetic." Clara murmurs.

It was, wasn't it?

Some of the apostles laugh. I swallow what little saliva formed in my mouth and feel the tip of the knife lodge itself ever so slightly further into my neck.

"Well? You letting us go, or what?" Dee says.

She doesn't get it.

"'What,' indeed." The branches rustle once more.

She doesn't get it, either.

The knife moves away from my neck. My hair is released. Yet, now there's a hand on my shoulder.

Dee looks my way again, horrified.

"No!" she shouts.

Ah. They're going to stab me in the back. The knife? Or...

"Let's give you your insulin, shall we?" My captor laughs behind me.

"No!" there's no use to Dee's pleading. They're going to make her watch.

She doesn't understand just how bad this is going to get. She couldn't have possibly known ahead of time.

That's why Bobby wanted her here. That's why he provoked her. He knew how she would react. Just like he knew how Clara would.

Bang.

The syringe was just a game.

Bang.

And he'd won before anyone had even started playing.

Bang.

The grip on my shoulder loosens. Something falls at my feet.

The game is over.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Screaming. Shouting. Swearing. The cultist from before's still singing; likely not processing what's happening. Dee's among the shouters. She's watching in horror as the robed figures all fall to the ground, one by one.

Bang.

The singing stops.

Bang. Bang.

In the darkness of the wood, I see a pair of is glistening. And another. And another. And the bushes rustle, drawing my attention to yet another. And there's one over there. And over there.

Wolves.

Wolves everywhere.

Wolves with the bodies of humans. Each with a revolver in their hand.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

"What the hell is going on? Stop! Stop!" Clara demands. But there's nothing she can do. Rustle as she might the treetops, the simple fact is that she's surrounded. Outnumbered.

And with her last cultist falling to the ground, a bullet in them—

She's alone.

From behind me, I hear a voice:

"As I was saying, I don't need your puppets anymore. I don't need anyone, when I've got the one person I can trust to do all I need to."

The voice now stands to my left. It's Bobby. It's a different body, but it's Bobby.

"Me." says another one of the wolf heads.

"Myself." says the one walking from the opposite direction.

"And I." says the one to my right.

Dozens and dozens of Bobbys. Everywhere.

"What have you done?" Clara demands. "What have you done?!"

"Made a cool impression." one of the Bobbys says.

"We're all just an amalgamation of impulses, you know." another chimes in. "I think ours are a bit different than the 'pure' electrical ones. There's something we carry along. It's what allows us to be 'alive.' Frankly, I have no idea what it is. It's incredible. Our essence is truly something. It's beyond pure matter. Yet, fundamentally — from a physics standpoint — we behave just like your typical electricity."

Another one steps out of the woods. "Electricity can be read. Measured. If it can be measured, it can be duplicated. And when duplicated, it can be spread out."

"Wireless is a great thing, isn't it?" I don't even know who that one came from.

"All I need to do is send signals from one pacemaker..." There's too many of them.

"...And have it reach the one in a different corpse." So many of them.

"So, let's say I dig up a few corpses..." This is hardly a 'few.'

"Install my special pacemakers into them, designed to pass along signals they receive into the rest of the body..."

"Send out signals to those pacemakers from my original body..."

"Those signals then activate their dead corpses..."

"And voila. They are Bobby. Just like me."

"And me."

"And me."

"At the same time. A bunch of workers ran by one brain."

"All that goes for the Bobby you just killed. Who wasn't the original."

"Oops."

"Oops."

"Oops."

Among the pack, one of them steps forward, mockingly bowing before the Great Tree.

"I don't know why you thought I'd come to you with such a stupid plan. A poison syringe! When exactly would Juice have snuck up on you with all those freaks watching? C'mon."

Dee's looking around. Her eyes dart from one corpse to the next. There's blood on her face. There's some on her lip. She's not aware. She can't even taste it, probably. It doesn't look like she herself is hurt, thankfully. Not physically, at least.

She didn't know.

"Oh, God. Oh, God."

But she does now.

Her eyes finally stop at mine. I think she's looking for some kind of comfort. Some assurance that I didn't have any idea something like this would happen. That she hadn't been tricked into participating in some sick performance.

I hope my eyes are giving her that right now. I really do.

Even if it isn't true. I might not have known it would play out like this exactly, but I knew the end result. There was no way I couldn't.

Because this is who Bobby is.

This is what he does.

"Well, then," The Werewolf says, placing his hand on the trunk, "what happens now? This has all happened before then, hasn't it?"

Clara says nothing.

Two of the Werewolves are carrying gas cans. They're sprinkling it all around the camp, over the bodies, over tiny growths of blood-covered grass, slowly making their way to the crestfallen 'God.' The fumes reach my nostrils.

"Well?" asks the monster with the head of a wolf. "Have I impressed you?"