"Sometimes I think to myself that if I owned a gun I’d blow my brains out the back of my head. But since I don’t own a gun, these bottles of whiskey will have to do," Richmond told the Arab man behind the counter of Bob’s All American Convenience store. The Arab man nodded politely and counted the money Richmond laid down on the counter before putting it in the register.

Richmond leaned against the counter staring past the clerk and past the cartons of cigarettes and boxes of condoms and blunt shell wrappers that fooled no one of their intended use. Richmond stared past the convenience store walls and passed the ****** blowing a John in the back alley by the dumpster and past the man beating his wife in front of their children and past the 13 year old girl that just found out she was going to be a mother and past the block that only worsened every day and past the city that was crumbling beneath corrupt politicians and the debt they incurred and past the country that hid the truth from its citizens.

Richmond stared past it all and felt his eyes begin to water as tears started to fall down his face, tracing his age lines, tracing the scars that scared away children, tracing the laugh lines he no longer used until he could taste his tears, salty and wet, first on his lips and then his tongue. Richmond cried for the first time in a long time and began laughing at the thought of himself crying. He did not know what brought it on and when he tried to pinpoint the thought or feeling or emotion that triggered the tears he was met with a migraine.

The Arab man behind the register looked at Richmond with suspicion and reached beneath the counter top and pulled out a baseball bat that had nails protruding from the top half and told Richmond that he needed to leave, that this was a place for business and not weirdos. Richmond wiped away the tears with the ragged sleeve of a flannel that he had found in the dumpster earlier that morning. He feigned a smile the best he could to show no hard feelings and grabbed the brown bag containing three small bottles of whiskey and left the store.

The air hit Richmond’s tear stained face and instantly cooled him and he felt the bitterness of winter coming even as he heard the air conditioners running and the taxis honking and the birds over in the park a block over chirping. Richmond walked along the sidewalk, ignored intentionally by everyone he passed, and found an alley way unoccupied except for the rats digging thru refuse and slid his aching body down against one of the buildings brick walls and took out a bottle of whiskey and uncapped it and brought it to his lips and felt its amber courage wash over his tongue and down into his belly creating a warmth that he hasn’t felt since the doctors told him that his wife and daughter had died in the car accident that had only left him scarred badly upon his face and chest.

Richmond thought about their deaths and felt the pain as if it had just happened and not seventeen years ago and drank the first bottle of whiskey gone until the numbness overtook the ache and he watched the rats scurrying thru the garbage before a cat crept down the alley and coughs one of the rats off guard and began toying with it as cats do. The other rats took off down various holes and behind whatever coverage they could find so that they could live another day.

“Smart rats" Richmond found himself saying allowed. He opened the second bottle and drank it as he watched the cat tear open the flesh of the rat with its sharp claws on its paw and tear chunks of insides out with its feline teeth. He drank the bottle as he watched the cats white face become red with blood from its **** and he drank as he watched the cat lick and clean itself until it was a white cat again and it left the alley. Richmond stood up slowly using the wall he was leaning against for support and he stumbled his way out of the alley with his one whiskey bottle left hidden beneath the left side of his flannel. He cradled it like an endangered animal and continued his sluggish, stumbling walk towards the park where he found a bench and laid down and closed his eyes.

When he awoke he saw a cop coming towards him. Wanting nothing to do with the law Richmond quickly snapped to and started walking in the opposite direction of the cop. He looked over his shoulder once or twice or three times after a good while of walking and did not see the cop anymore. He sighed. And laughed quietly.

Richmond walked some more with no path or intention in mind until he sobered up and realized he had walked to the graves of his wife and daughter. Richmond dropped to his knees and began sobbing and scratching at the dirt that covered their caskets some six feet below. He howled for god and asked angrily why them and not him. He laid his head down on the ground and cried and the dirt mixed with his tears so that he looked blackface in some spots. He wiped away the mud and tears and took his last bottle out and before putting it to his mouth told his wife and daughter that he would be with them soon and he pulled the trigger by drinking the bottle empty and laying down next to his wife’s grave and holding the ground where she lay dead.

The next morning the care taker was doing his first daily walk thru and came upon Richmond lying with the tombstones, dead, and with a smile on his face.

Within a few years of it being established, the Tree Keepers decided to lock Richmond Park between dusk and dawn, for the Trees of Richmond Park were known to hunt at night.

By day they sunned themselves and smiled, and seemed contented with their well rooted existence, but they hunted at night. So, although hemmed in and tagged by curious men, after sundown the Trees of Richmond Park hunted freely in packs within the Park’s walls:
Oak was the largest tribe (slow but relentless), then Beech (clever in coordinated assaults) with hangers on, Hawthorn (quick on flat ground), Blackthorn (vicious in attack), Birch (a graceful, brutal warrior) and Hornbeam (clumsy, but tolerated for their tough temperament).

The Trees of Richmond Park prided themselves on their stealth; slothful in appearance, apparently careless of the game around them, but they hunted at night. They granted a place for the birds to nest, yes, that’s true, they lulled them into a false sense of safe space and even allowed them to nurture their young. This replenished their stock, their lively larder, but - they hunted at night. The slower, tastier, ground nesting birds were the easiest prey - the grey partridge, the reed bunting, stonechat and meadow pipit all succumbed - their brittle bones breaking easily against a well-placed low swing of a gnarly bough. The swifter raptors repeatedly evaded the hunt and gloried in their survival and so the Trees of Richmond Park grew to tolerate their lack of veneration. Not so for the rabbits and squirrels of Bone Copse who were far too foolish to grasp the danger they danced with and they assumed too late that their burrow-nests were impervious to a delving nocturn root, to a dawning yawning crevice - to population cull.

There was talk of young deer disappearing within the Queen’s Saw Pit Plantation, but nothing was ever proven. Rumour also had it that the trees were responsible for an occasional missing child down in Gibbet Wood where a bad-tempered Blackthorn resided. That was hushed up and the parents were persuaded by the generous Crown compensation scheme which had been established and maintained for these and similar incidents. However, it remained true (at least in the main) that the Trees of Richmond Park hunted at night. It was in the dark that they pinned their prey. It was in the damp dark that they ****** their fill and nurtured their own, silently, stealthily filling every branch with their hungry young. They regularly sent their emissaries to claim yet more of the dark, with scant regard for the territories claimed or boundaries drawn, by come-lately, day creatures. And so they established outposts outside the curfewed walls, securing first rights on any and all nutrients further abroad.

Yes, the trees of Richmond Park chiefly hunted at night. And as apex predator, they have gone unchallenged. They have out-hunted, out-delved, out-witted, out-seeded, out-lived all contenders and they still occupy the dead of hunted night.

But, Billy, they are still known to take the occasional child to feed their offspring. And that is why it was not a good idea to uproot that sapling. - Stay close, and let’s get back to the car.