THE MYSTERY OF THE EXPLODING TREE:

You could be a MAGA gentleman, or a true US patriot, but what I am going to tell you will blow your mind. Like it did to me. Literally.

<Thread, 1/24>

My name is Vodka Monkeybottom. I am forty-five years old. I live in a Chicago suburb in a single-family house, with a tiny family of three children, my wife, two melancholic cats, three dogs, two pet parrots, three camels, two republican mules, and a plastic elephant.

<2/24>

This unusual incident happened two nights ago. Or maybe last night. I don’t know. You see I am not good with remembering. But memory is overrated. I devour facts. I have had hopeless love, and I know to trust. Nothing shakes me now.

But this shook me to the core.

<3/24>

So that night I was up walking circles on my backyard lawn. It was 2 AM. I usually walk at that hour. An old habit I got from my previous work as a raccoon chaser. Anyway, I was simply walking and I went under the apple tree and I heard a cracking sound.

<4/24>

At first I thought it was my neck. I have a broken neck, a gift from my other previous job as a hippo wrestler. So I kept walking. A few minutes later, I turned back, came under the tree and heard the sound again.

<5/24>

Now, my apple tree is an old guy tree. It is single, has no desires in life, and it has his own idyllic life to live, unasked, unquestioned. A glass of beer at night is all it takes to put it to sleep. But that night I saw it sweat profusely.

<6/24>

Sweat drops streaming along that sensual, beautiful bark. Thirty-three squirrels could shower and wash their clothes and still have enough sweat left to make soup. So much sweat.

<7/24>

Like the tree lover I am, I ran into the house to fetch a few hundred towels, a portable fan, and a Xanax for the tree. We have many towels, thanks to my youngest cat's prior job as a Hilton Hotel owner.

<8/24>

When I came out, about ten feet away, I saw a charge shoot up from the tree into the sky, towards God's bottom. A luminous ball of light appeared in the middle of the tree trunk and enlarged infinitely as I heard a hundred thunderous staccato lightnings fall at once.

<9/24>

The next thing I remember is waking up in my neighbor's bed. Apparently, I had been flung into the sky, two blocks away, and I had blown down through the neighbor's roof. A gentleman that I am, I apologized to my neighbor, fixed her bed and the night stand, and ran out.

<10/24>

Black smoke filled my yard. Everything coughed. The other trees coughed. Grass coughed. I coughed.

But the wife, the children, the animals were still fast asleep. My wife is cool. She sleeps well. A freight train could blow its whistle in her ear and she won’t flinch.

<11/24>

The smoke settled. The tree was gone! Leaving a little heap of wood chips cut in perfect cubes. I am a man of intelligence. I have solved Fermat’s last theorem in my sleep. But I could not understand why a tree would explode. Just like that.

Fear flooded my bosom.

<12/24>

What if I were to explode in my house? I would inconvenience so many. They would have to clean the walls and we DID NOT HAVE A LADDER! Imagine them celebrating my son’s birthday as his father’s liver, attached to the ceiling, winks at him. What a horrible image!

<13/24>

But what could I possibly have done? All I had to my disposal was the scene of the event, soot deposits, burnt leaves, and mushy, perfectly cooked apples ready to plunge into an apple pie crust. No evidence of anything that could detonate.

<14/24>

That was when I heard someone weep. As if in pain. I turned to my right and saw, hanging upside down from a tree nearby, a man in black clothes.

He seemed to have been badly injured by the explosion.

<15/24>

Now, I am a tall guy. Five feet two on stilts. I have large, Trump hands, and MAGA courage. I am not afraid to confront unknown people. I went straight to him, pulled him down, washed his face with Lysol, fed him camel hair soup, and he woke up.

<16/24>

As soon as he opened his eyes, he seemed in shock. I had him down in the grass and I was sitting to his right but I did not expect him to leap to his feet and take off. I have good reflexes from my prior work as a DMV clerk. I pounced.

<17/24>

The man alone knew the mystery behind (or inside) the exploding tree. I caught him, wrestled him down, and he stopped protesting.

<18/24>

Now, I am an non-violent man. I do not eat meat. I will hurt no one. A tiger could be clawing at my eyeballs and I would simply kiss him back. So, a gentleman that I am, I tapped the man’s skull with a sledgehammer just once. Just to show that he was in my territory.

<19/24>

That was when he told me everything. He said he was an avowed antiFa. His name was Joe Treeman. He’s been living in my tree for the last four days. He has had nothing to eat so he was happy I fed him. Obama himself dropped him at my house. In a dark airplane.

<20/24>

Joe said he had 28 trillion *bags of soup* on him. He was to attack my house on Sunday because I am one of those demographics of the suburbs. He was getting everything ready when one of the soups exploded after a squirrel, that shared a room in the same tree, bit on it.

<21/24>

That was the moment I realized how genius Trump has been right all along. There indeed are people in dark clothes who come down from airplanes. Now, I had seen one with my own eyes. I had even touched his silky skin.

I smiled with gratitude.

He smiled back.

<22/24>

I thanked the man for his brutal honesty and his friendship. I packed him some mouse meat cookies, my wife's favorite cookies. I called him an Uber.

As his car left my front yard, I stood with a feeling of great, heavy, crushing sadness.

<23/24>

I was angry too. Why would Obama do that to me? I went down on my knees and began to sob, as I heard my wonderful wife yell from the front door in the melodious, sedating voice of Alex Jones, “Vodka! What’s for breakfast? I am in the mood for some soup today.”

<24/24>

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