6. Pruned
Amy rummages around in her pack, then pulls out the rusty pruning shears.
“Geeze, lady, alright, let’s not get crazy now.” She can see the tree almost lean backwards away from her.
“Now tell me where you saw Shannon.”
“There was a little blonde bimbo a couple nights ago, she ran through here and tripped on my root. It woke me up. I wish I’d been awake before she tripping on my root, I’d give her a root to trip on, if you know what I mean.”
Amy has an idea, and doesn’t like it one bit. She snaps the shears menacingly at the tree.
“Okay, okay, geeze. Go on through.”
Amy walks cautiously past the tree, careful to keep herself always facing the lascivious sentry. Out of the corner of her eye she sees a flash of green. She quickly twirls around and SNAP! cuts off the edge of an approaching vine.
“AAGGGGHHH! Geeze, lady, I was just testing you, I wasn’t serious or nothing. GAH, how’d you like if I cut off a finger of yours?!”
Amy picks up the pace of her sidle, but the tree makes no more moves to attack her, merely moving his severed vine into his mouth and sucking.
After Amy gets a good hundred feet away from the tree she turns and flees.
“THAT’S RIGHT, RUN AWAY! JUST YOU WAIT! YOU’LL BE BACK! I’M MORE TREE THAN YOU CAN HANDLE, BABY!”
Amy rolls her eyes. She’d heard the same thing, with some variation, from construction workers around campus. This one, though, seems like he might have the, ahem, wood to back up his braggadocio. Amy makes her way further into the woods.
A short while later, Amy seems to come to the edge of the forest. In fact, as she looks around the horizon, it becomes apparent that this is just a big clearing. Before her stands an imposing wrought iron gate, set in the middle of a fence of similar construction. On that gate a sign is hung, written in dripping red letters, “Trespassers will be trespassed upon.” Amy gulps. How had Shannon seen all this and still gone forward? She looks through the iron bars of the gate. An overgrown path runs from inside the gate straight forward to the foot of a dark, imposing edifice. This must be the mansion Shannon talked about. Amy shudders, then screws her courage to the sticking place and starts working out how to tackled the gate.
What should Amy do?