Mimic Fruit

An excerpt from an expedition journal belonging to Blake Riley, a famed Blacksite explorer.

Entry #43 - Weeping Cherry (?)

As horrific as the monolith was, I couldn’t bear to leave the courtyard just yet. That tree right in the middle was calling my name, figuratively speaking. Just the placement of it really, the surreal nature of what I was seeing in contrast to where I was seeing it.

Visually, it took on the form of a weeping cherry tree, barring a few key details I'll dramatically leave out for now. It was in full fantastic bloom when we discovered it. This is the first sign of strangeness, these trees do not bloom in late summer, which is when we began our expedition. I'm not sure if the Blacksite's time distortion effects caused a late or perpetual blooming, or if this tree had a different life cycle itself, because spoiler alert it was very much NOT a weeping cherry.

Either way, it was beautiful, almost made me forget about that chill on the back of my neck telling me something was watching us from the windows (almost!). Its beauty was another layer to the strangeness though, the limbs of the tree and the fruit (?) dangling from it would sway side to side in an intangible breeze. There's your second sign. A seasoned stalker will tell you, the moment you stop feeling wind or hearing the sounds of nature: there is something strange about.

In the courtyard, there was no wind, there was no sound of skittering from the ROUS or any other creature we'd seen so far. All we saw was a marvel of a tree, in full beautiful bloom, gently sway in a breeze we could not feel on our own skin. The limbs and fruit (?) making no sound as the breeze pushed them calmly. Staring at the tree, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up once more. I could feel those eyes on me stronger then. A quiet, malicious rage burrowing into my skin from behind. It was as if an unseen predator were bearing its fangs in that moment, searching for an opportunity to devour me.

I felt like I'd seen this tree before, in the courtyard of a featureless concrete monolith. It was a low, primal feeling deep inside me somewhere that in my darkest dreams I'd seen those flowers bloom and those limbs sway in the breeze. In that memory I could feel the wind, it was a gentle cold that signalled an incoming snow. In a few short days the garden in my memories would be covered in ice, but that tree would remain I just knew it. Even as the creature staring at the back of my head from the window bared its teen in a jagged smile before it pounced, I knew the tree would endure. And so long as the tree endured, so would I. That even if I died at its feet, my blood would nourish it, the tree would endure.

We stared in silence at the tree for some time, only breaking out of it when one a member of our expedition broke down into tears. I was able to snap out of the effect before the others, and rushed to the side of our crewmate and tried to calm him down as he had a panic attack. He wasn't able to speak clearly, it was mostly vague babbling mixed in with the crying. But as I tried to calm him down, that's when I realised I forgot his name. I still don't remember it. That's our third sign of strangeness.

We took some time to recover, making sure to limit our visual of the tree, and keeping a circular watch on the windows around us. Holding this position allowed the anxiety to go down after almost an hour. I really can't put into words how exhausting this was mentally. If you failed to watch the windows, that unseen force would stare you down. But watching the windows meant you had some of the tree in your vision, which would begin to draw you into that trance. We had to alternate constantly, taking turns sitting in the middle with our eyes shut and focusing on our breathing. The rest of the crew wanted to leave, and so did I. But for the sake of this expedition I know I needed to get a closer look at that tree.

The tree itself was very crooked, it looked like it got struck by lightning and split right down the middle before growing again. So you ended up with two sides growing away from each other and a thin channel between them. Sign four incoming, because the tree was bleeding!!!

If you've ever seen one of those dragon blood trees, it looked just like that. But this was real blood! That centre channel right in the middle, where it looked like it got struck by lightning? It was bleeding, constantly oozing out blood. The blood would trickle down and seep into the grass below the tree, got all over my boots. I thought it was sap at first, shame on me for thinking any form of logic would apply here.

Written As A Part Of Summer Camp 2026!

Week Two - Growth

Prompt #12: "A Fruit That Grows in an Unlikely Environment"

Other Summer Camp 2026 Articles

Burial at Sea

Author

Blake Riley

Authoring Date

2013

Scientific Name

Caro Fructum Imitans

Geographic Distribution

• The Monolith

Oriental Poppy by Karl Blossfeldt

Entry #44 - Mimic Fruit (?)

Once I was done freaking out about the bleeding tree though, I had plenty of time to freak out about the fruit (?) growing from it. Yes! I will finally write about the fruit (?) and why I've been writing "fruit (?)" like that. Sign five is that all along the limbs of the tree were thick vines(?) that hung down, each with one fruit (?) attached to the end. The vines(?) by the way were smooth, rubbery and a sort of greyish colour. I'm only calling them vines(?) because I don't know what the bloody hell else to call them. Well, I do have something they reminded me of, but it makes what we learnt later much more troubling. So for my sake, if you know you know.

The fruit (?), or whatever you want to call them, were the size of large mangos. Big enough that you needed to use two hands to properly hold them, heavy too. They also had a similar shape to mangos, but that's as close to real fruit as they got. Now the first thing you notice is how... hairy(?) they are. This is real hair from what I can tell by the way, it feels like human hair, and under the hair it feels like skin, like a scalp.

Holding the fruit (?) made me feel uneasy. I was already taking frequent breaks to step away from the tree to catch my breath, but it took me an entire hour to stomach holding the fruit (?) after the first time I felt it. Let this be a lesson to bring along antianxiety meds if you come to the botanical gardens. I didn't need them anywhere else as much as I needed them here.

By this point, a few of the others had calmed down enough to join me under the tree. Bishop made the mistake(?) of handling one of the fruits (?) too hard on the vine (?) and the whole thing fell off and splattered all over the ground. Blood everywhere, it was a mess. Some of it from the fruit (?), most of it from the vine (?). The vine started to push out blood like a hose, it was like cutting an artery. The fruit (?) though didn't bleed too much, it mostly just spattered onto the ground and made Jester throw up because the inside was MEAT.

Whatever courage we had gathered evaporated by that point. Seeing the blood gush out onto the dirt, watching it soak into the grass as the tree seemed to drink it up right in front of us. The sound the fruit (?) made when it hit the ground, it was wet and heavy. A horrible squelching sound that rang in my ears and caused me to panic.

We lost track of time at that point. Each of us had broken down, a few ran out of the courtyard and back into the building as they screamed. I could hear them yelling a name, "Marshal! Marshal!". I don't know a Marshal but I know who he was in that moment. Born in New York, 1997. He disappeared while riding the subway in 2013. He liked comic books and rock music, his favourite food was birthday cake, the one his grandmother made for him before she died.

I came to in one of the featureless rooms of the monolith. Half the crew was gone, I can't remember how many or what their names were. Bishop found me, we gathered who we could find and left. From what I can tell, we lost about a day and a half at the monolith. As we left, we made sure one of us kept the building in sight as we walked back into the forest. It felt unnecessary though, I knew in my gut the being watching us before wasn't there any longer.