A Forced Transition.

It was a second apartment. A pied-a-terre. And it was in a big city, probably New York. And in a walk-up building.

I lived on the top floor.

I had a main residence somewhere else, and this was a place I’d procured just to live in part time.

One day I came home to find construction workers inside and taking furniture apart and hauling it down the stairs and outside.

Obviously I was concerned, and demanded to know what was going on and why they were doing this.

“Who is in charge?” I wanted to know. “Why are you in here taking my stuff out?”

They ignored me. And didn’t say anything at all.

There was a frumpy older woman in the kitchen, cleaning. I didn’t want to waste my time trying to talk to her. Instead, I focused on getting the things I wanted to make sure they didn’t take out of the apartment. The things I wanted to secure.

I noticed a younger woman and some of her friends on the other side of the apartment. I asked them what was going on.

She just smiled at me, and starts taking things apart too. She was actively getting in my way as well, seeming to want to prevent me from making progress on collecting my things.

That’s when I noticed back at the other end of the apartment is some greenery growing under an end table. Like a weed.

I walk over to try to pull it out. But when I push the little table aside to grab at the greenery, I see that it is actually the top of a tree. It looks like a root, but it’s actually a tree that has grown through the building and is coming through the floorboards.

The crew of men has started to pull back the floorboards to reveal the tree. To make room for it.

“Why aren’t you removing the tree?” I want to ask. “It’s growing in my space!”

The younger woman comes up to me. She doesn’t seem pleased. She is threatened by me for some reason.

She had been using large hedge trimmer sheers to take my things apart. But now she has broken the sheers apart. to create two separate blades. She is positioning them towards me in a threatening way.

I go up to her and lean in. I ask what she thinks she is doing. I just want all of my stuff. But she doesn’t want to let me walk away with it.

I grab parts of the two blades, positioning my hands above hers. They are dull blades and a bit rusty.

As I push into her while tugging for the blades to move from her to me, so that she has no way of being able to stab me with them or swing them at me.

But I see her smile at me wickedly. And then I notice a knife has gone through her back, opposite her stomach.

That’s what she wanted.

To agitate me so that I would accidentally kill her while trying to defend myself.

Her suicide.