Jon and Karyn blinked.
Jon looked at the gun in his hand. It was cracked, and half melted. "This is not good," he said.
"What do you mean?" Karyn said. "Nothing happened." She looked around. Everything seemed normal.
"It's broken. That can't be good."
"Hello, Jon," a friendly voice from nearby said. They turned. It was Mrs. Wilson, the elderly woman who lived across the street.
"Good morning, Mrs. Wilson," both Jon and Karyn said. Jon hid the broken device behind his back.
"I wanted to know if your..." suddenly, there was a flash of reddish light that engulfed the old woman.
Time seemed to slow down for a moment, and Mrs. Wilson seemed to step a few paces onto Jon's lawn. Her feet sunk down inside the dirt, and she raised her hands to the sky.
A few feet away, the oak tree on the lawn suddenly began to move, raising its roots out of the dirt.
It began to shrink, as Mrs. Wilson began to grow, her fingers growing and splitting. Before long, there was a Mrs. Wilson almost as tall as the house, her hair, in its bun, having poufed out into a canopy, shading the yard...and standing under it, a person-sized tree with branches for arms.
"...is your mother at home?" The tree said...although it was hard to tell where the voice was coming from.
"What?" Jon said.
"I said, I wanted to know if your mother was home."
"She's inside," Jon said.
"Thank you, dear." The tree-person walked toward the house, leaving Jon and Karyn alone under the shade of Mrs. Wilson.
Jon walked over to his now oversized neighbor, and touched her. "It looks like skin...but it's as hard as wood." He knocked on it..."It even sounds like wood."
"What just happened?"
"The gun broke...I guess...this is what happened."
"Your neighbor is now a tree? Did you see that weird red light?"
His sister walked over with her friends. "What's suddenly so interesting about that Gretchen?" She asked.
