After being diagnosed with melancholia, Spoon returns home under a bruised sky. She arrives to find a stern man in a black suit and a corpulent woman guarding the door to her house. The house is festooned in balloons and brightly colored streamers.

“This is not your house anymore,” the stern man says. “You live in the tree now.”

Spoon looks at the tree in the front yard. It is larger than she remembers, reaching all the way up to the dark clouds.

“I’ve never climbed a tree before,” Spoon says.

“Bah,” the stern man spits, grabbing her arms and marching her over to the tree. He pushes her face against the rough bark.

She does not possess the power to resist. She clutches the tree and begins to climb. It’s easier than she would have thought but she has a very long way to go. The stern man and the plump woman drag chairs from the house and sit them at the base of the tree. They sit down and look up at her. The woman’s chair sinks into the ground and the man laughs wildly. Spoon continues to stare at the ongoing spectacle as she climbs the tree. A group of similarly dourly dressed people emerge from the house and gather round the couple. A few of them help the woman out of her chair. The stern man looks skyward and catches Spoon staring at them. His face turns angry and he reaches into his pocket, plucks out an object, and hurls it at her. Spoon is pretty sure it’s a light bulb. The rest of the crowd joins him. They all reach into seemingly endless pockets and pull out countless light bulbs, throwing them viciously. None of them reach her. Spoon decides she likes the sound of bulbs shattering and popping against the earth from a great distance.

By nightfall she reaches the top of the tree, well into the clouds. She can still hear the people from below. It sounds like they are having a party. Perhaps that would explain the streamers and balloons. Her arms and legs are very tired but she discovers she does now live in the tree. Her house is there and, opening the door, she discovers everything is just as she left it.

She goes out on the deck and watches the moon approach.

There are people wandering around its surface. Small, from this distance. As the moon draws closer, nearly brushing against her house, she sees they are all wearing miners’ caps, the kind of helmet with a light on it.

The one closest to her (they all kind of look the same) turns to her and says, “We built this for you.”

But as Spoon reaches out to touch the surface of the moon it is already drifting away into the cold blackness of space.