so i have a sideblog problem

A vast quantity of blood inexplicably appears and fills the Nightvale waterfront over night. Carlos and his team of scientists study it for several weeks before discovering a giant, dead eel at the bottom, a rusty patchwork submarine in its jaws.

Both of them have been torn asunder by a knarled tree, its twisted roots slowly crawling across the ocean floor. Its branches stretch for the surface little by little each day until a few leaves, blackened by iron, break through to the scorching desert sun.

Doppler scans of the tree trunk reveal that it’s hollow. Or at least, it isn’t solid wood throughout. Carlos and co. attempt to open it, and are unsuccessful. They make several dives with increasingly sophisticated and aggressive tools and techniques, none of which yield any progress. The tree is eventually abandoned for the more accessible discoveries to be had at the site, and once those are exhausted, the site itself is abandoned, much to Carlos’ chagrin.

Nightvale adopts the blood-waterfront as a feature of the town. Tourist shops sell t-shirts saying “We are all, we are one in the blood” and “I survived an audience with the one-eyed blood god and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” The tree branches continue to grow out of the blood and become a feature of Nightvale’s waterfront boat tours.

Then one day, mid-June, the community radio host reports that webbed footprints were discovered trailing up the hard-packed dirt shore of the lagoon around the iron tree. They lead toward the general direction of the barista district.

In unrelated news, Nightvale community radio has been asked by the Waterfront Management committee to remind visitors to use the available showers before and after swimming in the blood ocean. They’ve also been asked to remind shop patrons that “No Shirt, No Shoes, No service” applies at all waterfront businesses, and a thick coat of blood over one’s entire body does not constitute publicly decent attire.

In the coming days, the leaves of the iron tree flutter down, one by one, to the surface of the lagoon, at first dotting, and then blanketing the red with charcoal black. The branches start to shrivel. Deadfall drops and tangles itself into bundles that drift into bottlenecks and choke the flow of blood throughout the waterfront.