Work Text:
Apple; the revolting vessel that encompasses the bitter scent and overwhelming tang I have gotten exceedingly sick of over the past fifty years of my life.
Though I've only taken shallow breaths, I feel nauseated at the barest hint of the odor that smells like the blood of dying blades of grass and already tainted soil. My coarse gloves protect me from the toxic pesticides that make my orchard look consistently "Happy and healthy!" as my and my wife's deceptive tagline states.
I feel the weight of the apples in my cold, clammy hands and of the income that rests on this marketing photoshoot. I have to appear delighted and in love because I am being watched and photographed all day. My wife is staring back at me with her always-dilated eyes—though we never speak—because we share this cursed company and must present a united front in our advertisements. I hear her hushed, grating insults through her gritted teeth and the sound of all my nightmares: wind through our apple trees’ leaves and the crunch of fallen ones being stepped over.
The taste of my stale, foul breath granted by years of unhealthy coping habits and the dryness of my tongue overtakes my senses as I take a bite of the literal fruit of our labor. A sour feeling pierces my heart and I realize at once that these past few days have been no “sort of bug” as I believed only two minutes ago. I have been poisoned.
I fall down, clutching my chest, cackling because though we may not share any love, we have always reciprocated in creating concepts. The fool will know in due time that I have returned the allocation of chronic cyanide poisoning.