There was a growth in the kitchen, protruding bulbously from the fruit bowl, furred and quivering where the pineapple should have been.
“Where’s my pudding?” called a voice from the garden.
I looked at the growth and tried to direct my mother away from it and onto the idea of having something else for pudding.
“What do you want?” I said. “There’s some ice cream.”
“Fruit,” she said. “You know I always have fruit for pudding.”
“I’m not sure there’s any left,” I said.
“There should be a pineapple in the fruit bowl.”
“Are you sure you don’t want any ice cream?”
“No! Fruit! I want my fruit, David!”
I picked up the growth, hoping until the last it was a miniature coconut, that the quivering was a trick of the light, that
that
that
anything
except what it was
It was soft in my hand, and almost definitely alive, moist, like wet bread, and as hairy as a tarantula you’d been forced to stroke at the zoo, but warm and responsive, unlike the refrigerated docility of those poor captive beasts.
I placed it on the chopping board and cut it in half. Blood seeped out everywhere, green and sickly and thin. I skinned the thing, dumped it’s abject flesh into mother’s favourite cereal bowl and took it out to the garden where she sat grimly underneath the parasol.
On my way back inside I absentmindedly licked my fingers, and they tasted like acid. Like acid and metal and electricity being fired through the bones of my skull. I spat and spat into the sink but nothing would make it go away.
Mother loved it, wouldn’t stop saying all night how nice it was, asking me when I was going to go out and get some more.
__________
Notes:
1. This story was written on the 24th June, 2018
2. It’s not a very good story
3. I was thinking mostly of kiwi fruits, but also there’s this thing in the garden, down by the compost heap, and it’s all furry and odd and I don’t know what it is and I don’t dare find out