Poison

Jesi is a bully. She makes me post things to my blog even though I'm swamped with work. Guilt, Jesi! Feel lots of guilt!

Poison

The apples are rotting on the tree beside the cottage. She smells them for the first time in November – a sickly-sweet notion that creeps through her nostrils and calls to her as she passes.

She keeps her eyes on the road. There’s homework to do, and she’ll never get it done if she wastes time spying on the neighbours.

In December, she notices that the manholes in the street are shrinking. Not so you’d see unless you paid attention, but she knows they weren’t always like this. Something is afoot, and those apples are smelling better than ever.

She takes the opportunity to eye the clouds. “Looks like snow,” she says aloud.

It’s late January when she steps on the little white-haired man who’s sitting in the middle of the street. He’s wearing a housecoat and is pulling on one of his long ears, anxiously eyeing his watch.

“You’re late,” he says. “The ways are shrinking. Follow me down to Wonderland, oh won’t you, won’t you?”

Alice sidesteps him. “I’m done with that kind of thing,” she says.

After that she pays more mind to her studies, attending to the D’s and C’s that have been following her around like stray animals hungry for attention. Let someone else worry about the manholes and the birds and the bees.

But the apples. She passes them every day, and every day they seem more intriguing. A biology teacher once told her that the edible part of a fruit is the ovary. It’s one of the few things she remembers from biology (she’s failing now)

The branches are empty of leaves, and the rotting ovaries hang swollen and drooping as she passes them by.

The last straw is in February. She is passing the cottage again, and this time a squirrel leaps down from the tree and scurries over to block her path. It is cradling an apple in its forearms, and a square of white paper attached to the stem reads plainly, “eat me”.

Alice kicks the squirrel. It squeals in anguish and flees, leaving the apple to roll innocuously against one of her feet.

When she picks it up, she breaks the surface, and the cold coarse pulp settles between her fingers like unset cement.

It smells like cider.

She sighs. She lifts it to her face, inhales gently, and places her open lips on one of the wounds left by her fingers.

She closes her eyes.

“I never was much good at much else anyhow,” she says as she shrinks into the yawning mouth of the now tiny manhole.

Wonderland awaits, as it always does.