Bad apple

It’s fall, the harvest will come soon. Ripe pomes just right for picking, heavy with juicy flesh, white as porcelain, flawless and tender. The hungry are poised beneath laden limbs, arms outstretched to catch their bounty.

Standing outside the tree line, he marvels at their ignorance. He knows she is tainted, that the fruit so eagerly anticipated is corrupt.

He wonders if he should rescue them, climb the gnarled bough and take her for himself. Expose her for the infection she is, toxic to the core.

They wouldn’t believe him. Possessed, they’d clamor to steal her away.