The Fruit Dilemma

Sunday the 14th began just as countless Sundays before it had. There was no hint of the horrors that were to come. The farmers were setting their produce out on their stands in the parking lot, early rising senior citizens were strolling by, and soon the church-going peoples would be stopping by on their way home from services. Sounds of the flea market around the corner could also be heard. In short: humdrum, everyday, boring-old-normal.

The first person to see anything out of the ordinary was Eliot. Eliot’s family attended the local Methodist church religiously, but because Eliot’s father, Jeffrey, was not fond of crowds, they frequently skipped the last ten minutes of the service so they could get to the farmers market before most other people. Eliot preferred the market to church because he was allowed to walk around and make noise. Not too much, naturally, but more than he could ever get away with in church.

Being just five, Eliot was the perfect height to spot any changes. His eyes were just level with most of the fruit bins. Unfortunately, because Eliot was five, his parents, and anyone else, were less likely to believe him when he said an apricot had winked at him.

The second person that noticed produce behaving unnaturally was Edith. At eighty-five, Edith considered herself somewhat of an expert on fruit. In fact, since retiring she had done extensive research and felt that there was little about the local produce she did not know. Therefore, when she observed an avocado with what appeared to be an arm, she knew that there was reason to be alarmed. Indeed, when the arm waved at her, she had the presence of mind to faint. At the end of the day she realized that this had saved her life.

The first screams erupted while the proprietor of the avocados, as well as other assorted vegetables, was jogging around to the front of his stand to aid Edith. Two stands away Mary was attacked by a tomato. She watched it rise up onto thin, wobbly legs in disbelief and then let out a thin, piercing shriek that hurt Jeffrey’s ears seven stalls away when she witnessed the fruit opening its eyes for the first time. Two black slivers appeared as it flicked open its thin red eyelids. Mary’s scream was cut short when the tomato leaped forward and lodged itself several inches down her throat.

Although he was initially irritated by Mary’s shrill screech, Jeffrey soon had his own problems. A short yelp from his son drew his attention. He looked down to see Eliot’s finger stuck fast in the jaws of a peach. He bent down to help his son, but froze when he saw a jack-o’-lantern smile cut jaggedly across a watermelon. A low, rumbling chuckle escaped from the depths of the leering melon and Jeffrey wished that he were still in church.

Up until that point only a handful of fruits and vegetables had exhibited unusual behavior, but the deep laugh signaled the end of sanity at the Sunday farmers market. Rank upon rank of oranges rose in unison alongside aubergines. Sinister grins spread across the dark skins of the purple fruits. Eliot grinned with childish delight; his father’s jaw dropped in horror. Then the true violence began.

Still smiling their dreaded smiles, the aubergines turned away for a moment. When they faced Jeffrey and the few other shoppers around him and his son, they were holding asparagus. A half breath later the spears had been launched. Jeffrey watched one of the green shafts sail by his face and slide into the cheek of a woman on his right as easily as his own teeth bit through asparagus on a normal day. That day was no longer a normal day. The coin had been flipped.

Jeffrey sprang into action. He reached down and grabbed a fistful of Eliot’s shirt and spun away from the stand. As he did, he took a spear of asparagus high in his right shoulder. It felt like hot iron; he grimaced. They moved quickly through the appalling killing field that the market had become.

Eliot saw a gang of jalapeno peppers push a cackling cucumber off a table as his father half carried him through the market turned battlefield. When the log shaped fruit hit the ground it rolled with alarming speed into a knot of people. Eliot watched, fascinated, as the fruit quit all movement just as quickly as a fly changes direction. Half a second later an elderly man’s cane came down on top of the fruit. Robert Stevenson IV was a proud veteran of the Vietnam War where he had caught several large pieces of shrapnel with his left leg. He had pleaded with the medic that amputation was not necessary and lost. Subsequently, he leaned heavily on his cane at all times to help him use his wooden leg. Robert Stevenson IV fell that day with much dignity, but where the Vietcong had failed, vicious pineapples and cruel cantaloupes did not.

Jeffrey switched Eliot over to his left hand; his right was weakening. His son was smiling as if it were a big game. Jeffrey was sure that his boy did not understand the fatal implications of what was happening around him. Unfortunately, Jeffrey understood all too well.

Mr. King had been selling cherries, pears, and cactus, or nopales as his best customer Mr. Casillas, who was standing just before him, called them, at the end the farmers market row for his entire life (it was the family business) and had often hawked his goods in what many would consider an aggressive manner, but he had never had his fruits literally leap at his potential customers. Both he and Mr. Casillas were stunned to inaction. A large, ugly pear, armed with nopales sprang onto Mr. Casillas’ shoulders. Unfortunately for Mr. Casillas, Mr. King prided himself on selling his nopales as nature provided them: with thorns still attached. This pear was particularly hard and unripe. It gripped a large circular nopales like a pro wrestler would a metal folding chair. The pear pumped the nopales through the air several times to seemingly no effect, but when Mr. Casillas slumped to the ground, eyes peering into the back of his own head, Mr. King saw light through scores perforations in his cheeks.

Mr. King did not see what happened next because mangoes wielding a four-inch paring knife sliced through his Achilles tendons. Had Mr. Casillas maintained consciousness a few moments longer he would’ve seen the pear that had felled him joined by several of his fellows, these armed with cherries. As it was, the mob of pears bounded over Mr. Casillas and dug into the macadam on the other side of his body. The same ugly, lumpy pear stood above his comrades and began whirling a pair of cherries over its stem like a warrior with bolas. Within moments the red orbs were a blur; the pear released them.

Jeffrey, still dragging his son, let out a small breath. He had reached the end of the row. Before stretched the parking lot. Screams of terror mixed with maniacal laughter behind him, but there was no fruit in sight ahead.

The cherries cut through the air. Most people, upon seeing cherries charging through the air level with their head would simply open their mouth and gamely try to catch them. Of course, normally cherries don’t sprout wicked looking barbs like a puffer fish. These did. The pear’s aim had been true. His target would fall.

Jeffrey made the fatal mistake of pausing. He looked down at Eliot. Eliot returned his look with a gleam of wonder in his eyes. Jeffrey envied the innocence that allowed his son weather the situation without fear. He put Eliot in front of his body protectively and set out for the car.

No cherries had ever flown as swiftly, nor had then ever killed someone in such a brutal manner. The barbs, equal in length to their communal stems, whipped through the hair on the back of his head like a shark’s fin through water. Next they entered the skull itself with the same sound as an axe sinking into a hefty log.

Eliot had felt his father push him forward and began running to the car. Sometimes, if the market was not very crowded and they finished early, Jeffrey was in a good enough mood to race him to the car. Such races often commenced with a slight push so that Eliot would have a head start. He took off in delight.