Lunch's Apples

By Amelia Thornton

Runner up of the ORB's HT26 Spring Short Fiction Prize, judged by Kate Greathead.

Lunch’s apples spend most of their lives hidden away in my cabinet. Just like me, in my windowless

living room, on my windowless couch, they must have lots of time to think. Think about the tree they

grew on and how far they fell from it. Think about making the big move to New York City and starting

their job at the supermarket. Think about how nervous they were about making their new life

work—finding someone to take them home while they are still ripe and fresh and not yet soft. Think

about the brief time they spent on the subway and how loud it was. KRRRRk SHHNN HSS. Think about

what happens outside the cabinet and what they will become when they leave there.

The first one must have been surprised when I brought the second one. Hopeless even. Or maybe relieved.

Maybe the first apple felt like the second apple came to take its job and to compete over lunch. Maybe I

didn’t believe in it. Or maybe it was pleased to share the darkness and the thinking. Maybe now they think

together, hypothesize about what happens outside the cabinet and help each other to remember the things

that came before.

I wonder if the apples ever think about me. They don’t know that my living room doesn’t have windows

and that the place I have left them is perfectly acceptable when you consider my apartment as a whole.

(Because the apples have never sat on the shelf in my living room.) If they do think about me, they

probably only know about my disembodied hand that took them from the store, then from my bag, and

then eventually from the cabinet out into the world before lunchtime. They probably don’t even know

about lunchtime! They definitely don’t know that my hand is connected to the rest of me and that the rest

of me sits inside my windowless living room to write.

Today something happened that the apples could have never theorized about: snow day, no lunch on the

go. I took them both out of the cabinet at the same time and revealed to them the kitchen. They must have

been confused why everything was so white. White tiles. White walls. White trees outside with white

buildings and white ground. I prepared to cut them both up and mix them with lemon and cinnamon and

brown sugar. To cover them with oats and with butter. To put them in the oven.

Then came something I hadn’t expected either. The apples had gone bad. They were soft and brown and

their shape was no longer pristine or fresh. I tried still to make them into pie, but they only dried out

further. They were mealy and their appleness, which once made them good apples, was gone. I could tell

the apples were just as disturbed by this as I was. They wondered if it was because of the tree they fell

from or the big move to New York City. They thought maybe it was my fault for leaving them in the

cabinet with no windows.

AMELIA THORNTON is from Atlanta, currently living, working and writing in New York.

Art by Esther Goddard