Better than Flesh — Shelby Dollar
“What the hell is a bob-a-thon?” Karl asked, passing beneath the cross-stitched banner as he followed Janine to join the small crowd surrounding the barn. It was the usual set-up, a keg on ice and thudding music, but then he saw it—a water tank large enough for cattle, metal splotchy with pale lichen and blossoms of rust.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never played,” Janine said. “Look at all of them!”
In the tank, hundreds of blood-red tops skimmed the pitch-black water, air fermented with the sweet and rancid tang of fallen apples. The last thing he wanted to do during Halloween was bob for apples. Karl had hoped for sexy costumes and drunken debauchery, not a children’s game that reminded him of Emma, his toddling daughter who didn’t know he existed. She’s switched to solids, applesauce. His ex-girlfriend had texted him earlier in the week. Don’t forget child support is due. Karl had wanted it that way, but now he wasn’t sure. Maybe he could be more than a check in the mail.
But he'd have to stop drinking and partying. A challenge he refused to tackle. He wanted a distraction. So, when he met Janine with her kind eyes and promises of a phenomenal party, Karl was thrilled.
He thought nothing of riding in Janine’s truck, which stunk of soil and fertilizer, as they bumped along miles of gravel roads and hills combed with sagging apple trees.
But if the night was a bust, he was stuck. Nowhere to go.
He cracked open a beer and relished the hops, praying it’d dull his senses.
Janine fluttered to the women, giggling, and clasping their hands. Like a murmuration of starlings spooling in the air, Janine and the women had mannerisms that threaded them together; twirling their hair, hiding giggles, adding a skip in their step. He’d seen sororities act this way and half-expected them to flash a hand sign or sing a chant.
None came.
Janine tapped the tub with a stick, a hillbilly toast. “Let’s get this party started!” The women banged the metal in response while the men nursed their beers.
Janine waited for them to settle before continuing. “Around here, it’s tradition for only the guys to bob…” she winked at Karl. “But I’ll at least show you how it’s done.”
More shouting and metal clanging erupted over the music as Janine plunged her face into the murky water, blonde hair swirling. The men were getting into it, fingers drumming on the sides while Janine bobbed. She emerged moments later to roaring applause, grinning with the apple between white teeth, her makeup eroding. She tossed her prize back and bowed.
The party simmered in excitement, and Janine kissed Karl’s cheek, ushering him to the rim. Down he dove, the freezing water leaving him breathless as he mouthed, tasting metal with each failed attempt to snatch the buoyant apples that grazed his forehead and cheeks. The warbled cheers spurred him on despite his spitting and sputtering. Now more than ever, he was desperate to prove himself.
His teeth skimmed waxy skin, then anchored with a crunch. Heart pounding, he threw his head back, cinnamon and clove teasing his tongue as sweet nectar crept down his throat. He snapped the thick flesh free and chewed. The taste reminded him of childhood trips to straw-sodden pumpkin patches and his mother’s Dutch apple pies.
He went for another bite, and small, black seeds squirmed like beetles from a clotted core. The world around him began to slide, and warmth bloomed across his skin. Janine brushed crimson juice from his slackening mouth, and another man approached the pool, his date coaxing him on.
“Come,” she whispered in his ear.
Like a tide bending to the moon, Karl followed her deeper into the orchard where the rows were untamed and gnarled branches snagged his clothes and lashed his face. His ankle turned over a wormed apple, and Karl steadied himself against a tree. His hand bumped something solid and slick.
A tennis shoe thudded to the ground.
Something wasn’t right. He should leave, turn back.
But he couldn’t. His body refused.
Janine tilted her head, listening. “Mother?” she said, her breath smoke in the moonlight.
Hair raised on the back of his neck. Nearby a twig snapped. The husky hush of quivering leaves grew louder. Another snap. A tree on his left shifted, branches moving freely. Scraggly and broken limbs unfurled, and a slender torso separated from the trunk. Back hunched under broad antlers, the creature shambled forward, swollen apples swaying from glistening thorns.
Janine kissed its feminine cheek. “Do you approve?”
Slanted pupils bore into him, and a pitiful whine clawed in Karl’s throat. The creature’s flat nose twitched, sampling the smell of him, bloody face inching closer, reeking of iron and acrid sweetness. Karl now knew what had been bobbing for. Hot saliva gathered at the back of his throat. He gagged.
Janine pressed a finger to his lips, a wreath flowering around her temples. “Don’t insult Mother. You’re a part of the family now.”
She smiled, and with a wet drag, his spine dislocated, vertebrae elongating and shins splintering. The ground swallowed his feet, and saplings burst from his veins, setting his nerves on fire. Karl screamed, the sound a gurgle in his sap-ridden throat as his skin thickened into knotted bark.
Janine danced beneath him, caressing his twisted trunk. “Now, you’re better than flesh,” she said, voice a singsong. “You’re a provider. In the summer, your leaves will shade my sisters, and in the fall, your fruit will fill bellies.”
Karl’s budded eyes stared at the sky, his branched fingers intertwining overhead. In the distance he heard the murmurs of women, anxious for their dates to meet Mother. Karl settled into stillness and hoped that one day, Emma would eat an apple from his limbs and know that he loved her.
AUTHOR BIO:
Shelby Dollar lives in Kansas City, Missouri. Her fiction can be found in Magnificent Cowlick Media, Apparition Lit, and Sliced Up Press. Follow her on Twitter @SCDwriter or visit her website at shelbydollar.wordpress.com.
