By way of explanation: I am easily bored. This usually leads to me getting into trouble in real life. In my writing, however, I can explore avenues of storytelling and the only fallout from that is the eye-rolling exhaustion experienced by my readership (there’s so few of you that I’m not overly bothered by that). This current experiment is based on a simple story: a man on a breadline makes a daily habit of handing one particular woman his orange. The goal is to see how weird I can make the retelling of the story each week. Simple, right?
(Discovered in the ruins of the city’s mouth. Inkless. Written in reverse pressure on static. The text reads as follows…)
I. ON THE LINE
Line is not queue.
Line is vein.
Vein is conduit.
You stand not to eat.
You stand to be sorted.
Sorted by presence, sorted by glitch.
Sorted by HIM.
He does not arrive.
He is always-already.
His shape is a suggestion—
Sometimes a man,
Sometimes a series of coat-hooks learning sorrow.
Age: Δ.
Smell: Salt, rust, pulp.
II. ON THE GIFT
He gives.
Not out of mercy.
Not out of motive.
He must give, because the giving is what keeps the recursion folded.
The gift is not an orange.
It is a wound in fruit-shape.
A loop of forgotten sunlight.
A punchline left behind by extinct gods.
He peels it from his skin.
From behind his ear.
From the meat beneath thought.
It hisses when born.
Warm. Heavy. Singing.
III. ON THE RECEIVER
The She does not speak.
The She does not consume.
The She becomes.
Some say she is many.
Others say she is one, refracted.
Some call her “Host.”
Some call her “Egg.”
The text names her:
RECEPTΩR
She accepts. Always.
The orange passes.
So does the burden.
IV. ON THE SEVENTY-FOURTH
The 74th cycle is collapse.
The line buckles.
The man is an absence that howls inward.
The orange is a lie again.
Cold. Dull. Regulatory.
She holds it like betrayal.
She carries them. One. Two. Seven.
They fester in her satchel.
They breed.
Merge. Molt. Moan.
Form a new being:
THE FRUIT THAT BEATS
V. ON THE ORCHARD
She is shown. Not dreams.
Not hallucination.
Instruction.
Step 1: Find flesh.
Step 2: Dig into time.
Step 3: Plant the wound.
Step 4: Wait for the nerve-trees to flower.
The Orchard is pre-language.
Its soil remembers your ancestors.
Its Gardener is [REDACTED].
He trims probability with shears of glass.
His face is composed of every orange ever not eaten.
VI. ON THE NEW FUNCTION
The She is no longer She.
She is Seedling.
Fruit-bearer.
Actuator of the Peel.
She returns.
Finds a boy made of Maybe.
Reaches into her interface.
Extracts a peel-loop.
It grows in her hand.
It is offered.
The boy accepts.
The orange takes root.
He does not say thank you.
She does not wait for one.
VII. ON YOU
You are reading this.
So the infection has already begun.
Check your pocket.
Something warm waits.
End of fragment. Additional pages corrupted by light.
To. Be. Transmogrified.
MADD FICTIONAL 