Apples - Chapter One

Apples - Chapter One

1.

                I was walking through the shady forest.  It had been a couple days since I had last eaten.  This particular stretch of the forest was barren with fruit – and crawling with dangerous predators.  I had to travel slowly and keep my wits about me.  I would at times take breaks from my walking and hide in the shadows.

I was a scavenger – I did not enjoy taking the risk of hunting game.  I did not fashion hunting weapons of any kind.  I preferred to travel as a nomad, collecting low hanging fruit such as berries.  Occasionally I would find a corpse of a small animal, perhaps a rodent or a bunny and eat its meat raw.  On the rare occasions when I would enjoy companionship, I always chose friends and women who could cook meat.  In return, I would provide sexual favors to the women and comic relief for male companions.  But in the end, my relations did not have permanence.

I saw light emerging some many meters in the distance.  I must have been coming to a clearing in the forest.  There may be less predators outside of the forest, I thought, and perhaps I will find the corpse of a mouse to pick at.

When I came to the end of the forest, I noticed a wooden sign.  Red paint upon the sign declared:

Apples 4 Sale.

Underneath the words there was a painted red arrow pointing east.  I walked many miles that way and finally came to a mountainside.  Engraved in the mountainside was a wide gully.  It appeared to extend several miles up the mountain.  I could see a large and very tall apple tree rising up, out and above the gully's crest.  I entered the pass and eventually arrived at the tree.  About 50 yards away, embedded in the gully's wall was a cave.  Several pairs of eyes peered outward at me from the darkness.  The creatures – whatever they were – began whispering among themselves.  I apparently had come to what appeared to be some sort of primitive society.

                Finally, a tiny hobbit of a woman ran out of the cave toward the tree.  She stopped at the base of the trunk and shouted up into the thick branches, “Apples!”

                The leaves began to stir as if a great breeze had picked up, and a thunderous thudding could be heard from something hitting the bark of the tree.

                Eventually, a foot came into view, down and below the lowest branches and leaves.  The man soon appeared in his full form to me, all seven feet, two inches of him.  He was a giant.

                He smiled at me and said, “I see we have a guest.  Welcome.”

                I wasn’t sure what to say.  His face was so welcoming, yet his size was alarming.  Soon, many other hobbit women began to emerge from the cave.  The initial women cocked their heads to one side as they looked at me, but they said nothing.  When all the hobbit women, some thirty in all, had ventured out of the cave to look at me, they began to speak among themselves in low whispers.  They would nod their heads at each other and giggle and at times you could make out their favorite word being spoken in excited whispers:

                “Apples!”

                Two male creatures then appeared.  They were the last to leave the cave.  They were much smaller than the giant man from the tree.  They were slightly smaller than me, but they were larger than the women.  They rubbed the backs of their necks nervously.

                One lonely woman came toward me slowly.  She was finally about two feet away from me.  She only came up to my waist.  She looked up at me with her giant elf eyes and cocked her head to one side.

                In a questioning tone, she asked, “Apples?”

                Then she bore her jagged, triangular teeth at me.  I jumped back in fear.  They were carnivores.

                The giant man laughed at me and said calmly, “Don’t worry.  That’s just Patrice’s smile.  Calm down now, Patrice.”

                Patrice ran to the giant man and hugged his shin and massaged his ankles.  She purred like a cat.  Then she looked up and said to him lovingly, “He get the apples from the high branches of the tall tree.”

                “So they eat apples as well as meat?” I asked.

                “Yes, my friend,” the giant said.  “The women have molars in the back of their mouths and sharp daggers in the front.  The men only have molars and incisors.    So our species does not require much meat.  We mainly eat apples.”

                “I see,” I said.

                “Run along, Patrice,” the giant told the hobbit woman.  She ran back to the rest of the women.  The two beta males looked on.  The giant looked over at them for a few moments and seemed to be considering them.  One of the two men looked down at his toes, while the other looked away, stoic.  Then the giant looked back to me and said, “Come with me.  Can you climb?”

                “Yeah, kind of,” I said.  “I mean honestly though, I’d rather not.  I might fall.”

                “Yes,” the giant said.  “You might.”

                “Women,” he addressed them.  Then he pointed at me, cocked his enormous skull to one side and said in a high pitched, questioning tone, “Apples?”

                The women all bared their daggers.  A couple of them took a few steps toward me.

                “I see,” I said.  “I guess I’ll follow you up the tree.”

                “Good,” the giant said, and smiled warmly once more.  “I was hoping you’d see reason.  Now you will enjoy the privilege of seeing what the world looks like from the high branches of the tall tree.  You will see the world for what it truly looks like.”

                The climb was difficult, and I did almost fall.  But I made it up to the highest branches.  There was a fortress erected among the leaves.  Its floor was made of wood, and the wood had been nailed to the bigger, trunk-like branches.

                “Nice place you got here,” I said as we both sat cross-legged upon his floor.

                “Thank you,” the giant said.  “You see, when I first arrived here there was a much smaller tree.  The Manboys – I’m sure you noticed them – they were able to climb the other tree easily and throw apples down to the females.  I cut down the small tree and carried pieces of it up into the tall tree and built my home.  That was how I established my kingdom.”

                “Oh,” I said.  “That’s kind of a dick move.”

                He said nothing.  If he was going to hold me hostage and threaten to have the hobbit women eat me, I was going to fuck with him at least a little bit.

                I looked out from the tree house into the rest of the tree.  There were many apples.  I reached off the edge and picked one.  I took a couple bites and munched with my mouth slightly open.

                Then I said to the giant, “Why did you really ask me to come up here?”

                “Ah,” the giant started, and looked down.  “I have a business proposal for you.”

                “Okay,” I said and took another bite.

                “I’ve taken note of the length of your strides.  You seem to have longer legs than the two Manboys.  You seem reasonably able to perform simple, repetitive tasks.  I’ve estimated that you could do somewhere around 75% of the work the two Manboys are, currently.”

                “So, more apples?” I asked.

                “I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea.”

                “What do you have in mind, then?”

                “We have guests here from time to time, and I often feed them to the females, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

                “Ok.”

                “I’d like to feed the Manboys to the women,” the giant said.  “I’ve grown tired of them.  They used to amuse me in my youth, but now, as I get older, they tend to bore me.  I need something new in my life.  And I think you can help my kingdom run more smoothly.  Tell you what.  You do 75% of what the Manboys do.  With only one other man besides me in the community, the women won’t physically be able to eat you.  They need someone to throw them the apples, and you see - I don’t have to.  And the women understand that.  If they were to eat you under those circumstances, with the two Manboys already dead, the women would have to do all the work.  So they will be forced to do the remaining 25% of the apple catching and collecting after my plan goes into effect.  Apple catching is very simple, you see.  I throw the apples down from the high branches of the tall tree, and the Manboys catch the majority of them and put them in baskets.  The ones that drop and hit the ground are to be inspected and any apple that has not become applesauce will be placed in the baskets.  The women can do the inspecting of the fallen apples.  That will be their job now.  Can you catch?  Think fast.”

                An apple came flying toward my head, and instinctively I reached up and grabbed the fruit right out of the air.

                “Very good,” the giant said.

                “Apples,” I heard a voice call up from beneath the branches and leaves.

                The giant laughed a hearty laugh and said to me, “The women are becoming impatient.”

                “Apples,” another voice cried.  Their laughter echoed up toward me.

                “They’re wondering if they get to eat meat today,” the giant said, amused.

                “Are they?” I nervously whispered.

                “Not you, of course.  Come.  Follow me down the tree and I will inform the women that they are allowed to eat one of the Manboys.  I still haven’t decided which one should die first, but the second will be eaten tomorrow.  Just let me do all of the talking.  Don’t say a word.  Do you understand?”

                I nodded.  I was fucked.