Forbidden Fruit

Chapter One: Red Crystal Ball

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The tree was old. The leaves were a dry brown-green, and the branches were skinny and weak. Those branches hung down in a steep curve, weighted down by heavy, softball-sized orbs. In the moon and shadows the branches looked like the skeletal spines of old men congragated together above the cherry-red orbs, as if protecting them- as if they were something precious to them.
Crystal balls Ronny thought, they're looking into the future with their crystal balls...

Ronald Duely III had an imagination beyond that of anyone at his old school, and far beyond that of anyone at his new, MalcolmValley High. Ronny was only 14, only a freshmeat, but he had a mind with no equal. Not booksmarts- common sense and imagination are much harder to obtain.

At late hours like these, his imagination did run wild. He stepped closer and saw not old men or warlocks above the red crystal balls, but a tree. A tree with ripe red fruit hanging on it. He knew it was a tree, but for a second he swore it wasn't.

Ronny reached out for one of those fruits, and as if waiting for the exact right moment, fell as his fingertip touched the surface. He hesitated, he thought that maybe all of the other orbs would fall also. They did not. He bent down and grabbed the fruit, it felt just as he expected- hard and cold.

Upon holding and examining the orb he recognized what it was. It was a pomegranate. His mother loved them, she had later eaten so many of them she never wanted to have another again.

But how did one go about eating one of these? He held it to his mouth and bit quickly and hard, feeling like a fool afterward, all he got was a mouthful of sharp pain.

Ronny went back into the house, he had gone out into the two acres of newly inherited land because he feared the inside of the new home. It was large and strange, creeks and moans all about the structure. His family had moved in only a week earlier. Tomorrow he would go to school, his new school in Malcolm Valley, the school where he had yet to make any friends. His friends were an hour and a half southwest, in Berivale, California.

Ronny didn't understand why they moved in, the original plan was to sell the hell hole after Grandma passed (Grandpa died ten years earlier). Dad hated the place.

I was born in that house, I am NOT going to die there! Dad had said.

Ronny's mother had another idea.

I want to own a home, it's a beautiful house and we'll never get a chance like this again! Houses are so expensive these days, and if we sell it, what good will it do? It'll never be enough, we could just live in it, it needs some fixing up, but we can do it. I WANT that house!

His father responded in just the way he expected.

No way in hell, no fucking way in hell!

Ronny started walking back, and walking became running (an overactive imagination often made children run from things that weren't there), when he got to the sliding glass door he couldn't help but think: I guess there is a way in hell.

He opened the door slowly, almost painfully slow, trying hard not to make a single sound (God forbid his parents wake at the ungodly hour of 1am).

The door opened smoothly, closed even smoother. The locking, however, the click of the lock echoed all around the old home.

At first Ronny expected his parents to be right behind him, but they weren't. The house remained quiet and dead long after the click had passed.

Ronny tip-toed his way up the spiral staircase his mother loved so much, elegant she called it. To Ronny, it looked like a crazed ax killed could be at the top, it squeaked that antique staircase horror movie squeak. Just an old haunted house, that's what Ronny expected.

An old, haunted house.

Ronny reached the top of the stairs and walked to the end of the hall, to his new bedroom. Most of his stuff was still boxed up, only the things he needed most, like (video games, comics, mini-fridge full of RC Cola, Playboy under the mattress) his pocket knife. After much study of the fruit, he finally stabbed it deep with his knife. Red

blood

juice squirted at his face and dripped down his fingers. Ronny twisted that knife, breaking the fruit in half.

Ronny hadn't seen many of these, last time he did he was just a kid (three whole years ago), but it looked rather familiar. White spongy flesh dotted in red juicy kernels. It was like an inverted, circular ear of corn.

A HEAD of corn. Nyuck nyuck nyuck thought Ronny. Smiling at his own less-than-clever joke.

He bit in recklessly. It was sour to him, sour and bitter. He gagged and coughed. Silence, he expected his parents to have heard. After a safe amount of time he spat out the mouthful and took the fruit to his mini-fridge. Maybe someone at school would like it, trade it for a brownie or Rice Krispy.

He flicked off the lights and lay in bed, he slept well until 6:02am. He half-woke in a daze and looked around the blur of his room with nearly opened eyes, but then they opened wide.

The deep dark orange of the rising west coast sun glowed through his curtains. He was terrified, and it was not his imagination, even he couldn't imagine something as randomly odd and twisted as what he saw.

Many nooses hung from the ceiling of his room, two dozen at the least. Each wrapped firmly around an adult head-sized bulk, two eye holes cut in the sheet of each head were completely dark, despite the sun's glow behind them. The rest of the sheet hung loose below the noose, but not low enough to touch the ground. The sheet appeared empty below the head so of course, no feet hung below. They looked like a child's idea of a ghost. Your typical comedy skit Sheet Ghost, but this was no SNL skit. Just as Ronny concluded that the terrible sheets were empty, a single one of the sheets began to vibrate, then shake violently. The other sheets started to disappear behind a thick black smoke, which came from the shaking sheet. The Ghost Sheet was burning, but the fire did not burn anything else. Ronny half expected a thundering voice to echo from the sheet, but out thundered a scream from his own mouth instead. Scream, gagging and coughing out blood. Ronny's blue veins began to throb and bulge under his pale white skin.

Then there was nothing but the sunny orange glow. Ronny lay in his bed and that was all he could do. He opened his mouth to attempt a scream, but no sound dared escape him. He continued wide-eyes, knowing it was a dream or drama of his mind, but the deeper thought knew it was something real he saw, more real than he wanted to know. He remained in this state until the time-set radio alarm clicked on at 7am, tuned onto the "Best Rock of the 90's", one song ended and another began. It was Kurt Cobain claiming that she "eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak."

At 7:06, Ronny stood and slowly fumbled through his closet for clothes, preparing for his morning shower.