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I wrote this story based on the first anthology Stephen King gathered called “Night Shift”. Stephen King wrote and published one story in particular that gave me this idea. It was “Grey Matter”. The idea of a man transforming into something so different and horrible was madly attractive to me. In my case, and after being a person who loves apples, it occurred to me that I could do something that Stephen King would like to read if I had the chance to send him the story. I am sure that this story would become part of his collection. Stephen King mentioned Valencia’s oranges and I, at the early age of thirteen, wrote something about some special apples.
Tom loved his fruit trees, especially the apple trees when the blossomed in spring. He loved his apples and every day, he ate two apples. The apples were green, acid and huge. One day, Tom is more tired than usual. It is spring and he watches the apple trees blossoming in his land right in front of his bedroom’s window. The flowers opened and Tom is getting more tired as time goes on and he feels his body joints getting more rigid. The flowers start to show the balls that will turn into big apples, but for that, summer must past. Tom surrenders himself and goes into bed with great weakness. He lives alone and he has never visited a doctor, and he wouldn’t start now. He is stubborn. The apples grow up and he, lying on his bed, realizes how his body is now completely rigid. But he can see his apple trees through his window. The first roots start to appear on his nails. After that, they extend to his legs and arms. He becomes wrinkle, rigid; the apples have finished their life. Now is time to pick them up. The apples that sprouted from him too.
1
Mister Tom loved his fruit trees, especially the apple trees ad he picked up the harvest between September and October, when the rain and the endless sunrays were more present than ever. But the taste of a bite of an apple was enough to leave him satisfied and happy. The smell that the acid exuded was simply a mystic experience. Tom loved apples and he didn’t miss his two apples a day. One in the morning and one at night. They were green with an unusual glow and very smooth. Completely smooth. He played with them between his long fingers. But this year’s harvest brought something more than the good acid taste and smell of the apple. This year, Tom would wish he didn’t love the apple trees in his land so deeply. Or maybe he wouldn’t.
Everything happened the next spring, when the flowers of his apple trees started to blossom.
2
Last season, Tom had eaten a large quantity of apples and he thought they were the tastiest of them all. More acid and more scented. Tome took special care of his apple trees (around twelve trees), in his land. He hated red apples. He wanted green apples. There are several kinds of apples but for him, the best ones were his. And he told this with a strong believe. He told this to the naked walls of his house, since he lived alone, but he had his apple trees that watched in every season of the year. He was fascinated to observe how they were covered by snow in the winter, how the flowers blossomed in spring and how in summer, the apples grew without stopping and finally, in the fall, he could harvest them.
But this new season, something changed in his life. The apple trees were preparing to present him with flowers in the spring, surrounded by bees doing their job. And one morning, he felt something in his body. He just felt tired. He felt a little weak. He thought at first, that it was due to flu, but after a couple of hours, he felt better again. And that was it.
3
Several days after, when the cocoons opened and reflected all its beauty under the warm spring sun, it happened again. Tom was looking through his window leaning his elbows on the edge, watching the apple tree show, and he felt weak, tired. His face became aching and he frowned at the same time he closed his eyes. A buzz sounded in his ears and he felt dizzy. After that, the tiredness. The exhaustion. He stepped away from the window, barely supporting himself, and walked slowly towards his bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and sighed deeply. Tom was over fifty years old but under a hundred. His age wasn’t the reason of the fatigue. Plus, he wasn’t doing anything! He just watched the trees and breathed with the singing of the birds. And, on the upper part of the window, outside, the sun kept shining and the flowers continued showing its beauty. Inside, Tom was breathing heavily. This time, the effect lasted four hours at least, in which he ended up sleeping, lying on his bed, without moving, with his dirty shoes on, staining the sheets.
When he opened his eyes, the sun had placed itself between two mountains and seemed it chose that place specifically to hide, while it descended slowly in a fusion of yellow and red colors that decorated the sunset. Tom was better now, but he complained anyway. He got up and went to the kitchen, on the ground floor, to prepare dinner for him.
That night, he dreamed with the sun, the flowers and the apple trees.
4
On the next day, Tom woke up without the tiredness but he could hear his knee joints crack as he stood up. It didn’t hurt but Tom was surprised by the sound. It wasn’t something to worry about, he thought, and he walked toward the window to breathe some fresh air, to inhale the soft morning air combined with the smell of the apple trees. He watched the bees flying around the flowers, busy on their job before winter came to kill them all. That was life and he sighed deeply, but the thing got worse pretty soon.
5
A week later, another wave of tiredness hit him but this time, his joints cracked loudly and started to hurt. Tom frowned, but didn’t pay more attention to the situation. However, he had to sit down on the edge of the bed constantly. A bed with wrinkled sheets and the headboard on the floor. And the window remained open to let the sunrays and the smell of the apple trees enter. And all of a sudden, he stopped eating too. But he continued to love the apple trees and waited its produce. He would eat them two at the time this year, that way, he would eliminate the tiredness along with the strange rigidness. And the spring left some vague rain and the days went on. And Tom was getting more tired and dreamed more.
6
He dreamed he flew around the apple trees and watched a bunch of flowers blossom surprisingly beautiful, and then, this became apples. Some big, shining, green apples. They were acid just how he liked them but suddenly, everything became dark and he fell to the floor, lower and lower, in an infinite well and the apples turned into a dark red. And then, he woke up covered in sweat and more tired. Even more.
7
July arrived and with it, an extreme heat and Tom opened all the windows in his house. The flowers had turned into tiny green balls. Some bees got closer, pollinating the grass and they left. Then, some wasps came, too late. And the apple trees remained ready to give its produce. Uncle Tom’s apples, as a grandmother would say counting the story to his grandchildren under the heat of the chimney.
And Tom was so tired that he had to lie down on the bed for several hours, and the mattress started to sink in from the middle. His joints were a little more rigid than last month and hurt even more, and he noticed that one of his finger nails was growing inn a weird way. It looked like if a brown and twisted wood splinter had dug into the corner of his nail. Tom ripped it off and blood came out. Only one insignificant drop that stained his finger, but that screamed that it was a proper wound. Tom didn’t care about this and he thought that maybe, he had stuck that yesterday or the day before, when he stepped clumsily into the sand of his land. He was tired. Even more.
But even when he was lying on his bedroom bed, he could still watch the apples grow and grow.
8
And August arrived and the heat was even more suffocating. Tom, without a shirt and all sweaty, remained lying on his bed, almost immobile. It had been more than a week without moving and being old and lonely, he didn’t have a wife to call the doctor. He didn’t even have neighbors. His weird personality made him antisocial. So, he was alone. Him and his apple trees that now showed small green apples almost done, the size of a plum. Despite the tiredness and re rigidness, Tom smiled widely when he saw his apple trees through his open window that was aligned to see the trees perfectly from his new position. And Tom started to pee himself. He couldn’t get up and the smell of the apple trees flooded the air in his room. And from his toe nails, twisted wooden splinters started to grow, showing themselves from under the nails.
9
And September arrived, a month where the produce could be recollected. Big, heavy, green apples glowing more and more with the sun of the summer, but it kept a relative moist in the environment, creating a new sticky weather. By mid September, the apples were ready, but October was the ideal month to collect them. They were acid.
Tom, with a stinky and yellow stain on the sheets, was proof of the time lapse. He had to make his natural necessities right there. His body showed his sharp bones through his tense and dry skin. His face had lost all sense of expression and his eyes were yellow. There were roots on his feet! Tom breathed heavily but inhaled strongly the smell of the apple trees, which now were citric and acid. He felt sad he couldn’t get up and watch them standing up from the window. His knees were completely still and his thighs had lost all his muscles, showing at the same time some big, dark and puffy veins. Like some complex climbing plant with roots at the end. A yellow stain covered his briefs and another brown stain was right under his ass. He had sores all over his back and something sharp was pocking him. It felt like finger nails, or even worse, more roots!
10
By mid September, the root appeared in his hands and on his back. He knew it but couldn’t do anything, except that he stopped peeing and pooping himself. He just stopped but his bones looked like branches under his skin. He had roots on his teeth too. And the smell of apple trees continued around him. He couldn’t inhale this pleasant smell with the same intensity as before. He wasn’t hungry.
11
The first week of October, the roots on his feet had tangled on the bed’s edge and legs. His legs were now apple trunks and the air in the room smelled like apple trees.
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12
The next week, the root from his hands had spread to both sides of the bed. And they were strongly tangled to the posts of the bed. Now, the mattress dry but yellow, was less sunk. More roots had come out of his legs and these remained on the wrinkle sheets. And the first heavy rains started. Tom could only move his eyes and watched two or three heavy storms that ripped apart the apples from the trees. Tom felt sorry for that and couldn’t think of the roots and everything that was happening to him. Actually, he never thought of anything else but the apples.
And the days wet by October, to the arrived of the fall.
13
When fall arrives, Tom’s neck was stiff as the trunk of a tree. He couldn’t open his mouth and he didn’t need too anymore. It remained open forming a stretched O. the roots that came out of his teeth has spread to the headboard of the bed. Tom’s eyes didn’t move. He didn’t feel pain or could do his necessities. He didn’t was hungry or thirsty. And the smell of apples continued floating on the air. However, he couldn’t smell anymore. He had leaves.
14
Early November, Tom wasn’t Tom anymore. He was a tree on the bed, covering it with his long roots and twisted branches. Without experiencing the flowers, the wasps and the bees. Tom, or whatever he was now, started to grow little apples. The sun set earlier every day, but the roots and the apples grew quickly. Tom, or whatever he was now, didn’t think. He was just there, immobile, but growing and filling the room with a strong smell of acid apples. His eyes had remained open and it probably was the only human thing left in him.
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15
By mid November, the apples had grown completely and outside his room, Tom’s apple trees, on his grove, showed a different picture. The trees didn’t have leaves anymore, neither green, juicy apples. No one had harvested them and they all lay on the ground, dead and wrinkled, covered in mud. Some of them were rotten and big rats with small teeth ate them without rest. The window was still open.
And Tom, or the new apple tree, with fresh fruit was inside. But no one harvested the apples.
16
In December, Tom’s apples had fallen from his branches. The longest roots spread on the room’s floor and narrow walls searching for nutrients. But couldn’t find them, not this time, since Tom wasn’t Tom any longer and couldn’t feed himself. The apples started to rotten on the floor, but the air continued to smell like apples. Tom who, one day, was someone happy with his apple trees. Now, he had died and soon, the roots, the branches, the apples would become rotten and dry. This situation continued during the winter, but then, spring came and something happened.
17
The sun shone like a giant fire torch suspended on the blue sky. The sunrays entered through the window and licked Tom’s remains. Some days after, a dry sound marked the start of a new stage. The roots had caught a bunch of rats the size of cats that sought for shelter in the room. The rats were caught by something or someone, in the fight against death.
By mid spring, a bee came in through the window, buzzing like a little helicopter and got near to one of the flowers. The flower was located on the surface of the right eye that remained glassy and white but immobile. The bee took out its sting and did his job.
A few weeks later, Tom craved for more apples.