FRANKENFRUIT

10th Flash-Style Flash Fiction Battle submission

Today I’m participating in the 10th Flash-Style Flash Fiction Battle against Sandolore Sykes hosted by Andrew Robert Colom

10th Flash-Style Flash Fiction Battle

The writing prompt is: “neighbours tree hanging over your fence. strange fruit start growing off it. missing cats.”

Here’s what I came up with:

FRANKENFRUIT

I don’t keep pets in the house for the same reason I don’t keep a man in the house; they’re dirty creatures. Still, I’m known as the neighbourhood cat lady. I consider myself more a community centre for kitties. My front yard’s a place for felines to feed and frolic and frenzy.

My neighbour Jimmy is known for finagling bits and pieces he finds at his factory job into industrial works of art. Every week he installs a new addition to the cat gymnasium in my front yard — compelling the kids to conjure us TikTok fame.

His true passion tho is his garden in the back. A mad scientist kind of passion that’s produced more dangling mixed breed fruits than the trees of Tennessee. I rarely turned down a plump PLUMANGO.

A few months ago, he tore up his PASHAPP tree in the middle of the night like a mad man in a fever dream. I tried calling out to him from the kitchen window, but he wouldn’t look up from his feral fertilization of a suspicious sapling glowing in the moonlight. I thought, oh brother, here he goes with that radioactive shit.

Truthfully, I forgot all about it till last week when the tree decided to grow all the way up and over my fence. She was robust and rotund with her round ripe radish-red cantaloupe-curved fruit. The heft had her leaning over my fence like big breasts on a desk. They looked sumptuous but smelled like South Pacific salmon.

This drove all the kitties to the yard. ALL the kitties. Day and night — a constant kitty bum rush for my backyard to devour all the exposed fruit from the tree that pulsated a glow. They ignored the food I put out for them like a white lady’s potato salad at the cookout, or mac & cheese made by that Aunty that can’t cook. I didn’t mind much because they ate that shit CLEAN, so my yard stayed pristine.

But then they started disappearing.

Mr Wiggles, Silly Samford, Princess Penelope, Bo Cankles — the pillars of my kitty community vanished or vacated? After a week without their presence I started panicking and pressed Jimmy for answers about his Frankenstein fruit. The guilt from not reporting him sooner was fermenting in my gut.

Jimmy refused to tell me what the tree was made of. He mumbled and grumbled some things in a rage; then in a craze, he tore down the jungle gym art installation in my front yard. Screaming and crying, I continued to ask him about the tree. He ran into his house and exploded out of his backyard with a rip of his chainsaw.

I dashed upstairs into the safety of my room to watch Jimmy decapitate the head off the tree. My rage turned into horror as the tree top toppled into my yard. I could now clearly see the high school football field again — all 120 yards covered with kitty corpses.

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