Short story (tentative title He Shows Up Near the End of Each and Every Paragraph):

The weather was nice for a late summer day. The clouds and the sky blended well together, forming a whitish blue. The air was humid and dense, as usual in this southern small town, especially just after some rain. She decided to take a short walk to the gardens after lunch. She had always loved walking. When she was little, her father used to take her for long walks after dinner; they would walk for two hours, just around the neighborhoods. Father would talk almost the whole time, about history, politics, sciences, philosophy, old family stories... She learned a lot that way. As she grew older, walking started to become a more solitary activity for her, and she liked that very much, too. She walked in many places, for many miles, when she didn’t have to walk or shouldn’t have walked or it was plainly ridiculous that she decided to walk instead of using proper transportation. But she walked, while listening to some music, probably a song on repeat. Leading up to the gardens, the road started to get muddy. The prime time of the gardens had long gone. No more flowers could be found in sight and neither was the smell of compost mixed with fragrances, even the greens had started to wear off. There were several gardens adjacent to each other divided by red brick parapets and white wicket doors. It was a bit cumbersome to keep opening and closing the doors, he told her when they came here for the first time, and also the only time, in the spring. But she knew he enjoyed that walk nonetheless — nice for one time but probably not again because one time was good enough was his reasoning, he didn't have to say, she knew well enough. Opening and closing the doors, she went across a few gardens and sat down on a stone bench. Silence. That was when she realized that she wasn’t listening to any music, and was a bit surprised by it. She then realized that she hadn’t been listening to much music at all these days, because she hadn’t been walking alone for quite a while. And that was when she realized that she was alone this very moment, even though she used to be alone all the time, and was a bit surprised by it.

She just sat there, spoiling the tender earthy breezes by letting them toy with her bang however they wished. This was also something she really liked, just being somewhere, doing nothing. She once read an article about an experiment where people were left alone in an empty room with nothing but an electrifier; the conclusion of the experiment was that so many people could not bear the boredom of having nothing to do to the point that they would willingly electrify themselves to get excited. She always thought that was so ridiculous. At some point, an earthworm caught her sight. It was trying to cross the dirt road to make its way back to the soil. That’s right, she thought, the rain drove out many of them. She started to take a special interest in earthworms not because she loved worms, but due to guilt. As a matter of fact, she once murdered 500 earthworms. It was a stupid, tragic, egregious, atrocious, despicable, typical her-story. Contingent on her shortlived enthusiasm of becoming a zero-waster, she decided to build a small kitchen composter powered by worms — just imagine the perfect bargain to have no more kitchen wastes and tons of high-quality compost for the plants — she was instantly sold. After doing a bit of research, she bought 500 worms online. Perhaps just pause and spend a moment here to process the fact that one could buy live worms online, and they’d be shipped right to your door. Okay. But yeah, that was what she did, despite that there is a word called vermiphobia with the following definition: an abnormal or irrational fear of worms or being infected by worms, and of course, she had it. What happened next was a series of dark comedies. First, she had to ask a friend in the middle of the night to help her dump all the worms into the composter because she couldn’t dare herself after trying for hours. Then she refused to move the composter indoor even during the winter days because she didn’t want to accidentally witness an escaped worm squirming on her floor. By springtime, all the worms had died out except for a massive monster worm almost as thick as her pinky still lurking sinisterly beneath the surface of the soil bedding in the composter, occasionally exposing a segment of its corpulent and slimy body, and sometimes when guilt got the best of her, she'd accuse the monster worm of being a cannibal and hence the true murderer of all the other worms instead of herself; but eventually, the massive monster worm died, too. And then there were none. What was she thinking when she bought the worms?! You are probably wondering, or questioning. Good question, she didn't know. Maybe she thought she could handle it? You know, just like ordering three dishes from that trendy restaurant and thinking you'd be able to finish them all? Something like that? But whatever her reasoning was, committing a worm massacre, she was haunted for life, by worm ghosts. It was sometime after that, on a gloomy rainy day, when she saw a worm tangling up in a puddle, drowning and dying on the concrete road yet still not giving up on the pilgrimage back to the soil which was only several inches away, but the worm just couldn't figure it out. She stopped to watch the movements of the worm, wriggling, twisting, confusing. They always get lost on the concrete roads, she thought. After a while, she walked away, and then came back. She picked up a small tree branch with a crotch, propped up the worm, and gently put it on top of the soil. She then started crying; death had been on her mind that day, but if I could still save a worm by being alive then I’m worth living, she thought, clinging onto the realization as if it were an epiphany bestowed on her and simultaneously not thinking about being capable of killing 500 of them and also having indeed actually done so. From that point on, it became her mission to save lost worms on the concrete roads after rain. She was convinced that if she hadn’t killed those 500 worms, she would have never thought twice when she saw the worm that day, not to mention helping it. It was her redemption. One time, however, she saw another lost worm, and she stopped to help it, but the only thing different was that she wasn’t alone anymore. He waited for her, but was a bit confused and impatient, she was having trouble picking up the worm with a tree branch and felt a lot of pressure for keeping him waiting. He told her afterward that he felt what she did was a bit too much.

She had lost track of time when she decided maybe she should head back. The worm she saw earlier had disappeared, good for you for finding your way back. As she was standing up, she saw a greenish fruit hanging on a plant next to the bench. It was the absolutely only object attached to the plant, as there were no other fruits or even leaves growing on the branches. An unknown bare plant bearing a singular fruit. She gazed at the oval-shaped fruit for a while and felt the urge to take it with her, and so she did. In her hand, the skin of the fruit felt cool and smooth with a thin delicate velvety, almost frost-like coating evasively glistening. She could feel the weight, too, delivering a sense of freshness. She then sniffed the fruit — it smelled like some kind of flower, but with a hint of sweetness, a bit similar to the smell of a pear, but not exactly. The unexpected beautiful elegant scent suddenly made her so happy. She rushed back to her office with the mysterious fruit tightly held in her hand. Eagerly waiting for the end of the day so that they could walk home together so that she could show him the fruit she found, she spent her afternoon hours. On their way home, she took out the fruit from her pocket and showed him. Look, I found this in one of the gardens today, she said and gave him the fruit. He took it and looked at it, a bit baffled. Sniff it! She said. It smells really nice. He was slightly hesitant but still did as she pleaded. Doesn’t it smell nice? She asked, her voice filled with high hopes and anticipation. I think so, he answered, what kind of fruit is this? He inquired, mildly curious. It’s a magic fruit, she answered, it’ll make me live forever if I eat it! Is that so? He smiled and was a bit amused. I’m going to eat it, she claimed in a vacuous tone lacking any hint of whether she meant what she just said or not, perhaps because she wasn't sure if she meant what she just said or not herself. I don’t think it’s safe to eat an unknown fruit, he replied. You are right, she laughed and kept sniffing the fruit on their way back.

She put the fruit on the dining table after getting home. She would still sniff it from time to time when she sat at the table. The scent started to ripen after a few days, the freshness was gradually replaced by a more pronounced sweetness; the color of the skin also started to turn yellow. One day, she noticed that the fruit had been shedding some mysterious brownish crumbs all over the table. She was slightly startled and decided to put the fruit into a measuring cup to prevent the crumbs from sprinkling everywhere. I have never seen another fruit that would shed crumbs, this must be a magic fruit, she was convinced. Days had passed by, and the fruit was still there in the measuring cup. One night, she decided that the fruit had fully ripened and it was time for her to test her theory, to prove that the fruit was magical. She took a knife and carefully sliced open the fruit. The pearl-colored juicy flesh was revealed, and an intense fragrance suddenly filled up the room. She was mesmerized. She held half of the fruit to her lips, and gently licked the edge of the cut surface where a drop of juice was about to escape. It was mellowly sweet. She then took a small bite, the texture of the flesh was soft but not mushy, it was delicious. When she realized, half of the fruit in her hand was already gone. She savored and devoured it at the same time. A few seconds felt like being stretched out to infinity. But she knew something else had happened as well, some deeper change with deeper meaning. Soon she started noticing a titillating sensation plaguing her back, and the shirt she was wearing started to become tight as if something underneath it was protruding outward. She went to the bathroom mirror. Lifting up her shirt, she saw a pair of tiny wings poking out of her back, growing in size bit by bit steadily like a larghetto, with fluffy white feathers, not so much to her taste, black would have been better, more devilish and stylish, and matches with my hair color. With a pair of scissors, she cut two slits on the back of her shirt from which she pulled out the developing wings. And then she waited. After a long spell, it seemed that the growth of the wings had been consummated. She then slowly dragged herself along with her now enormous wings to the balcony and slid the door open. It was around dawn, she could see some purply orange colors diverging on the edge of the sky. The air was chilly. She tried to flail her wings, but they were very hefty. She tried again, and again, and again. Each time she felt the force of levitation generated by the movement of the previous attempt mounting to the current one. Something was building up, something about to culminate, about to overflow, about to explode. She closed her eyes. It then came the moment of the leap of faith, and she found herself in the sky, flying towards or flying away, she didn’t know. What she also didn’t know was whether he would eat the other half of the fruit left on the dining table when he woke up in the morning and found her gone, and that in another universe far far far infinitely far away, the fruit stopped ripening one day and started rotting instead. There was another girl just like her living in that universe and another guy just like him. He came to ask her to get rid of the fruit because the skin was all dark and mold was collecting. She felt sad to just throw it away, so she decided to cut it open just to see what it was like inside. But the inside was corrupted by mold as well. There was only a splinter of flesh near the skin still left intact, so she cut that part off and threw away the remaining. She put the tiny chunk of the yet-to-rot flesh again on the dining table. She then forgot about it, and one day she realized that it was no longer on the table, and she couldn’t remember when was the last time she saw it.

*This short story will be under major revisions. It belongs to a much longer novel.