There are bugs in the watermelon. They’re supposed to be bugless but they always have the little white maggot bugs and sometimes, like today, they have the black scarab weevil bugs even though they’re supposed to be bugless. I never know if I should remove the bugs or not. Nobody else seems to mind them but it bothers me to label containers “bugless watermelon” when they clearly contain watermelon that contain bugs. We’re not supposed to deviate from the label’s ingredient list. But if I took the time to meticulously pull each bug out, the others would look at me weird, probably.
I don’t want them to look at me, so I just ignore the bugs like they do.
It’s Monday which means new knives. The knife guy always comes on Monday to swap the old dull knives with new, sharp knives. The feeling of switching from a dull knife to a sharp knife while cutting fruit is unlike anything else—it’s euphoric. I won’t have to whack the watermelon, like I’m taking an ax to wood, to break through the rind. I’ll just glide right through it with my new sharp knife.
I wish every day was Monday so my knife was always sharp. I feel powerful when I wield a sharp knife. Like if anyone comes at me, I can just stab them in the eye before they even see it coming.
Sometimes I like to imagine the fruit is some small scampering thing instead of a fruit. Blood pooling on the cutting board instead of juice. Nobody else thinks about that though, and would look at me weird, probably, if they knew I think about it. Sometimes I wish I worked in the meat cutting factory because they probably have to think about that sometimes. But the meat cutting factory isn’t hiring so I just continue cutting fruit.
I’m good at it. Skinning the various fruits. Scalping the little, hairy kiwis. Scraping the toothy guts from the cantaloupes. Snapping the crowns of pineapples, crunching through their cores. I think I’m better at it than all the others. More deliberate. I care about the fruit that I cut. You can taste the difference between my fruit and the others’ fruit, probably. They don’t care the way I care. I put a piece of me into every chunk of fruit I cut and you can taste it.
After the knife guy leaves, there’s an announcement over the loud speaker for a meeting in five minutes. The meetings are always voluntary so I never go. I just want to cut my fruit. All of the others go. I have the feeling that the meetings are a ruse. That there is no meeting. That they all go and watch me on the camera and laugh at me. I could try going to a meeting just to see for sure. But if they are all watching me on the camera and laughing at me, I wouldn’t want to interrupt. It would be really uncomfortable for me and for everyone, probably, if we all sit down to look at the video screen and see that I’m not on it and am in fact sitting among them waiting to laugh at myself.
They’d probably all look at me weird then.
So I never go to the meetings.
I’m cutting watermelon while they’re all at the meeting. It’s late in the season and most of the melons are rotten. Their sickly sweet scent mixes with my gourmand perfume and it makes me want to vomit. I think I should have worn a fragrance more complementary to the smell of rotting fruit. I’ll wear a different perfume tomorrow. An earthy scent, so it will smell like autumn, like dirt and leaves and musk and decay.
A chunk falls to the ground and splatters everywhere. Its pattern resembles the high impact blood spatter of a head getting bashed with a hammer. I think if they sprayed luminol in this room it would light up like a starry night. No length of cloth could ever wipe clean all the blood of all the fruits that have died a death in this room.
When I’m done with the watermelon, I cut papaya. Papaya is fun because it’s always slimy and slippery like disemboweled viscera. The others come back from the meeting as I’m shoveling papaya seeds into a vinyl glove I intend to pocket and take home. One of them notices and asks what I’m doing. They have a weird look on their face. I can’t tell them that I’m going to pile them on top of a crostini spread with crème fraîche and take pictures of it which I’ll later post online with the caption: caviar or papaya seeds? I do this once a week. Sometimes I put them on crackers or just set them in a small dish or put them back into the papaya. Always with the same caption. The answer is always papaya seeds because I can’t afford caviar.
But I can’t tell them that or they’ll look at me. Even weirder than they’re looking at me now. Before I can conjure some excuse, Boss interrupts to make an announcement. I deflate with the relief that I won’t have to answer their question anymore. I think I’ll have to be more discreet gathering papaya seeds from now on.
Boss says there’s a new fruit. Unlike any other fruit. A box just came in today. Boss opens the box and we all crane our necks to get our first glimpse of the new fruit. I immediately look up to check the others’ reactions before giving my own. They all look awed. I try to make the same expression but I’m a little confused because the new fruit does not look like a fruit at all. It looks like a human hand.
I’m staring at a box filled with human hands and thinking the others must not be seeing the same thing as me.
Boss holds up one of the hands and waves it at us. Everyone laughs, so I do too. We’re instructed to simply cut it into chunks and package them like we do all the other fruits. I wonder if we should skin it first but I don’t ask because I don’t want to be looked at if it’s the wrong question. I just take my time and watch what the others do. They cut right through without skinning so I do the same.
It’s softer than I expected. There’s no core inside. No seeds or strings. Just flesh and juice. Somebody samples a piece and says it’s the sweetest, juiciest fruit they’ve ever tasted. This gets everybody going and they all start sampling the hand-shaped fruit and exclaiming how good it is. They keep eating it with more and more haste. They feast. They become savages, salivating and gnawing on knuckles. I try not to watch because it feels wrong. Like I’m peeping through a window and witnessing something I shouldn’t be. Soon all that is left of the fruit are the chunks that I cut, a total of 10 containers, which sell immediately.
Weeks pass and we cut more hands than any other fruit. Eventually we don’t cut any fruit but hands. Customers rave about them. Their hunger is primal. Ancestral. I can see it in their eyes. They’re crazed. They need the juice of the hands like they need blood in their veins. If this were the age of the gods, they would offer their first born child for just a nibble.
I begin to feel less joy in cutting my fruit. I’m not really worried about the others looking at me weird anymore because they never look. Or they look but can no longer see. Still, I avoid their regard out of habit.
One day, long after the grueling mundanity of chopping away at the hands shifted to an anesthetized shuffling along, something occurs. Dozens of boxes of hands are delivered, like usual, but when I open one, I am met with a grotesque heap of rotting, festering hands. Blackened with decay, they resemble logs reduced to charcoal beneath flames.
And the stench, putrid. I think I should have worn a perfume with a cleaner scent. A scent like laundry or disinfectant or bleach to mask the pervasive odor emerging from the boxes.
It is this smell that seems to break the spellbound state of the others. The horror of once again being perceived by them pulls taut every muscle in my body. My horror mimics theirs as they leer at the necrotic hands. They’re disgusted and appalled, and I am shrinking into my corner so that they do not notice me.
Boss comes and says there will be a mandatory meeting, we all must be there in five minutes. I think I can’t go to the meeting. I’ve never gone to one, and I can’t go now. I can’t join them in watching me on the camera and laughing at myself. They must know that I can’t do that, so why would Boss say the meeting is mandatory for everybody? For me?
I look up and see that the others are all staring at me. They’re at the door ready to leave but they’ve stopped. One of them says it’s time to go. Something isn’t right I think. They’re plotting, probably. They’ve been plotting against me, to get rid of me, this whole time. And now they’re inviting me, the imposter, to their ritual denunciation of me.
I have no choice but to follow. Pretend I don’t feel weird, like I’m not being led to my own execution. Their side-eyed glances pierce me but I remind myself they cannot hear what I’m thinking. Still, I train my thoughts to be of nothing but knife cutting fruit. Fruit the shape of hands. Hands that intoxicate. Just in case they can hear.
At the meeting Boss says we have no fruits to cut. This is a problem because customers are already lined outside the door, money in their hands. Hands the shape of fruit. Whispers crescendo through the room. What will we do? Boss says there is a solution and everyone gets quiet.
I think this is it. They’re all going to look at me. Raise their twisted, mangled fingers to point at me. Look, they’ll say.
I’m paralyzed. I think I can’t be here for this but I can’t leave either. Everything begins to fade and I think I’m really going to disappear this time, to will myself out of existence. Then Boss speaks and I jolt back to corporeality, to the backs of everybody’s heads.
Everyone will be asked to sacrifice one of their hands. This will hold the customers over until the next batch of fruit arrives. This is when I notice the miniature guillotine. It’s atop the table in the room. Without hesitation, the others form a line in front of the table. I act instinctually, joining the line, but I’m thinking, this can’t be real. They can’t just take one of our hands. But no one else seems to be questioning it so I can’t question either.
The line is inching forward and I can hear the guillotine’s blade moving through the air. The grunts, and moans of pain. The trail of blood exiting the room along with those who have sacrificed a hand. I wonder what happens next. Will we get the day off or will we have to further cut our own hands for the customers?
Suddenly, there is no one in front of me. Just me, and the guillotine. I step up and Boss says my right hand. My right hand? That’s the one I cut with. Boss says they have enough left hands and only need rights now. I want to protest more, but I can feel the eyes of everyone in line behind me. I slide my hand through the hole. I feel a wisp of wind as the blade falls and I see my hand at rest on the table.
As I walk toward the exit, blood flowing from the spigot of my arm, I know the pain is immense. But more prominent than the pain is the loss. I have never lost anything before and now I know what it feels like.
Now I have something in common with the others.
I contemplate this lack, this void, as they stitch my wrist and wrap it in gauze.
I’m led back to the fruit cutting room where everyone is waiting, knife in hand, for the new fruit to arrive. I grab my knife with my left hand and practice the cutting motion.
I think about knife cutting fruit. I think about fruit that looks like hands. I think about things that look like what they are not. Seeds that look like bugs. Seeds that look like fish eggs. Fangs that look like faces. Respite that looks like a small dark corner.
I think of what I won’t do to avoid the weird looks of others. I find there is not much to think about.