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Brittany Redd

Applekin

   I am the omen they never see coming, because when I do arrive, they are waiting for me
so eagerly that they don’t even know what I am. My quarry - if indeed it is even fair to call them
that - will quite literally eat right out of the palm of my hand when I come to collect.
   Ours is a subtle force; a mere suggestion. A nudge here, a sign there. Practically
untraceable.
   My kind are known and we are unknown. We are seen and we are not. We exist in the
space between what we would see done and what you think you might have decided all on your
own.
   You will find us in all sorts of places, but we have our favorites. In the old days, we
roamed the orchards. Some of us still do. Some of us have adapted with the winds of time and
now prefer bakeries, grocery stores, and school cafeterias. Easy access to the public. We very
regularly attend picnics and parties as the neighbors you think you might have seen before,
though Halloween parties are nearly always the cream of the crop.
   We are everywhere, and yet in many ways, we have been lost to time. Our many names
have faded into almost nothing but whispers on the lips of an aging grandmother who might
recount a bedtime story she barely remembers to her own grandchildren.
   This does not concern us, however; we do what we do.
   Our business is apples. Well, no, that’s not entirely it. Our tool is the humble apple, but
our business is the threads of what moves reality and possibility and fate, to the degree it does
exist.
   There is power in something obvious and innocuous. Never forget that.
   Our moves may be imperceptible, but they are formidable. The young lover who dares
approach the one they have eyes for because the stem twisted off at the right letter. The wise one
who knows well to hang the garland of dried apple slices about when the frost approaches and
wakes to find their harvest protected. The dreamer who thinks of their wildest dreams as they
place a homemade pie into the oven. A well-timed bonk on the head beneath one of our trees.
   We watch. We wait. We place the apple in your path.
   All you have to do is bite.

Brittany Redd (she/they) is a teacher and writer in Thailand.  Her work appears or is forthcoming in Funicular Magazine, Cosmic Daffodil, Corvid Queen, and elsewhere.

© 2025 by Juice Press Magazine

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