Daily story, October 18, 2024

The apples kept falling, faster than they could eat them or stew them or juice them for cider. Faster than they could gather them. They heaped around the trunk of the tree, stinking as the buried ones fermented. And still the branches sagged under the weight of new fruit. Flies and rats came, more each day, and the apples kept falling.

They cut down the tree, and the apples did not stop. They poured from the felled branches even as the stump sprouted anew. They sawed the tree to pieces, and the pieces dropped apples. Some found a little length of branch that produced just one or two each day, and took it home for themselves. But this was forbidden. They piled the pieces in around the stump, atop the rotting fruit, and burned it all. Most of them never tasted an apple again.