Free Malus Domestica by S. A. Hunt

house.”
    Mother clutched it in her bony hands, and lifted it to her lips. Her mouth opened, the corners creasing and flaking, the joints of her jawbone cracking, and she pierced the fruit’s skin with her teeth. A soft groan of delighted pain escaped her throat as she bit into the fruit.
    Instead of juice, vibrant arterial blood dribbled from its rind and ran down her arms, dotting the quilt.
    As the rich carmine ran down her throat, Mother’s skin loosened, her fingers fulling and flushing. The corded veins snaking down her neck and across her shoulder plumped, throbbing, and fresh life trickled throughout her body.
    “An apple a day,” she gurgled.

4

    K NUCKLES BANGED ON THE side of Robin’s van, waking her up with a start.
    She squirmed out of her sleeping bag and opened the door. Joel stood outside, sidelit by the pizzeria’s security lights. He squinted into her flashlight beam. “Hey. I thought that would be you, out here in this sketchy-ass van.” He had put on a light windbreaker, and had his hands tucked deep into the jacket’s pockets. “You got any free candy?”
    “No, fraid not.”
    “Damn.” Joel glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, I wanted to come tell you…my brother Fish, he owns a comic shop in town? And he does this movie-night thing every Friday. He gonna start it up in about—” He checked his cellphone. “—Twenty minutes. You know, if you want to get out of that creepazoid van for a little while.”
    “I don’t know. I—”
    “Miguel usually lets me bring over a bunch of pizza from the shop. Employee discount.”
    Robin paused. The Sriracha-pineapple-pepperoni slice she’d had for lunch had been amazing, and she was more than ready for Round Two. “Jesus, why didn’t you say that to begin with?” she asked, flicking on the dome light so she could find her clothes.
    “What in the hell?” asked Joel, peering into the back of the van.
    He reached in and took the broadsword down from its clamp on the wall and struck Conan poses with it. “What is all this now? This part of your witch-huntin YouTubes channel?”
    Robin wriggled into her jeans. “Yep.”
    He put the sword back and tipped one of the plastic bins so he could see into it. Batteries. “You loaded for bear, hooker.”
    “Witch-hunting is a resource-intensive business.”
    Shrugging into a sweat-jacket hoodie, Robin clambered out of the back of the van and locked it up. She had the video camera in her hands, and as Joel led her out to his car, she turned it on and aimed it at her face, holding it at arms’ length. “Hi everybody. It’s Malus. I was getting ready to settle down for the night with a good book and a bowl of staple-food ninety-nine-cent Ramen when my new best friend Joel—”
    She aimed the camera at Joel. “What up, internet.” He blew a kiss.
    “—came to invite me to Movie Night. Complete with more of that goddamn fantastic pizza from the pizzeria. Lady Luck smiles on me for a change.”
    Joel drove a beautiful jet-black Monte Carlo with bicycle-spoke rims and whitewall tires. She opened the passenger door and slid into the plush black interior to find an eight-ball gear shift and an armrest wedge with a picture of Elvira embroidered on it, and the words B LACK V ELVET in cursive.
    “All black.” Robin buckled up as Joel tossed himself into the car. “I bet this thing is a bitch in the summer.”
    He turned the engine over with a cough and a beastly, deep-throated grum-grum-grum-grum. “Honey, it’s a bitch all year,” Joel said, throwing it into gear and pulling out of the parking lot.
    The subwoofers in the back howled “Crazy On You” by Heart as he piloted Black Velvet down the twisting highway out of the canyon, his headlights washing back and forth across the trees. The backseat had a stack of vibrating boxes in it, filling the car with the tangy-savory smell of hot pizza, and her stomach twisted into knots immediately. As they came into Blackfield proper, the headlights