Rotter Apple

I'd seen them at one of the fruit sellers' in the bazaar, piled high, pearly white, and completely out of season — whoever heard of a jamrul in July? I bought four. They're small fruit, a bite or three and they disappear down the gullet, a cotton candy mesh of slightly sweet water, encased in the smooth skin of a white, bell shaped apple; a treat on a hot summer day, right up there with the kamranga.

When I bit into the first one, absent-minded, reading the news, it was sour, betraying its imminent decay, unpleasant, but not inedible. Until I encountered a burst of frantic motion between my tooth and cheek. I manoeuvred it unthinkingly, bit down and felt something soft and slimy die, crushed between my teeth. Its remains tasted like mud in my mouth. I was put off by it, and yet I swallowed, before looking over to the water apple with its head bitten off. Inside the hollow where the seed ought to have been, worms whiter than fruit flesh writhed. Maggots, I imagined, or something like that. I watched them squirm a while longer before discarding the fruit. Not in the bin, out on a patch of grass at the foot of a tree on the street.

I sliced the other three open with a knife to find them entirely untouched by rot. I devoured them immediately, unhindered by the memory of the worm's compost-like flavour. It's not the first time I've eaten a bug, though I've eaten them intentionally only once — pickled red ants, fermented formic acid is an interesting spice — but I think I'll steer clear of this particular type of worm in the days to come, they're just not to my taste.