The Orange

I remember the weight of it first.

It sat in my palm with a kind of quiet certainty, as though it had always belonged there. Round. Firm. Familiar. I turned it over slowly, studying its surface. It was dimpled, but not in any way that struck me as unusual at the time. My mind settled on a simple conclusion.

A baseball.

I don’t know why I thought that. It wasn’t white. It had no stitching. But in dreams, conclusions come before observations. I accepted it without question.

I pressed my thumb into it.

That’s when something changed.

The surface gave way, not entirely, but enough. There was a softness beneath the skin, a yielding resistance that didn’t belong to leather or anything manufactured. My thumb sank in just slightly, leaving an impression that slowly, almost reluctantly, returned to shape.

I frowned.

No… not a baseball.

An orange.

The thought arrived fully formed, as if correcting a mistake I hadn’t realized I’d made. Of course it was an orange. I could feel it now, the subtle texture of the rind, the faint give beneath it, the promise of something sweet and segmented inside.

I brought it closer to my face, though I don’t remember smelling it. Still, I believed it.

And so I began to peel it.

My fingernail caught the skin easily. It tore open with a soft, fibrous resistance, curling back in a strip that exposed the pale underside of the rind. Beneath that, I saw the orange itself, bright, pulpy, glistening faintly as if it had just been revealed to the air for the first time.

It looked right.

Reassuringly right.

I peeled more.

The skin came away in thick pieces, and I noticed something then, small strands of fruit clinging to the inside of the peel. That wasn’t unusual. It happens with oranges. Little bits get left behind.

Without thinking, I brought the peel toward my mouth.

I used my teeth to pull one of those pieces free.

It felt… off.

Not wrong, exactly. Just… unfamiliar. Softer than I expected. Not quite the clean burst of citrus I was anticipating. It was squishier. Resistant in a strange way, like it didn’t want to separate.

I paused.

Something in my mouth moved.

Not much. Just enough.

At first, I thought it was my tongue adjusting. But then it happened again. It was a faint, deliberate shifting sensation against the surface of my tongue.

And then it grabbed me.

Not with force. Not violently. But with intent.

A small, precise pressure at the tip of my tongue, like something anchoring itself there.

A cold realization spread through me.

That’s not part of the orange.

I froze.

For a moment, longer than I’d like to admit, I considered doing nothing. Just… leaving it there. As if ignoring it might somehow make it belong.

But the sensation grew clearer.

It wasn’t just attached.

It was holding on.

I slowly extended my tongue out of my mouth, my breath shallow, my chest tight. I could feel it now, not just the pressure, but the texture. Smooth, yet segmented. Alive in a way that fruit could never be.

With trembling fingers, I reached toward it.

My nails scraped lightly against my tongue as I tried to get a grip on the thing. It resisted, not by pulling away, but by tightening. Clinging.

I pinched it.

And I pulled.

It stretched.

That’s what I remember most.

It didn’t tear. It didn’t snap. It stretched, thin and translucent, like something that should have broken but refused to. A faint numbness spread across my tongue where it had been attached, like the aftermath of a mild shock.

And then, suddenly, it came free.

It lay across my fingertip.

I stared at it.

It was longer than I expected. Thin. Semi-transparent. Its body segmented in delicate sections that seemed to flex ever so slightly, even now. Along its sides were tiny, almost imperceptible legs, many of them, moving in a slow, rippling motion.

A centipede.

Or something like one.

But wrong.

Too soft. Too pale. As if it had never seen light.

I held it there, transfixed.

And then it moved.

Faster than I could react.

It curled, twisted, and drove itself beneath my fingernail.

I felt it slide in.

There was no pain. That was the worst part. No sharpness, no tearing. Just a pressure, a slipping sensation, as though it belonged there, like it had found a place it was meant to go.

I gasped and grabbed at my finger with my other hand, my nails digging in, searching for purchase.

I caught part of it, just the end.

I pulled.

It stretched again.

The same unnatural elasticity. It resisted not by strength, but by refusal to break. It held itself together as I drew it out, inch by inch, the sensation beneath my nail shifting, writhing.

I didn’t look away.

I couldn’t.

And then it came free.

Fully.

For a brief second, I held it suspended between both hands.

And then it moved again.

Before I could react, it drove itself under the nail of my other finger.

A second invasion.

This time, I didn’t hesitate.

I grabbed it immediately, pinched hard, and pulled with everything I had. My breath came in sharp bursts, my heart pounding in my ears. Again, it stretched. Again, it refused to break.

But I was faster now.

More desperate.

I pulled it free.

I didn’t examine it this time.

I didn’t think.

I threw it.

It landed in the garbage.

I stood there, staring into the bin, my chest rising and falling, waiting, watching, for it to move again.

It didn’t.

It lay still among whatever else was in there, a pale, twisted line against the darkness.

Slowly, my gaze shifted.

Back to the orange.

It sat where I had left it. Half-peeled. Innocent. Bright.

Waiting.

For a moment, the thought returned.

Maybe it was just that one.

Maybe the rest was fine.

Maybe…

I stopped.

The idea collapsed under its own weight.

I looked at it, really looked at it, and something about it no longer made sense. The texture. The way the peel had come away. The way those strands had clung.

How many had I almost eaten?

Without another thought, I picked it up and dropped it into the garbage beside the creature.

I didn’t wait to see if anything moved.

I didn’t want to know.

Even now, I can still feel it sometimes.

That faint numbness.

Right at the tip of my tongue.

As if something had once been there…

…and might still remember the way back.

The End

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Author’s Notes

Dreams have a way of disguising themselves as something familiar before revealing what they truly are.

This one stayed with me. Not because of what happened, but because of how easily I accepted it at first. The mind can be remarkably willing to believe in something ordinary, even when the details don’t quite fit. It fills in the gaps, smooths over the inconsistencies, and invites you to continue… just a little further.

Until something moves.

There’s a strange boundary between what we recognize and what we merely assume we recognize. And sometimes, it’s only when that boundary breaks that we realize how long we’ve been holding something we never truly understood.

Even now, I can’t say what unsettles me more, the creature itself…

…or how close I came to accepting it as part of something harmless.