Smá athugasemd: Sagan er skrifuð á ensku einfaldlega vegna þess að mér finnst þægilegra að skrifa á því tungumáli.

Sagan er hérna í svolítið grófu formi, ég er ekki fullkomlega ánægður með hana, svo gaman væri að fá e-ar athugasemdir, sérstaklega ef þær eru lengri en ein, tvær setningar, en þið ráðið náttúrulega alveg hvað þið gerið.

Svo er soldið slakt að það sé ekki hægt að nota skáletur þegar maður sendir e-ð inn … vona sagan komi sér til skila þrátt fyrir það!

Enjoy! :D



ORANGES

Elsie Sullivan did not use a knife to tear open the orange she held in her hands. She used her fingers. She was not particularly fond of oranges, so she had never really developed a skill in taking the peel of. She didn’t dislike them; she just didn’t eat a lot of them either. Apples were more to her taste – oranges were sometimes too sour. But these oranges looked good. They were big (she’d thought at first that they were much too big, but then again what did she know?) and judging from the spraying from within the peel she was crudely trying to rip open, it was also juicy. Big and juicy, just the way Elsie liked most things.
How she had come by these particular oranges was actually quite a tail. Elsie’s life wasn’t very eventful and so whenever anything out of the ordinary happened (and most new things were out of the ordinary for Elsie) she considered them particular. A visit from Mrs. Thomson was not particular, because she’d been coming over for tea for almost 15 years now, but a visit from a young fruit-salesman – an orange-salesman – indeed was. It was on a Saturday morning in June when the door to Elsie’s remote country house was disturbed. She was lying in her comfortable couch, watching television, and had almost thought that the knocking was part of the soap opera she was watching, so unaccustomed was she to Saturday-morning visits. When the knocking persisted even when the soap cut to an exterior location, she knew that there was someone at the door and so she went to open it.
The young man outside her door looked very tired, but also very handsome. His skin was tanned – no, too brown for that. She guessed, slowly, that the man was Latin-American, if indeed he was American. His wide smile showcased extraordinarily white teeth and his blue eyes shone in the morning light. Elsie, who was quite taken aback by this sudden visitor, also smiled. She didn’t think about it then, but this man was probably her first male guest in many a year. Many a year indeed.
“Good morning, ma’am.” The young man said. His voice fitted his looks perfectly. “I hope I haven’t disturbed you.” He actually sounded genuinely concerned.
“No, no!” Elsie quickly responded. She did not want to brush this fine young man off by being impolite. In her altered state, she did not say anything else, so the young man became a tad bit uncomfortable. He could undoubtedly see the look in Elsie’s eyes – a look that was in equal measures adorable and pathetic. A bit shyly, he continued: “Umm, my name is Rick Sanchez. I’ve been traveling ‘round the state these past few weeks selling fruits.”
“Fruits?” Elsie asked, as if she had never heard the word before.
“Yes ma’am, the best fruits ever to see these shores, if I may say so myself,” Rick Sanchez said, and had Elsie been a bit more aware of the outer world, she probably wouldn’t have believed him. As it was, she had no reason to think that he was exaggerating (nor did she have to, as she soon would learn). “The thing is, I’m in a bit of a jam, really,” Rick said.
“How so?” Elsie was deeply concerned.
“You see, I don’t have a lot of money to spend, and the job doesn’t really pay of that well, you know?”
Elsie did not know, but nodded anyway. She liked Ricky’s voice (to her, his name was Ricky.)
“And so I’ve basically been living on my merchandise and sleeping in my tent where the grass is comfortable enough. Sometimes I get to take a shower in my customers’ houses, but only if I really need it.”
“Do you want to take a shower?” Elsie asked, ready to dry him off herself.
“No, no! Nothing like that, ma’am. Well, what I’m trying to get at is that last night I guess I was robbed, probably some problem kids, you know. You see, my day is a long one and I do a lot of bicycling – “ he pointed to the old but working bicycle that stood behind him in the driveway. There was a small wagon connected to it where, Elsie presumed, he kept his fruits. “ – and I usually sleep like the dead after I lay down. When I woke up this morning, I discovered that my merchandise – all my fruits – was gone! And all my money with it. Everything gone, except for the bike, the wagon and my tent. And one case of oranges. I guess they had enough to carry,” Ricky said in a sad tone of voice, even though his eyes did not appear to be sad at all. No, his big blue eyes seemed to be grinning, totally unconnected to the rest of his face.
“But that’s terrible!” Elsie exclaimed, stating the obvious.
“Yeah, isn’t it?” Ricky’s eyes weren’t grinning anymore. Now they had connected with his face again and looked at her pleadingly. Had Elsie ever had any children, she might’ve known the meaning of his expression: he looked like a kid that’s trying to get the nerve to ask his parents for something he knows he probably can’t have. Ricky, in other words, was going to ask Elsie for money. And when he did, it did not surprise Elsie at all, though ten minutes ago, she’d probably never even considered the idea of giving a complete stranger money. There was just something about the man’s eyes – he seemed so genuine. He only needed it to eat and then get back to the city to his company. How could she refuse him? Besides, she wasn’t giving him the money. She got the last case of oranges! They were rather expensive, the oranges, if you were going to look at it that way, but at least she hadn’t given him the money, that much was for sure.
Elsie never stopped to think about his story, though. To her it seemed completely credible that in this day and age a young Hispanic would ride his bike across the state with fruits in the trolley behind, that this young Hispanic would occasionally shower in the houses of good-hearted customers, and that his cargo of fruits had been robbed by kids. It all seemed perfectly acceptable to Elsie Sullivan.

While she was not thinking about how utterly incredible all these things would sound to reasonably thinking adults, Elsie was opening the first orange of many from the case. What she was thinking about, was how handsome Ricky had looked and how nice of her it had been to help him, and if it wouldn’t have been nicer had he wanted to take a shower in her house. A smile crept up on her face as that thought took on a life of its own and became a small fantasy. The fantasy, however, was disrupted when the bark of the orange was off. Elsie stared at the orange in dismay, not really knowing what it was that she was seeing.
The orange was perfect in shape, and at least half of it had that light-orange color one always associates with oranges (or at least Elsie did). But the other half wasn’t orange in color at all. It was red. Blood red. Not being an orange fan, Elsie did not know a thing about these red oranges, nor that they were perfectly normal. She wasn’t really sure of what to do. Could she eat a thing like that? Wasn’t it … corrupted or something? It reminded her of the apple the bad witch had made for Snow White. That apple had been red on one side and green on the other, right? That apple had been poisoned, right? But why would Ricky want to poison her? It was probably just a bad orange. She put it away and took the next one from the case. She opened that one just as crudely as the one before it, splattering orange juice on her face and chest, her fingers slippery with orange juice. When it was finally as naked as the first one, Elsie saw that they were almost identical – one half orange, the other blood red. Elsie was confused.
She was also hungry and she was always impatient. In spite of her not liking oranges all that much, the fact that these ones had been given to her by a handsome stranger (she had by now completely forgot all about the money he got from her) had made them curiously appetizing and she was looking forward to eating them. So confusion gave way to hunger and Elsie tore one orange (the first one) into two halves and then peeled a boat off one half. She did not put the entire boat into her mouth at once, for she started by biting off the orange half – the normal half. She inspected the other half carefully. It was dark red, like someone had poured red wine into it. Or red blood. Otherwise, it looked perfectly normal. The pulp was intact and did not seem to have been tampered with, the skin around the boat was also quite normal. It was just the color that made her think twice. She brought the boat to her nose and smelled it and realized that it didn’t really have an odor. Then she squeezed it gently. A small red drop fell from it and landed on the table. It wasn’t blood, for sure – it wasn’t thick enough – and she doubted it was red wine. It must be normal, she thought to herself and then, as if for further encouragement, she thought: and you only live once! She opened her mouth and put the half boat of orange inside her mouth. Her teeth locked around it and bit gently, squeezing the juice on her tongue from where it floated down her throat. She finished the bite and chewed on the orange for a while. It didn’t taste any different than the other half. No, that wasn’t right. It tasted better. After this first bite, Elsie hadn’t quite surrendered to the oranges, but it was good enough to make her want a second boat. This one she did not bite in half, for she put it all in her mouth at once, feeling the sweet taste of the orange half mixed with the slightly bitterer, slightly more stronger taste of the red half. Not before long, she had finished the first orange and was already starting the second one.
It was only the beginning.

Things started to get weird that very same night when Elsie, who had by then eaten 8 whole oranges – big ones – decided not to make dinner. It might not have seemed weird to most people, but it was completely out of order for Elsie who had basically done exactly the same things every day for too many years. On Saturday night she always had hamburgers for dinner. Always. This Saturday, though, she did not. She rationalized it by thinking that she had eaten to many oranges and therefore wasn’t hungry, but that was a lie. She was hungry, all right, but it was a hunger that meat could not satisfy. She was hungry for more oranges. The only problem was that after her fifth orange today (or was it the sixth?), she had made the quite shocking realization that these oranges were not going to last forever. Actually, if she was going to continue like this, they would be over before next Saturday. So she decided to rationalize her consumption of the oranges. Only three a day, no more than that. And she decided that today, the day would begin exactly after this decision was made, so she could eat three more oranges. It wasn’t any fun stopping when she was just beginning to learn how good they were – they would be better after she’d put a limit on how many she could eat. That was true, because the three oranges she ate afterwards were not only delicious, they were sublime.
That evening she sat in her comfortable couch and watched some uninteresting film on the television. Any other night, she probably would have been completely caught in the plot of the film, no matter how bad it was, but this night her mind was busy thinking about the oranges. How good they were, how lucky she was to have them and most importantly, how she was going to get more of them. Elsie wasn’t a very smart woman, but she knew that normal oranges weren’t this wonderful, so it wouldn’t be any good for her to try and buy some at Mr. Henry’s grocery store. No, she’d have to find that young man again. Ricky Sanchez. Yes, she’d have to find him and let him sell her some more oranges. Into these thoughts, the fantasy about Ricky’s shower did not enter, though another kind of fantasy was created: Elsie was by no means obese, but she was fat. Even she could admit to that and she perfectly well knew why: her diet was absolutely horrendous. She did not censor her eating habits at all. When she wanted meat, she ate meat. When she wanted cake, she ate cake. When she wanted candy, no force on earth could stop her from getting some. She had always considered herself a lover of food, but knew that was merely an excuse. She simply didn’t know how to not eat so much. Nobody ever taught her that. How could she get through the day if she was hungry? It was impossible even to think that thought to end. But now everything was different, because of the oranges. Oranges were basically just water with some skin and pulp and though she didn’t know for a certainty, Elsie was pretty sure that she could eat a lot of them without gaining much weight. For Elsie, this fact combined with her newfound love for the fruit meant that, would this continue for a few weeks or months (and she surely hoped it would), she’d lose a lot of weight. And if that wouldn’t send men like Ricky Sanchez to her shower, she didn’t know what would. To say that she was reconsidering her life sitting there on the couch, dreaming about the oranges, would be wrong. She was reorganizing it.

The week went by and at least one of her thoughts from Saturday night held true: her love for the oranges did not die. In fact, it grew. The three-orange limit had become so frustrating by Tuesday, that she quickly upped it to five per day and forced herself not to think about the ever-emptying orange case or how she was going to renew it. However, the idea of not eating anything for a few weeks but oranges quickly proved impossible. She’d just been too excited on Saturday to feel hungry, because by Sunday her stomach was commanding her to eat something with more substance. To Elsie’s endless amusement, she discovered that all food was actually good with oranges, or rather oranges were good with all food. Oranges in her cornflakes, orange-sandwiches, any kind of meat with oranges on the side – the possibilities were endless.
After she’d discovered just how much all food benefited from being served with oranges, she searched through all of the numerous cookbooks her mother had left her when she died, trying to find more recipes for the oranges. Elsie and her mother, Maureen Sullivan, had lived together in the remote country house after Elsie’s father, a fat and funny little man named Edward, died when Elsie was only a child. She’d always been a daddy’s girl, but her relationship with her mother was extraordinarily good, probably because they were so alike. Edward had left them some money and his insurance money was enough to keep both women well off for the last of their lives, and so the Sullivan women mostly kept to themselves in the remote house. They were simple women and had simple pleasures. They both liked food of course and loved to stay at home on weekends, sitting in the sofa, watching their favorite television shows. Maureen used to love lying outside in Edward’s big hammock when it was warm outside. She especially liked it when there was a gentle, cool breeze to counterwork the heat. While Maureen would be almost asleep in her hammock, Elsie would be sitting in a big chair in the garden with a book to read and a cold drink on the side. The book was almost always a second-hand, second-rate love story. It had been a morning exactly like that when Maureen suddenly died – a heart attack. Elsie was of course sad by the passing of her mother, but she was even sadder by passing of her only friend. During the years they had spent together, Elsie had met a precious few people. Most of them were friends of Maureen’s, and some of them were old friends of Edward’s, but none of them were friends of Elsie’s. Well, almost none of them. Mrs. Thomson became Elsie’s friend after Maureen died, but they hadn’t been friends before. Mrs. Thomson had been Maureen’s friend, and Elsie had met her on numerous occasions and so she welcomed her after her mother’s passing. Mrs. Thomson’s visits became with time a normal thing and finally a habit that both women enjoyed tremendously.
Mrs. Thomson was herself a widow and had no children of her own. She liked to say that Elsie was the daughter she never had, but she didn’t really think so. Elsie was too peculiar to be her daughter. Not that Mrs. Thomson wasn’t peculiar, oh dear no. She was a regular nutcase, just as eccentric as the Sullivan women. For example, Mrs. Thomson adored hats and would buy a new one every week. She had a collection of over a thousand different hats, and never wore the same one more than once (or, if it was particularly nice, perhaps twice). Mrs. Thomson also just loved surprises. You couldn’t ask her what kind of surprises because she couldn’t tell you. Everything surprising was wonderful in Mrs. Thomson’s view, and since Elsie wasn’t exactly full of surprises, Mrs. Thomson decided that she wouldn’t be fit as her daughter, though she would never tell Elsie that. Despite her love for surprises, Mrs. Thomson did not like to surprise anyone herself – the surprise always had to be inflicted on her – and thusly, much like Elsie, she kept a fairly regular schedule. And she always came to Elsie’s on every other Sunday morning.
That thought suddenly struck Elsie, as it was now Saturday evening. The house was a mess – a complete and utter mess. Elsie, who had nothing much to do during the daytime, usually kept the house spotless and clean, so she guessed that Mrs. Thomson was in for a spectacular surprise tomorrow morning. She briefly considered tidying up just a bit, but decided against it and ate an orange instead. There were only five oranges left, and she’d only had four today. One to go … but that would leave only four for tomorrow! The idea was simply ridiculous – why, she had decided that she would eat five every day! She couldn’t possibly eat only four on the last day! A semi-depression came over Elsie at that point. She hated herself for not having tried to find Ricky Sanchez earlier that week, like the day after he left (or even sooner), but she wasn’t a hasty woman and every time she had to do something out of the ordinary (which was not often), she let it wait. She would sometimes in the evening be sitting in front of the tube, not really thinking about anything special, when the thought snuck into her mind and made her freeze: “You were supposed to go to the dentist two days ago, Elsie!” the voice would say, or: “Why haven’t you called Ricky yet, Elsie?” and Elsie would always feel ashamed of herself for a moment. Even a bit scared, though she couldn’t explain why. Gradually, the uncomfortable feeling would pass and then she would forget it all over again, saving it for tomorrow night, or the night after that. But now she couldn’t forget it. She really, really hated herself. She had not taken a shower this morning (had not taken a shower, actually, for three days) and was wearing the exact same clothes she had worn last Saturday when Ricky had come over. She knew she smelled of sweat, dirt, oily-hair-smell and oranges, and she knew she was disgusting. She hated herself for it. For a very brief moment the thought crossed her mind that it was all the oranges’ fault – that they were the cause for all of this – but she never thought that thought to the end and quenched it from her memory-banks. She would not blame those delicious, wonderful oranges. They were the only reason she wasn’t even more depressed, weren’t they?
The news came on the TV and she quickly changed the channel. News had been strange all week (come to think of it, they’d been strange ever since last Saturday), with gruesome reports about people killing each other in the otherwise quite state. It hadn’t been so violent in years, if ever, and Elsie didn’t very much like news like that. She wanted to see outstanding citizens being awarded medals for saving people from a burning house, or perhaps some news of what was going on in the “outside world”, which was the phrase she used for foreign countries in their entirety. No such news had been on for seven days – all the news were about violence. On the other channel she started to watch a rerun of a soap-opera she’d already seen at least three times before, but she watched it anyway as it was an episode she enjoyed and it might take her mind off of wanting another orange. It did not.

The morning after Elsie woke up in the sofa. She was still sitting, though her body had somehow leaked forward and was now in a position she never would have dreamed she could get in. She felt tired and lousy and decided to take a shower and perhaps clean the place up a little bit before Mrs. Thomson came over for tea.
After the shower, which had been incredibly refreshing, she returned into the living room and started cleaning up. Old papers were laying everywhere, remnants of old food, old bark off an orange. It all went into the trash, and for the first time this week, Elsie spent a good hour not thinking at all about the oranges. That was a good thing, because she’d be thinking about them a lot in the hours to come.
In the middle of her little housecleaning, the doorbell rang and she let Mrs. Thomson in, even though the house wasn’t nearly clean enough for Elsie’s taste. Mrs. Thomson exclaimed in her distinctive high-pitched voice that the wrecked house was “a big surprise!” Elsie, however, was not surprised to see Mrs. Thomson’s new hat, this one purple and not particularly interesting. Mrs. Thomson took of her hat and coat and sat herself in the kitchen. Elsie noticed that she was carrying a plastic bag full of something. Something round. Small balls, perhaps? But why? She joined her at the table and apologized for not having made any tea yet – she’d been busy cleaning.
“Never mind, dear,” Mrs. Thomson said, “you can make it now. Besides, I have something I want to show you while we wait!” She looked as if the thing she was going to show Elsie (presumably the thing in the bag) was quite special. Elsie started to boil some water and put some redbush tea in a teabag over a kettle. Then she went back to the kitchen table to see what Mrs. Thomson had brought.
“What is it that you want to show me?” Elsie asked. Mrs. Thomson smiled and lifted the heavy bag up on the table and opened it so Elsie could see inside. What was there somehow didn’t surprise her at all, even though she had not been expecting it. The bag was, of course, full of oranges. Big ones.
“Aren’t they big?!” Mrs. Thomson cried. “And you’ll never guess how I got them!”
Oh, but Elsie could guess because she knew exactly how Mrs. Thomson had gotten the oranges, and her story was just like Elsie thought it would be, because it was exactly the same way she had gotten her oranges. Mrs. Thomson told her all about the young Latino man with the big blue eyes (in her story, his name was Enrique) who came on Saturday afternoon – and hadn’t that been a welcome surprise? – and how he’d been robbed of his entire merchandise – fruits, no less! – and how he just needed a little bit of money to get back to his company and hadn’t he been sweet to give her case of oranges for her help?
“How could I refuse?” Mrs. Thomson asked. Elise just forced a smile. She couldn’t speak now and she didn’t now why. She didn’t really feel betrayed – they were just oranges for god’s sake! – but there was disappointment in her heart. And frustration. Mrs. Thomson took four oranges out of the bag and put on the table.
“These are so good, Elsie dear, I have to tell you. They’re not like the oranges you buy at Mr. Henry’s – these are special! You see, they’re red inside! Red! Can you believe it?”
Elsie sure could believe it.
“And they are just too good to be true. Just about perfect – you have to try one!” She pushed one of the oranges to Elsie, who now had no expression on her face. Mrs. Thomson didn’t notice because she was busy finishing her story: “I’ve been eating them like a wildcat all week, but I saved these last ones to bring to you so you could try them. Go on, open it up!”
Now Elsie didn’t feel frustrated anymore. She felt angry. And she realized why – it wasn’t because Ricky had also tricked Mrs. Thomson by telling her that cock and bull story, and it wasn’t because Mrs. Thomson had oranges as well (she figured that a lot of people must have them, so there was no point in being jealous just because she stupidly thought that she’d been special). She was angry because Mrs. Thomson was giving her the oranges. Because Mrs. Thomson clearly could not see just how special these oranges were – how sublime and wonderful they were. Mrs. Thomson had no idea, because if she did, she would not have given away a single one. Mrs. Thomson did not know how special these oranges were, and that made Elsie furious for some reason.
Mrs. Thomson now noticed the strange expression on Elsie’s face. She did not realize it was an expression of pure hatred, because she had never seen such an expression before. “Elsie, dear … is everything alright?” she asked, but the answer she got was not what she had wanted. It was, actually, quite a surprise.
Elsie, not really knowing she was doing it, took up the orange Mrs. Thomson had given to her, and slammed it hard into Mrs. Thomson’s face. Mrs. Thomson’s face was that of someone who did not know a hit was coming – bewildered amazement and hurt. The old, frail woman fell off her chair and onto the rather dirty kitchen floor. Elsie jumped on her and sat down so her knees blocked Mrs. Thomson’s hands. And then she began hitting her with the orange, in the face, over and over again. At first, Mrs. Thomson tried to object, to scream or to do anything, but Elsie was too quick with the orange and her weight was too heavy for the old woman to lift her off. As the big orange hit Mrs. Thomson’s face repeatedly, it squished and squashed, sending orange-juice flying all over the place, until the orange itself was limp and finished, at which time Elsie grabbed for another orange and repeated her actions. When that orange was finished as well, Mrs. Thomson had passed out. Her face was orangey-red from all the juice, and her lip had cracked and was bleeding. Her rage had not died down after having beaten Mrs. Thomson up with two oranges. Quite the contrary, she was still furious. She took one of the limp oranges and used her soaked, fat fingers to open Mrs. Thomson’s mouth and then stuck the orange in and pushed it as far down as she could. Mrs. Thomson did not wake up. Elsie wasn’t really sure what she was doing, but her purpose was simple: to make Mrs. Thomson choke on what she did not wish to eat herself. She took the other limp orange and with great force, stuffed it down the old woman’s throat. This time, Mrs. Thomson did open her eyes.
The sadness and terrible frightened look in Mrs. Thomson’s eyes struck Elsie like a wet rag in the face and that very look would haunt Elsie’s mind for the last minutes of her life some hours later. It was a look that pleaded with her to stop this madness, to let her go – let her live – and at the same time also knew that there was no salvation for her. Her throat had been stuffed with a two limp oranges, bark and all, and she was never going to breathe again. Tears ran from her bloodshot eyes and mixed with the orange-juice that covered her face. Elsie now realized fully just what she had done and looked away. She suddenly felt as if she was sitting on top of a giant, squirming bug, and her whole body convulsed and shuddered. She half stumbled, half fell of the dying body of Mrs. Thomson, and crawled into the corner of the kitchen. She had killed her only friend in the world, with and because of oranges. She didn’t really feel any regret – she was still angry at her for giving away these heavenly oranges – but she could identify with what she was going on, that horrible choking-on-an-orange sensation and was extremely disturbed to know that she was responsible for it.
Elsie had probably been 8 years old when it had happened to her, but the circumstances had of course been very different. She’d been home alone for whatever reason, and she was eating an orange. Not a big one, like these, and certainly not red ones, but it was juicy and Elsie had gotten a bit greedy towards the end, when she took two boats of the orange into her mouth at the same time. She had chewed this large chunk of the orange very well, but not well enough, because when she tried to swallow it, the skin of the orange, filled with half-full pulp, did not want to go down. It just stayed in the back of her throat, blocking her airway, slowly suffocating her. She had grabbed her throat, as if that would help. She had even tried to scream, though no one would have heard her if she could. Her eyes had become watery and she had felt a strange sadness: her mind had suddenly become clear and she had known that she was going to die. Eight years old, she had been ready to accept death. But it hadn’t ended like that. In a final bid for survival, she had jammed her then-small fingers down into her throat and she had started to rip the skin of the orange out of it. At first, it didn’t seem like it would work. The skin had been too far back and too slimy to get a good grip of, but she hadn’t given up. Her fingers had gone as far in as they possibly could and even though she had begun to see black spots in front of her eyes at this time, she had somehow managed to rip out the skin and throw it as far away as she could across the kitchen. She hadn’t gotten it all out, but enough. Now that she could breath, she had taken a lot of air into her lungs. Then her stomach had decided to empty itself, and she had vomited until she thought she was completely empty. For whatever reason, Elsie had kept this story to herself and was remembering it for the first time in years just now. She hadn’t been embarrassed, but she knew how the story would sound to her parents or friends: “I almost choked on an orange!” They’d have laughed at her or, even worse, not taken her seriously; Thought that she was exaggerating.
Mrs. Thomson’s body stopped writhing on the floor and Elsie let out a single tear.

Later in her sleep, she had a nightmare about Ricky Sanchez, Mrs. Thomson and the oranges. She had gone to bed as soon as she could stand up from the kitchen floor, without taking care of the body. She couldn’t think about that now – it would have to wait until tomorrow. She’d also gone to bed without as much as having had one orange the entire day, but that, also, would have to wait a better time.
In the dream, she replayed in her mind the incident with Mrs. Thomson, from the moment she had hit her with the orange and until she was dead. Except in her dream, when she hit Mrs. Thomson with the orange, it didn’t squirt orange juice – it squirted blood. Elsie tried to tell herself that it wasn’t blood – what would blood be doing inside an orange?! – that it was just the dark red juice of the dark red part of the orange. But the juice was much too thick to be orange-juice. Then, Mrs. Thomson wasn’t Mrs. Thomson anymore, but a television anchor woman. The television-personality, her face covered with blood and juice, told Elsie that if she’d just think about it for a minute, she’d realize that it wasn’t her that killed Mrs. Thomson, it was Ricky!
Of course it had been Ricky that killed Mrs. Thomson, Elsie thought, and it made the greatest sense in the world. He had sold them the oranges and then the oranges had technically killed Mrs. Thomson. Elsie had only assisted. What was it that people always said when disaster struck? “Earthquakes don’t kill people – buildings do.” Or something like that. This dream-logic made as much sense to her as Ricky’s story had earlier, and so when she woke up a few moments later (she couldn’t quite remember what happened in the end), she didn’t feel guilty at all. In fact, she felt great. None of this had been her fault – it had all been the fault of a Hispanic, big-eyed fruitsalesman. And she really wanted an orange.
To her great surprise, it was not the following morning when she woke up, but that also made sense. Mrs. Thomson had come over at noon and had died not more than 15 minutes after that, so Elsie had gone to sleep at about one o’clock. When she turned on the television, the six o’clock news were just beginning, telling us more stories about violence in the city. Now experts believed that oranges were to blame, or so the anchor-woman explained (not the one from her dream, though). Elsie laughed at that ridiculous idea. Oranges! Hah, what will they come up with next? she thought and continued to open one of the four oranges she had brought with her from the kitchen. In Mrs. Thomson’s plastic bag there were several more oranges, so she didn’t have to worry about finishing them all now. She had been very careful not to look at Mrs. Thomson’s body in the kitchen, because she had no intention of feeling bad today. In fact, after quenching the guilt, she felt like a million bucks and wanted to keep that feeling. That, however, was not easy.
Directly across from the comfortable sofa, next to the television, was the kitchen door. Through the door, Elsie could see Mrs. Thomson’s dead, juicy face, staring up at the ceiling with its bloodshot eyes. As much as she tried, Elsie could not stop looking at it. Her eyes would be on the TV one minute, but before she even knew it had moved, she was seeing Mrs. Thomson. She had do something about the body – had to – if she was going to keep her good mood. On the tube she saw film footage from a riot in the city: people fighting on the streets, throwing things at each other. The things, she saw, were oranges. Store windows were on fire. On fire … Something in Elsie’s head clicked. That’s how she could get rid of the body, of course! Why didn’t she think about that before? Quick and easy! She hadn’t thought about anyone missing Mrs. Thomson, though. Such trivialities could not enter a mind preoccupied with fire and oranges, not that it would have made any difference anyway. Mrs. Thomson, like Elsie, did not have that many friends and would probably not be badly missed until late next week, then most likely by Mr. Henry who’d wonder why she hadn’t bought any groceries this week.
Elsie managed to drag the body, which was of surprisingly little weight across her muddy lawn and to the back of the house, where her father’s (and later her mother’s) hammock swung unused in the early-evening breeze. There was also a big metal barrel, situated just outside the kitchen window, that had until then been used for old newspapers and magazines. Elsie kicked the barrel over and old, moldy and wet papers flowed out of it. When there was enough room for Mrs. Thomson in there, she jammed her into it, leaving the poor old woman in quite an unusual position. Then she went into the garage to get some gasoline to fuel the fire she was going to light. She pored probably much too much of it in the barrel, not really thinking or caring about the consequences, and then she lit a match and threw it into this macabre grave she’d made for Mrs. Thomson.
The barrel did not catch fire – it exploded. A big cloud of flame rushed out of the barrel and immediately set fire to the housewall behind it. Then the barrel expanded a bit and suddenly exploded. Elsie would have thanked God for being in safe distance from the debris, hadn’t she been in such a state of panic: her house was on fire, and there were still uneaten oranges inside!
Inside the house, things were uncommonly quiet, or so Elsie thought. It was hard to believe that the mess taking place outside her kitchen was actually going on inside this relaxed place, but the sound of her massive kitchen-window exploding was enough to send Elsie bolting into the now-flaming kitchen where the oranges lay in a plastic bag next to the dinner table. The heat inside was almost unbearable and visibility was zero. The flames from outside had started to eat her window-curtains and were already swimming around most of the room – on the ceiling, the walls, the stove. Elsie reached blindly for the bag, seeing nothing but only feeling burning heat. She did pray to God now, asking him to keep the oranges safe from the flames. Perhaps he was listening, as she finally touched plastic. She knew instinctively that this was the right bag, so she just pulled at it and then ran out of the kitchen, barely escaping the explosion when the flames reached the gas-kettles that had made her many a meal. When she came outside, she could see the chain-reaction, which had started with that explosion, take place – the house just seemed to fall apart as if it was made out of cards. First the middle, then the left side in a few steps, then the right side just fell into the inferno.
Elsie, however, was not sad. She had the oranges and that was all that mattered.

When the firemen came to the place about 15 minutes later, they found the house in flaming ruins, and Elsie swinging in her mother’s hammock, orange-bark strewn around it. They did not notice that she was dead until they were close to her; there to tell her to get out of the way, please, so she wouldn’t be in the way of the water-hoses. But when they were close enough to see her face in detail, there was no doubt about it. Her eyes were closed and seemed in some way peaceful. Her cheeks were glistening with juice and bulging outwards as if there was something stuffed in her mouth. Out of her half-closed mouth was the skin of an orange. It dangled in the breeze, maybe waiving goodbye. One of the firemen tried to bring her back to life, or was at least going to, until he discovered that it was futile. He’d pulled out of her mouth and throat the remains of at least three oranges, and suspected that there were many more jammed in there.
The remains of Mrs. Thomson were discovered a few hours later, after the fire had been put out. No one would ever know exactly what had happened at the remote country house that night in June, though there was plenty of speculation – all, of course, connected to the wave of violence that appeared to have originated from oranges, of all things. But they’d never know what Elsie Sullivan had thought of in those 15 minutes between the crumble of her house and the arrival of the firemen. They’d never know how much sadness and understanding had come over her, like a powerful tsunami, when her house went ablaze. She was literally knocked off her feet when the orange cloud over her mind was lifted away and she realized what she’d done. Stronger than the wave, and stronger than the regret, was a nostalgic longing to be reunited with her parents, both of them. So she had sat down in the hammock and started eating the oranges. They were delicious, these last oranges, perhaps even better than before, now that her mind was clearer. Purposely, she did not chew them as well as she should have. And then, suddenly she was 8 years old again on her kitchen floor. Both her parents were alive. The taste of the oranges was sweet and sublime. This time she did not vomit.