Orange Crush

Round Two story for NYC Midnight CWC

Genre: Fantasy (gulp)
Location: submarine
Object: an orange


“Orange Crush”
Manfred always fell for the wrong witches.


“This is ridiculous. I can’t die this way.”

Manfred wouldn’t let himself believe that this was his fate – waiting for the acidic pulp inside an orange to corrode the metal shell of his tiny submarine and burn him alive.

And yet here he was.

The sub was already leaking in spots. Trying to patch them, a few minor burns proved what Manfred feared. Vianca’s spell had not only shrunken their bodies, but made their skin and organs hypersensitive.

Manfred knew there were other ways things could go. Should the sub remain intact, he might simply die of starvation. Nobody knew where to find him, and provisions had already run out.

He didn’t want to think about the third option. If ingested by one of the Royals, the storm of stomach acid would eat the sub’s sheathing in a matter of seconds. As nauseatingly sweet as the orange’s pulpy, acidic flesh smelled, at least it gave him some time.

--

Manfred had met Vianca at Helena’s, a tavern famous throughout the coastal regions for its bottomless bisonette bowls. Bisonettes were a lower species bred primarily for food. A smaller, tastier descendent of the long extinct bison, bisonettes had no discernable form of communication, had been proclaimed soulless (and delicious!) by the Royal Council and were easy to raise and process on the harsh coastal land. Before long, there was a Helena’s on just about every corner of every district.

That night, Vianca had seemed impressed with Manfred’s hearty appetite and came over to say hello. But her latest actions made Manfred realize just how little he knew about her.

“Maybe I just had sucker written on my forehead.” He cursed his luck. Falling for another goddamned witch.

On their third date, most of which was spent in bed, Vianca told Manfred about a vision she had.

“Madame Chancellor will lead all of our local species into extinction. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. She may not do it with evil in her heart, but it WILL happen.”

Over breakfast, she shared her plan with Manfred, revealing a crate of beautiful green apples on the counter.

“Aren’t they something?” Vianca held and admired them like they were fine jewels.

“Are those real?” Plant-based fruit was extremely rare, and had become a luxury of the super rich.

“I pulled some strings. We’re going to deliver these to the Chancellor. Once she eats them, we can begin to control her decisions.”

Vianca asked Manfred to procure a submarine and position it just off the coast near the Royal Grounds. He was well connected for a mortal, and in an age where sorcery had long trumped military might, finding a vacant submarine wasn’t that hard. In a week’s time, Manfred had the vessel in place, and under his command.

He assumed the sub would be used as a base, for surveillance. So he was shocked when Vianca, with no warning, shrunk the submarine and them along with it, maneuvered it up and out of the water, and glided through the air toward the Royal Palace. Vianca gave a hearty laugh at the success of this complicated spell. But as this new, tiny air sub zipped through one of the Palace’s open windows, Manfred began to panic. He grabbed Vianca by the throat, thinking she had tricked him into some misguided suicide mission. She struggled to steer the vessel as best she could, through the long Palace hallway and into its dining room.

Just seconds from impact, she shoved Manfred hard, and broke free of him, but in doing so, missed her target. Instead of landing on the surface of one of her own apples and coming to rest, they saw a flash of orange, then found themselves crashing and slicing through thick layers of pithy white tentacles, and sinking into a blinding, pulpy swamp of sticky sweet orange. The sub’s power failed, and they were left in dark silence.

--

Many hours passed. In the sub’s dark, cramped quarters, Manfred barely recognized Vianca. Not because of the darkness, but because her face was so sunken. She was dying. Vianca had not braced for the impact of the sub’s crash. Her internal injuries were severe, and her powers useless. All her bravado was gone.

She whispered.

“Manfred, I have something to tell you. I am the Bisonette Witch.”

In the early days of the bisonette feeding frenzy, a witch had appeared before the Royal Council, claiming that bisonettes did in fact have a language, were an Upper Species and needed freeing from their fate. News of this witch spread quickly. She had lived among the bisonettes, she said, and would translate on their behalf. The Council denied her claims, and dismissed the witch as a kook.

“Wait, you’re a witch, AND a vegetarian?” Manfred hung his head, disgusted.

Vianca continued.

“We were going to become the Chancellor, take her body over, and free my bisonettes.”

Manfred’s stomach instinctively growled. “We?”

“I needed help, Manfred. My powers can only do so much.”

“I see that now. So were you just gonna kill me once you’d taken her?”

Even in the darkness, Manfred could tell that Vianca had looked away, ashamed of the truth.

“What about those apples you gave her?” He was desperate, reaching for a shred of hope.

“My spells won’t have the effect we could have had, inside her. I’m afraid we’re much like the bisonettes now. Waiting to be eaten.”

Inside the pungent pulp of the orange, Manfred tried to ignore the smell of citrus and death. He silently cursed Vianca and wracked his brain for a new idea, any solution he hadn’t considered.

Outside the thick walls of the orange, someone else was thinking too.

The chef at the Royal Palace eyed the enormous bowl of fruit on the dining room table, wondering what to serve with the bisonette rolls that were just coming off the fire. The answer came just as his gaze rested on an unusually large orange.

“Mimosas.”