Daily Writing Prompt: List your top 5 favorite fruits.

Rays of agreeable sunlight danced through the air, gushing into the idle kitchen. Flecks of white paint from a tired, wooden window casement were doing their best to land in the sink and poison the water. Beneath the sink a twenty year old bottle of bleach had given up it’s virginity alkalinity. A partially opened canister of Comet lent its scent to the dank potpourri of a dirty place while collecting ant carcasses. The cabinet doors enclosing that toxic netherworld bore the scratch marks of Gibson the Beagle. Who was hastily buried under the Red Mulberry tree in the backyard after a few false-starts (tree roots). From which tree, squadron’s of birds would happily denude it’s fruit, pooping freely upon the neighbor’s patio furniture.

This typically elicited curses from the bombing victims, who happened to be the HOA president (- east neighbor), and the HOA treasurer (- abutting neighbor) respectively. Which is exactly what the octogenarian owners of the Mulberry do when they find out their better half has eaten the other’s fresh fruit. Contrary to remaining a completely normal, if boring, marital disagreement, to the shock of Carl Linnaeus (the founder of modern taxonomy, or naming of organisms; for those of you struggling to keep up), the human conflict embroiled the fruit!

“I sayeth! This is highly irregular!” A proud pineapple sitting on a white formica countertop said to a pair of dowdy looking strawberries. Who had somehow ascended to the pineapple from their lowly spot occupying a Driscoll’s ‘Sweetest Batch’ container in the refrigerator’s fruit drawer.

“Why he be talking like dat?” The leaner one asked of his partner.

“Look, we be knowin wut u did to our friens da bwewberries. Jus own it maan!” Said the plumper one.

“Verily, methinks thou art not privy to the tidings of lofty perches as thou seest I am seated upon! Wherefore has’t thou cometh? Wh’re doth thee cometh from? Shalt I, a bromeliad both’r with m’re access’ry fruits? Hence from me scourges!”

The proper pineapple was indeed innocent of the murders involving three kiwis a few days earlier. However, he now stood accused by two ill-intentioned aggregate* accessory fruits of murdering some blueberries. After the pineapple’s monologue, the strawberries realized they wouldn’t be able to subdue the pineapple by themselves if they were to escalate their grievance. So they scooted across the stained formica in search of some muscle from the knife block. It would be remiss of me not to mention a slight, barely perceivable smattering of dark blue juice on the lower skin of the pineapple’s bulbous rump…

“You want us to do what?! D’ya hear this boys?” Said a largish cleaver.

“Ha! Who do they think we are?! Hitknives for hire?”– exclaimed the paring knife.

–“got me messed up man!” uttered the utility knife, partially sticking out of his slot, giving his words a bit more of an edge.

“He kill’d our FRIENS! Why wont any of yous HELP US???!!!” This from the plumpest, frumpiest looking one. Who suddenly noticed his partner, the lean strawberry, assuming the Toy Story slump, setting back on his side, gently rolling in an arc.

Because the hearing and vision of both Mr. and Mrs. Ainscough was failing, the fruit in their kitchen were able to animate when they pleased. Except if either human was in the immediate vicinity, as Mr. Ainscough was now. He never questioned the curious locations of the fruit in the kitchen, attributing the misplacement to his absent-minded wife, or grandson. Reaching for the knife block, Mr. A removed the paring knife and picked up the nearest strawberry, readying to slice it.

A bunch of bananas looked on from a bamboo bowl, with ripe satisfaction as the paring knife bisected lean, red complainant 1. Then plump, red complainant 2. It seems fate intervened to dispatch the pineapple’s dirty work. This was just as well, thought the collective of bananas. The treaty of housefly bound the bunch to their bromeliad neighbor in an agreement where hostile acts against one of the members was considered to be a mutual offense. Had it not been for the intervention of the male Ainscough, the bunch could’ve been called to the side of their ally in the event of hostilities.

As it stood the Driscoll’s strawberry container bore no more threats. It was empty. Next to it was a container full of embittered blueberries. But it was commonly-known that blueberries were cowards. So everything in the kitchen returned to normal. Fruit flies gorged upon the fetid kiwi skins. The scalps of the dowdy strawberries laid at the base of the pineapple, who himself was still uneaten. Probably because there was a piece of twine wrapped around his midriff, bearing a small note. Neither of the Ainscoughs remembered who put it there. In Mrs. Ainscough’s arthritic scrawl, the note read “DO NOT EAT.”

As the sun was setting, and shadows lengthened over the Red Mulberry tree in the backyard, an irate HOA president was sending an updated schedule of the forthcoming HOA meeting to his secretary. Mr. Ainscough was in his recliner, drooling over his PGA tour polo, careless of the conflict in his kitchen and the lives that it claimed. It was then, as the day was ending and mankind was reconciling another day of life, that Mrs. Ainscough found the remnants of her strawberries on the counter.

“ROBERT!!!” And so she yelled like a demon, while he pretended to be dead. Though, on second thought, someone should probably double-check on that.

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(Btw, can we agree that this is a weak writing prompt? I mean, seriously?? Write your top 5 favorite fruits?

-hold on, I may have mistakenly subscribed to WordPress for Kindergartners)