Careful What you Eat

Sam is too hungry to resist. 300-word flash

Careful What you Eat

Sam had been climbing the mountain all day. He was in search of the famed Fortune apple tree that was said to grow at the top.
“I sure could use good fortune,” he told himself.
He was so hungry. He’d already eaten what he’d brought with him and was out of water.
“I can’t stop now, I’m almost there!” he kept saying. Still, he climbed, with his mind’s eye on the prize. With his last strength, he reached the top. But he couldn’t see a tree. He fell to his knees in despair.
Then he saw it. Barely two feet tall, nearly leafless and bearing only one apple. Dragging himself along, he kept moving forward. Completely exhausted, he reached toward the fruit as far as he could.

Sam grasped the apple. Salivating from the sweet smell, he brought it to his mouth and bit it. A huge fly flew out of it into his mouth. Quickly closing it, he tried to crunch it with the apple.
“Nothing wrong with a little protein in your food,” he thought. But the fly would not be chewed alive. Sam, at last, concluded he’d have to swallow it whole. He continued to bite off pieces of the apple and chew them down. When his throat was lubricated enough with the juice from the apple, he was able to swallow the fly whole.

Refreshed, Sam carried the core of the apple with him back down the mountain. While he did the trek back down, he kept hearing and feeling a loud buzzing. It seemed to be coming from inside him. It then occurred to him, the apple tree was simply a Fortune tree, not a good fortune tree. But he still kept the core to plant, in case he was wrong.