Apple Peel

A green-wigged witch and a skeleton with fluorescent painted bones walked into the centre of the circle, each holding a basket. The witch put a hand in her basket and drew out an apple, shiny, red and green.
The apple from ‘Snow White’, Dodo thought. Safe on one side but poisoned on the other. She fought from shying away when the witch offered it to her. But it was just an apple. Just an ordinary apple. She took it.
Then the skeleton stood before her and dipped its fake finger bones into its own basket and drew out a knife. A huge, sharp knife. She gasped, but the skeleton began to laugh – a disquieting sight as its grinning jaws never moved – before turning the knife round and offering it to her handle first.
‘It’s a game,’ the ballerina told her, as she too took an apple and a knife. She sounded slightly exasperated at this teenager who was behaving more like a scared child than the actual children present. ‘You have to peel the apple all in one go, without breaking the peel. Then you throw the peel over your shoulder and it’ll show you the initial of the person you’re going to marry.’
‘Oh, that sounds like fun!’ said Dodo, even though she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to get married to anyone. You probably had to stop travelling through time and space if you got married, unless your husband or wife was incredibly understanding.
She began to peel her apple. The first time she tried, the knife slipped slightly halfway round and left her with a sadly short and limp piece of peel of no use to anyone. The witch, after tutting at the waste, was finally persuaded to let her have another piece of fruit.
The little ballerina, meanwhile, had finished hers in record time, the first of the girls to do so. She flung the long green strand over her shoulder, calling out, ‘Apple peel, please reveal, who will be my love!’
The other children shuffled over to look at the result. ‘It’s a T!’ they decided eventually.
The ballerina went off in ecstasies. ‘Maybe it’s Tommy! Or Timothy! Or Tony!’
Other girls completed their peeling and found out they would marry a D–, or an M–, or an S–. Dodo tried to block out their excited screams as she concentrated on her own task. Finally she had a single, unbroken spiral of apple peel.
Copying the others, she called out, ‘Apple peel, please reveal, who will be my love!’ and threw it over her shoulder. She turned round. And gasped.
The peel hadn’t landed in the shape of a letter. There, clearly in front of her, was an outline of a skull.
‘What is it?’ asked one of the others. ‘A weird sort of A, maybe?’
Dodo just shook her head, staring.
‘Maybe a Q gone a bit wrong?’ said another, sparking off an argument as to whether there were any boys’ names that began with Q.
But there was no way it was an A or a Q. It was quite clearly a skull, an impossibility of curves and shadows making a death’s head out of the single line, and she couldn’t understand why the children weren’t seeing it as she was.
Married to … death?
No. That made no sense.
Perhaps her future held no wedding, but only death?

***

Murder in the Dark, Tales of Terror