My first thought was “oh, that’s weird.”
The offending fruit was sitting in front of me, still on my cutting board. The knife I had used to slice it in half lay beside it, set aside as I examined what had been originally slated to be my breakfast.
The whole thing is because of that darn newspaper article. “Eating a half of a grapefruit for breakfast is only ninety calories, and gives you a burst of vitamins to start the day off right!” It had popped into my mind as I wandered up and down the aisles of my corner supermarket, and I figured it was worth a shot.
The article had included a lovely picture of half of a grapefruit, sliced open. The thousands of little tiny packets of juice inside the open grapefruit had seemed to glitter in the picture beneath the headline of the article.
And I had to admit, I’d been looking forward when I woke up this morning to taking a big spoonful of that grapefruit in my fridge.
I leaned forward, poking at the two pieces of fruit on my cutting board. I was cautious, worried that something would happen to my finger. The outside of the grapefruit had looked totally normal – yellow-pink, covered in little dimples, slightly squishy beneath my fingers.
The inside of this fruit, however, did not look like the picture in the article.
It looked like some sort of black and white mesh.
And it got worse. As I tilted the fruit back and forth, rolling it around on the cutting board, that mesh shifted, and I realized that the whole fruit was hollow; that mesh was curved to the inside of the two hemispheres. There was literally nothing inside this grapefruit.
But it had felt right! It had been heavy, cold, a little wet with condensation! What in the world was going on?
I picked up the knife, slowly lowering it down into the open grapefruit half. The knife didn’t seem to encounter any resistance as it entered, no pressure as it slid into what should be the interior of the grapefruit. I kept on lowering the blade, closer and closer to that stark black and white mesh.
The tip of the knife touched the mesh. And then the whole knife flashed into nothing but an outline of white lines.
I dropped it with a gasp. The thing still felt like a knife in my hand, still hit the cutting board with a clatter. But it no longer looked like a knife. It looked like a knife-shaped black hole in the world, outlined by lines of white that showed its curves and ridges. And it wasn’t changing back.
Over the next half hour, my work forgotten, I cautiously touched other things to the inside of the grapefruit. Car keys. A carton of nearly expired half and half. A rather rusty whisk that I had managed to free from where it was holding a drawer shut. My refrigerator.
Each item instantly blinked into a black-and-white frame.
I sat back on the kitchen table, staring down at the half of a fruit that was causing me so much consternation. I had set it on a plate, perhaps in a vain hope that it would transform back. It wasn’t doing so. I reached up and scratched at the back of my head.
My thoughts were interrupted by a meowing sound. I glanced up, and cursed under my breath. The neighbor’s damn orange tabby had somehow climbed into my apartment again! The dang thing kept on sneaking in, where it would go running around knocking over all my things. I would have to catch it, probably enduring several scratches in the process, and then would haul it back upstairs, where I wouldn’t even receive a thank-you for my actions.
My eyes flicked from the cat, to the grapefruit, and back. An idea began to form in my mind. A wicked, brilliant idea.
“Here, kitty kitty kitty…”
Missing Brains 