Poison
A Flash Fiction by Sarah McPherson
She bit into the apple, and I knew I had won. This girl to whom everything seemed to come so easily, felled finally by ripe red skin and crisp flesh hiding the poison I needled into its core.
She bit into the apple, and I remembered every biting word from her youth. I was expected to mother her; a child already half grown, who resented me instantly for everything I was not. Her father—my husband—urged me to be patient with her, but I was barely more than a girl myself and no-one had patience with me.
She bit into the apple, and in her half-closed eyes, her softly parted lips, her dark hair, I saw the image of the wife who came before me; so loved, so missed. The picture of her mother he insisted we keep hanging in our bedchamber, that I begged him to take down, that his eyes lingered on even as we lay spent side by side after our lovemaking.
She bit into the apple, and in that moment I knew where the poison really lay, and I cried out ‘No!’, and dashed it from her hand, crushed it beneath my boot.
Author: Sarah McPherson loves folk tales and myths and finding the weird in the everyday. Her flash fiction has been widely published, nominated for Best Small Fictions, longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50, and selected for Best Microfiction 2021. Find her on Bluesky as @summermoth.bsky.social or at https://theleadedwindow.blogspot.com/