Melon Foolishness

Occasionally I am seized by strange unwholesome motivation to accomplish some odd goal. Today, I bought a watermelon, and as I carried all 15 pounds of it home, I was taken once again by some unknowable, eldritch need. It was a warm morning when the subtle masters of the universe decided I would eat this entire watermelon, and it was a slightly warmer afternoon when I finally put down my spoon. This is my story.

It began with a knife, a spoon, and a bed. I carried the melon to my room, away from the prying eyes of neighbors. I couldn’t have curious heads popping through my window; I couldn’t have witnesses to what would come. I set the great sphere on my bed, the only surface I trusted could manage its weight. Then I clumsily set about sawing open the melon top  like a virgin cannibal thrilled for their first taste of brain. I scraped my spoon along the inside of the removed melon-skull cap. My first taste: watery, I bet that’s where the name came from.

15 minutes in and I was a few inches into the meat, and I relished the red viscera with every scoop. I sat cross legged on my bed, melon cradled between my legs, and I feasted. No lights were on. This was not something I wanted anyone–even me–to see.

2 hours in and the world held only me and a wet hoard of desiccated melon in a warm green shell. I had moved from my bed and was sitting on the floor lethargically scooping more melon into me. I think some deep part of my psyche wanted my body to be equal parts melon and person, to be a sick hybrid of man and fruit. I obliged these untoward desires and ate more. The melon and I were alone in the world. It was rapidly departing by the spoonful, and I was just as quickly becoming disgusted with my wretched ambition. 

My time with the melon ended like all my relationships: anticlimactically and with me on the floor begging an empty room not to look at me. What remained of the melon was a listless, empty vessel, a corpse, barren as a student’s wallet. And me: I don’t like what I became. I was driven by an unholy need to eviscerate this melon, and nothing could stop me. I will go forward with the weight of this knowledge hanging on my head. There is, I think, no hope for people like me, the melon-eaters. Monsters.