The apple rolled across the shack’s dusty floor, its body vermiculate and emaciated. It tucked into the corner of the room near a large mouse-hole. Not long after, a rotund mouse padded out of the hole. Circling around behind the sickly fruit, the rodent reared up on its hind legs and walked the apple back into the dark of the mouse-hole.

A violent squeal shot out of the hole followed by louder and louder cries until there was silence. Rolling back into the light, the once pale red of the apple was now an ashen gray. Tiny hairs peppered its skin. In its journey across the floor its stem became pink and fleshy before flopping out as a full tail. The apple’s roll turned into a tumble and from the chaos emerged a young mouse where once there had been a very animate fruit. The creature squeezed through a tiny gap in the shack’s wooden wall.