by Patrick Adkins<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jay lived in a slumped beige duplex just past the Watershed Glen train tracks\u2014a place that looked like it had been built in one frantic day and forgotten the next. Mold ghosted the air vents. The front step clung to the doorway like a scab\u2014too tender to tear away without drawing blood. Inside, a secondhand couch sagged under the weight of mildew and old bourbon. Jay had never tasted liquor that cost over thirty dollars, and even then, it was expensive in the way an oil drum is expensive\u2014by volume, not value. Morgan, his girlfriend, sold weed from the bathroom vanity, calling it \u201csmall-batch botanical work\u201d like she was distilling artisanal gin. But there was nothing small batch about it. Morgan got her weed from some old redneck who lived off Pauli’s Creek, and she always smelled like sweat and linen after every re-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jay dropped out of Tideland Coast College twice\u2014once for not showing up, once because he forgot he was enrolled. His memory wasn\u2019t bad, just badly applied. He had a habit of drifting, sealing himself off from the world, its clutter, and the parade of assholes pretending to search for answers. Most days he lay on the floor in busted cargo shorts, watching closed-captioned cooking competitions. He didn\u2019t cook. Barely ate. But there was a strange comfort in watching people pretend food mattered\u2014like those assholes again, only these had found the answers, crushing them into pesto or shaving them into consomm\u00e9, feeding envy into every crevice of Jay\u2019s molars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Morgan kept the machine wheezing along. She\u2019d vanish for hours and return smelling like spearmint, sweat, and car upholstery. She once handed Jay a joint she dubbed Savannah Fog, promised it would \u201creset his perception.\u201d He coughed for ten minutes and felt the same\u2014just wetter. Jay didn\u2019t think his perception needed any sort of calibration, but then again, maybe that was precisely the issue Morgan was talking about. So Jay just sat there. His cargo short seams bursting with ambition, and his lungs\u2014heavy with intention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then came the clementines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It started one limp Sunday at the Old Ashe Market, a half-collapsed farmer\u2019s stand behind the ruins of a bowling alley off Highway 601. Jay had walked there on instinct, afraid if he didn\u2019t leave the house, he\u2019d dissolve fully into the upholstery or be swallowed by his cargo shorts, hands first. His phone was dead. Morgan was hosting a \u201cMeditative Edibles\u201d seminar in what had been a Chinese buffet. That\u2019s where he saw them\u2014clementines in a dented bin, left too long in the sun. Wrinkled, concave, their skin puckered like drowned hands. A few were split at the seams, leaking pale juice that pooled in the corners of the metal like sweat in a fever dream. Mold had begun to spider across their rinds\u2014green-gray and delicate, like frost with a secret. One was almost beautiful in its ruin, furred over with a lacey bloom that seemed to pulse gently in the heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He stared, not in disgust, but with a quiet ache, as if the fruit had whispered something only he could hear. Something about being forgotten. Something about softening slowly while the world sped on. He felt it twist in his ribs. A kinship. He took two. No one stopped him. Nobody wanted them. At home, he placed them in the bathtub. Not tossed\u2014placed. Gentle, like they were sacred or broken. He sat on the floor, half-pulled the curtain, killed the light. The fruit didn\u2019t glow or hum or rot in fast-forward. It just was\u2014softening, dimming, becoming. And that was enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He went back the next week. Stole five, then ten. By September, the tub held a heap of sunburned ghosts. Some sagged open. Others wept syrupy tears. A few bloomed with fine green mold, delicate as lace. The air turned syrup-thick\u2014swampy and sweet like perfume worn too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Morgan eventually noticed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou running an experiment?\u201d she asked, folding a hoodie that didn\u2019t belong to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jay shrugged. \u201cI\u2019m keeping track of time,\u201d he said. \u201cSort of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She nodded, handed him a bowl of her bathroom weed, and asked if he wanted to try float therapy in Grimwood. Jay felt like telling her he had been floating and that he just wanted to be grounded, but just as he was about to express this, he was interrupted by a hollow knocking on the door. Mr. Wheeler. The other half of the duplex. Mid-seventies, maybe more. Always in a faded fishing hat, always cradling a plastic pitcher of sun tea, even on cloudy days. He knocked slow, like he was checking for a pulse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou growing rot in there?\u201d he asked one Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jay shrugged. \u201cSort of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDid the same. After Nam. Kept peaches in a cooler till they split like hearts. Needed to see something that didn\u2019t lie.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then he turned and walked off, slow as a sentence you don\u2019t want to hear the end of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After that, Wheeler started leaving things on the porch. A cigarette lighter with a dolphin sticker. A cassette labeled STORM SERMON 1993<\/em>. A crumpled lily wrapped in foil. Jay left clementines in return\u2014always soft, always bruised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then he found the one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tucked behind a box of collapsing squash at the market. Small. Firm. Flawless. No bruise. No puncture. It sat in his hand with the weight of something that knew it had been found. He placed it atop the mountain in the tub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And waited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A day. Then three. Then ten. The others rotted as usual, sinking into themselves like wet lungs. This one didn\u2019t blink. Didn\u2019t sag. Held its shape like a lie. Jay started waking with orange shadows beneath his eyes. Quit watching the Food Network. His dreams swam with pulpy suns, sticky hands, citrus pulp pressed like communion wafers against his tongue. Morgan said he whispered in his sleep: \u201cIt hasn\u2019t died yet.\u201d<\/em> And \u201cI think it\u2019s waiting.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Then one morning, a note slid under the door. Crinkled. Orange-stained. Neat, narrow handwriting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t trust what stays the same.<\/em> Jay stepped out, watched Wheeler kneeling in his hydrangeas, whispering into the dirt. He didn\u2019t ask. Didn\u2019t want to know. That night, Jay told Morgan he was leaving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLeaving Watershed Glen?\u201d she asked. \u201cOr, like, leaving?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cBoth?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOkay,\u201d she said, flicking lavender paint across a rolling tray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jay stepped outside, rolled something\u2014a whisper of Savannah Fog, maybe. Or just paper and hope. The world leaned sideways. The sky turned a sick gold. He reached into his pocket. The clementine was still there. Dense. Untouched.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n As he passed Wheeler\u2019s door, the old man was digging again. Elbows deep. Humming. Jay didn\u2019t stop. Didn\u2019t look back. But he heard him\u2014Mr. Wheeler, muttering into the soil:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSome things rot. Some things wait for you to rot instead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Jay kept walking, unsure if the fruit was a miracle or a trap\u2014 Patrick Adkins was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. He now lives in by Patrick Adkins Jay lived in a slumped beige duplex just past the Watershed Glen train tracks\u2014a place that looked like it had been built in one frantic day and forgotten the next. Mold ghosted the air vents. The front step clung to the doorway like a scab\u2014too tender to tear away without drawing blood. Inside, a secondhand couch sagged under the weight of mildew and old bourbon. Jay had never tasted liquor that cost over thirty dollars, and even then, it was expensive in the way an oil drum is expensive\u2014by volume, not value. Morgan, his girlfriend, sold weed from the bathroom vanity, calling it \u201csmall-batch botanical work\u201d like she was distilling artisanal gin. But there was nothing small batch about it. Morgan got her weed from some old redneck who lived off Pauli’s Creek, and she always smelled like sweat and linen after every re-up. Jay dropped out of Tideland Coast College twice\u2014once for not showing up, once because he forgot he was enrolled. His memory wasn\u2019t bad, just badly applied. He had a habit of drifting, sealing himself off from the world, its clutter, and the parade of assholes pretending to search for answers. Most days he lay on the floor in busted cargo shorts, watching closed-captioned cooking competitions. He didn\u2019t cook. Barely ate. But there was a strange comfort in watching people pretend food mattered\u2014like those assholes again, only these had found the answers, crushing them into pesto or shaving them into consomm\u00e9, feeding envy into every crevice of Jay\u2019s molars. Morgan kept the machine wheezing along. She\u2019d vanish for hours and return smelling like spearmint, sweat, and car upholstery. She once handed Jay a joint she dubbed Savannah Fog, promised it would \u201creset his perception.\u201d He coughed for ten minutes and felt the same\u2014just wetter. Jay didn\u2019t think his perception needed any sort of calibration, but then again, maybe that was precisely the issue Morgan was talking about. So Jay just sat there. His cargo short seams bursting with ambition, and his lungs\u2014heavy with intention. Then came the clementines. It started one limp Sunday at the Old Ashe Market, a half-collapsed farmer\u2019s stand behind the ruins of a bowling alley off Highway 601. Jay had walked there on instinct, afraid if he didn\u2019t leave the house, he\u2019d dissolve fully into the upholstery or be swallowed by his cargo shorts, hands first. His phone was dead. Morgan was hosting a \u201cMeditative Edibles\u201d seminar in what had been a Chinese buffet. That\u2019s where he saw them\u2014clementines in a dented bin, left too long in the sun. Wrinkled, concave, their skin puckered like drowned hands. A few were split at the seams, leaking pale juice that pooled in the corners of the metal like sweat in a fever dream. Mold had begun to spider across their rinds\u2014green-gray and delicate, like frost with a secret. One was almost beautiful in its ruin, furred over with a lacey bloom that seemed to pulse gently in the heat. He stared, not in disgust, but with a quiet ache, as if the fruit had whispered something only he could hear. Something about being forgotten. Something about softening slowly while the world sped on. He felt it twist in his ribs. A kinship. He took two. No one stopped him. Nobody wanted them. At home, he placed them in the bathtub. Not tossed\u2014placed. Gentle, like they were sacred or broken. He sat on the floor, half-pulled the curtain, killed the light. The fruit didn\u2019t glow or hum or rot in fast-forward. It just was\u2014softening, dimming, becoming. And that was enough. He went back the next week. Stole five, then ten. By September, the tub held a heap of sunburned ghosts. Some sagged open. Others wept syrupy tears. A few bloomed with fine green mold, delicate as lace. The air turned syrup-thick\u2014swampy and sweet like perfume worn too long. Morgan eventually noticed. \u201cYou running an experiment?\u201d she asked, folding a hoodie that didn\u2019t belong to her. Jay shrugged. \u201cI\u2019m keeping track of time,\u201d he said. \u201cSort of.\u201d She nodded, handed him a bowl of her bathroom weed, and asked if he wanted to try float therapy in Grimwood. Jay felt like telling her he had been floating and that he just wanted to be grounded, but just as he was about to express this, he was interrupted by a hollow knocking on the door. Mr. Wheeler. The other half of the duplex. Mid-seventies, maybe more. Always in a faded fishing hat, always cradling a plastic pitcher of sun tea, even on cloudy days. He knocked slow, like he was checking for a pulse. \u201cYou growing rot in there?\u201d he asked one Tuesday. Jay shrugged. \u201cSort of.\u201d \u201cDid the same. After Nam. Kept peaches in a cooler till they split like hearts. Needed to see something that didn\u2019t lie.\u201d Then he turned and walked off, slow as a sentence you don\u2019t want to hear the end of. After that, Wheeler started leaving things on the porch. A cigarette lighter with a dolphin sticker. A cassette labeled STORM SERMON 1993. A crumpled lily wrapped in foil. Jay left clementines in return\u2014always soft, always bruised. Then he found the one. Tucked behind a box of collapsing squash at the market. Small. Firm. Flawless. No bruise. No puncture. It sat in his hand with the weight of something that knew it had been found. He placed it atop the mountain in the tub. And waited. A day. Then three. Then ten. The others rotted as usual, sinking into themselves like wet lungs. This one didn\u2019t blink. Didn\u2019t sag. Held its shape like a lie. Jay started waking with orange shadows beneath his eyes. Quit watching the Food Network. His dreams swam with pulpy suns, sticky hands, citrus pulp pressed like communion wafers against his tongue. Morgan said he whispered in his sleep: \u201cIt hasn\u2019t died yet.\u201d And \u201cI think it\u2019s waiting.\u201d Then one morning, a note slid under the door. Crinkled. Orange-stained. Neat, narrow handwriting: Don\u2019t trust<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-18-2025"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/em>The man next door once buried something that wasn\u2019t fruit.<\/em>
<\/em>\u2014W.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
but knowing, finally,
that it was time to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
Aiken, South Carolina with his wife, Dr. Chloe Adkins, and their son, Ambrose. His
writing often blends the familiar and the surreal, exploring the strange edges of ordinary
life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"