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The Fruits of

By Chelsea Davis

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They’d long since passed the point where road gave way to trail gave way to forest. Bright green ferns now rose to their knees. Around them, old-growth redwoods loomed forth. It had been like this for miles: only trees, ferns, the sweet scent of pine, and the two walkers, lost and silent.

At least, Amber was fairly sure they were lost. Anton’s navigational methods didn’t exactly inspire confidence. The gruff, stout man in a camo sweatshirt and buzzcut—both style choices that were, she now suspected, aspirational rather than markers of actual military service—barely ever paused to check his compass or beat-up map. Amber didn’t dare question him, though. He had a fragile ego and a short temper, a powder keg of a personality that had both scared and intrigued her when they’d first met behind Danny’s Pub last month. He’d told her, then, with a smug calm that made her breathe harder, that she had literally nothing to go on without him and his knowledge of the nightfruit. “Zilch. Zip,” he’d slurred in the bar alleyway, slashing his Miller from left to right in the universal gesture for “nothing.” His small eyes had shone watery in the red light of the bar sign above the back door. “Also, first hint of funny business and I’ll leave you out there. Don’t care how far we are from the road.” She’d nodded, handed him the cash, watched him count it.

At least it wasn’t dark out yet in the woods, she told herself, her boots sinking into damp soil again and again. Judging by the sun’s place in the sky, they still had two more hours of decent light. Two hours from now they would hopefully have found what they were looking for. And then it wouldn’t matter whether she could see well.

She exhaled and rubbed her temples in a gentle circle, trying to will away the headache that had settled between her eyes like fog. Her hands paused when she realized what she was doing. This had been Mom’s signature move, the world-weary forehead massage. Her mother had deployed it at the beginning of a long, pointless fight with Amber over politics (how a daughter of the twenty-first century could turn out more conservative than her mother, Mom had never been able to understand), or at the end of a long day of teaching surly eleventh-graders in Willits the names of various presidents whose policies had permanently fucked them over. Was the gesture one that she played for sympathy, or an unconscious tic that brought her real comfort? Amber never could decide. Mom’s life had been dismal, to be sure—hardscrabble, and riddled with self-proclaimed failures, none bigger than Amber herself—but she had also savored her own pitifulness, the way a child tongues a loose tooth.

The footsteps ahead of Amber had stopped. A few paces in front of her, Anton was resting one hand on an enormous redwood trunk, staring intently at its bark. As she approached, Amber glimpsed a design in the wood that he was studying. Against the background of mahogany bark, black smudges—burn marks?—outlined a human face, slightly larger than her own. The face was absent of expression and of gender, its eyes closed, as if in sleep. “Here we go,” Anton muttered, more to himself than to her.

He started walking again without waiting for Amber to respond, his pace brisker now. She took a last look at the face, its mysterious peace, then hustled so as not to lose sight of Anton. His navy-blue frame backpack was nearly swallowed by the trees already.

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It had been a gently cold evening in early November when Amber had realized something was well and truly wrong with Mom. Memory had long been the woman’s gift and vocation. As a child, Amber would sit transfixed as her mother recited for her, in response to some cruel scrap of national news, whole paragraphs from Beard and Du Bois and Zinn. We must not accept the memory of states as our own, Amber. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest….

In recent months, though, her mom had begun to forget things. She’d miss her weekend phone banking shift, or write the wrong date—off by a decade—on checks. More than once, she’d become confused while driving to school along the same route she’d taken since the ‘80s, insisting, through frustrated tears, that someone had changed the street signs. Amber had barely had time to notice, at first, overwhelmed by her own two jobs and by the bills and housework that her mother increasingly neglected. But one night at the dinner table, Mom had looked up suddenly, eyes blinking quickly, then narrowing as they took in Amber’s hunched-over presence: “Wh—who the hell are you?”

From then on, the memory slips became a plummet. Dressing was an ordeal. Mom rarely made it to the toilet. But there was no money for an in-home nurse, let alone a facility. So Amber quit her job at the flower shop, then her job at the restaurant. Her mother was her job, now. Even if Mom didn’t realize she was her Mom. Even if Mom looked at her only without recognition. Or with loathing.

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An hour further into the woods, the trees had grown smaller and denser, blocking out much of what little sunlight remained. The warbler trills that had broken the stillness every few seconds on the first three days of the trek had grown less and less frequent, then ceased altogether. Replacing the birdsong was a lower, darker sound: the steady hum of some insect, pressing in around them in hidden, unthinkable quantities. There was a new smell, too, growing stronger the further they walked. Something putrid-sweet, an earthy tang that reminded Amber of opening her mom’s backyard compost bin to dump fruit and eggshell scraps there. Amber didn’t want to think about the hot scent the heap must give off, now, after being left untended for eight months, how it must twitch constantly with crawling things that ate death.

Anton had slowed his near run to the pace of a heartbeat. As he walked, he scanned the trees around them with uncharacteristic attention, turning his head slowly from side to side. In the end, though, it was Amber who spotted it: another trunk with a face sketched onto it, about five feet to the right of the mostly straight line they’d been walking. This face’s eyes were closed, again, though the expression was less ambiguous this time. Its lips were drawn lightly upwards at their corners in a small, toothless smile.

Anton whooped and grinned back over his shoulder at Amber, his look of little-boy glee jarring after days of sullen machismo. “That’s the last one!” he shouted, veering slightly right towards the tree, then passing it. “C’mon, now!” Amber followed. As she passed the tree with the face markings, she felt a squelch under her right foot and paused to look down. Lifting her hiking boot, she saw a small gash of dark purple pulp on the dirt beneath it. There was slime on her shoe, in the same color. Nightfruit. Pressure rose in her throat. This was it. She was finally excited, herself. And also, she discovered, afraid. Deep down, she’d been assuming they wouldn’t actually find anything. That Anton was full of shit, like most of the barflies in her town, just a hustler finding an easy mark in a grieving daughter. But maybe there was some truth mixed in with the shit, this time.

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The last time she’d taken Mom to the town’s run-down ER, they’d had to strap her down with restraints on each wrist and ankle. Even this had taken three nurses to achieve. Mom had thrashed her frail, dry limbs against the men in a frantic dance, shrieking first be freed—late, she was late for work! And Amber was trying to kill her!—and then with nonsense words, and then without words at all. Sundowning, the on-call doctor had called it a few hours later, as Mom slept a chemical sleep nearby. He was clearly a transplant to Willits, clean-cut and youngish. Amber wondered idly how long he’d last here. “Happens all the time,” he’d told Amber, jerking his brows upwards and patting her shoulder in a gesture of comfort and dismissal.

Happens all the time, meaning, “happens to many people,” Amber thought the next day and she slowly walked Mom to their car in the hospital parking lot. But also meaning, “happens often, to your mother, now and for the rest of her life.” She kept one hand under Mom’s elbow and the other tightly gripped around the bottle of antipsychotics she’d picked up at the in-house pharmacy. As they reached the passenger’s side door of their car, Mom turned to look at the face of the person holding her arm and smiled faintly, politely.

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More and more of the black fruits littered the ground in front of Amber, forming their own kind of path in the absence of a manmade trail. The rank, sweet scent forced more of its fingers into her nostrils and mouth. She suppressed a gag and began to jog, her backpack straps jostling heavily on her shoulders. Fifty feet ahead, Anton had stopped again. He sank slowly to his knees. This time, he said nothing as she caught up with him. And as she joined him in kneeling, she understood why. Before them was the bush. Though only three feet wide, it was thick, thick with the nightfruit, clusters of berries peppering the emerald leaves. They were something like blackberries in shape, but unshining—and darker, so dark they seemed more to mark the absence of light than the presence of color. Like little black holes that sucked at the green around them.

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The day after their return from the ER, Amber slept deep and woke late to the sun in her eyes, smiling briefly at the rare luxury. Mom usually interrupted her sleep several times throughout the night, fears of her own bedroom’s dark corners driving her to seek the vague comfort of her daughter’s presence, or whoever she thought Amber happened to be that particular night. Last night the new pills must have been working their magic.

Amber stretched, sat up, and yanked sweats and a ratty t-shirt onto her ever-paler body. After walking to her mom’s room down the hall, she yelled, “Morning, Mom!” and rapped on the door. When no reply came, she repeated the greeting. Opening the door, she first saw the sideways bottle on the bedspread, its bright orange jarring against the muted grays and purples of the rest of the room. And then she saw her mother on her back in bed, unmoving, her mouth fixed open as if in speech, and her eyes fixed open, too.

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“Are you sure,” Anton said softly, his eyes still trained on the plant ahead. There was no question in his voice. Amber took a breath in through her mouth, trying to block her nasal passages as she did. Mom’s compost bin, Mom’s vomit, Mom’s shit-smeared bedsheets. “Yeah,” she exhaled. Anton carefully extended a hand to the bush and grasped a berry. With a small tug, it was free from its cluster, then in Amber’s hand.

Amber looked at the nightfruit, small and silent against her palm. “So you’re the little woman who made this Great War?” she chided it with a small grin. It was Mom’s favorite quote to share with her students when they learned about the Civil War. Although, as Mom never failed to point out to the rows of bored young faces, it wasn’t clear that Lincoln had actually spoken those words to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Likelier, some advisor who’d witnessed the meeting had mostly or completely invented the line, then conveyed it to some historian to be recorded as a permanent fiction.

She raised the berry to her nose, gave it a sniff. This was the source of the smell, alright. Then, before she could stop herself, she popped the thing in her mouth and began to chew. “Gah!” she blurted, wincing as the taste hit her tongue. She was eating roadkill; she was eating dung. A juicy wad of dung. She kept chewing. She swallowed. She panted. It was done.

Anton turned and looked at her, then, for a few beats, the longest gaze they’d shared for days. There was a new look in his eyes, almost gentle. He gave a short nod, pushed his hands down on his knees to stand, and walked quickly away, retracing the path they’d taken.

Wait.

He wasn’t going to stay?

How would she…?

“Wait,” she murmured, too surprised to move. His steps became softer, then vanished altogether.

The sun was setting. What little light had made its way through the tight foliage before was leaving, now. She wondered what it would feel like. A moment passed. What what would feel like? That what had been important to her, crucial to her, just moments ago. But now she found it hard to recall why, exactly, she was here. The fruit-laden bush in front of her seemed related, somehow. But she couldn’t be sure. She stood up from the ground and turned around. A trail of dark splotches led away from the bush. There was no real path, though. Just the wall of trees all around. And a smell—what the hell was that smell? Fear rose in her chest. Was she really all alone, in this strange place?

She tried to focus, to remember anything that could get her out of here. Her back and underarms were damp; there had been exertion of some kind. And a nasty but exciting presence—the image of a man, buzzed head and scowling face, swam upwards in her memory. Had he hurt her? Or could he help her? He might still be close. “Hello!” she shouted into the forest. “Is there anybody there?” She rubbed her temples, willing her mind further into the past, but the past slid back as quickly as she ran to meet it, a line of surf retreating from the shore.

Suddenly, another face was there, rising in her mind. Ratty gray hair, falling to the shoulders. The jade eyes slitted, the mouth screwed up in suspicion. Mom, Amber thought, slowly. This she was almost sure of. That’s my Mom. The person’s mouth began to speak. Of disappointment; of disapproval. Never did I think, it hissed. Everything I fought for. Amber felt tears on her cheeks. But now Mom’s face was changing. Wrinkles and sag were pulled upwards, into smooth skin. The hair grew thick, and brightened to the colors of a fire. The eyes creased now not with hate, but with affection. “Amber,” Mom whispered, the words a caress. “My baby.” Amber’s chest cramped with sudden joy. Why this dampness on her cheeks? Her mother loved her. Had always loved her.

Soon, Amber would forget the words for everything. Soon her heart would forget to beat. She would lie down in the darkness. And on her face would be the smile of the silence of the trees.

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Host Commentary

PseudoPod, Episode 977 for May 23rd, 2025.

The Fruits Of by Chelsea Davis

Narrated by Dani Daly; hosted by Kat Day; audio by… Chelsea Davis

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Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing okay. I’m Kat, Deputy Editor at PseudoPod, your host for this week, and I’m excited to tell you that for this week we have The Fruits Of by our very own Chelsea Davis. This story in originally appeared in the online Spring 2024 edition of Club Chicxulub

Author bio:
Chelsea Davis is a writer and critic from San Francisco. Her fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in Vastarien, Reactor, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. She is the audio producer for PseudoPod. You can read and listen to more of her work on her website, chelseamdavis.net.

Narrator bio:
Dani Daly says she’s a jack of many trades, master of none. I don’t believe her, because she’s a damn fine narrator. But, anyway, she loves the rogue life, so it’s all ok with her. You can hear stories she’s narrated on the first four Escape Artists podcasts, StarShipSofa, Glittership, and Asimov’s Science Fiction podcast. Visit her on Bluesky under her alias danooli.

 

Before we go further, this story deals with some difficult themes, including death of a family member and suicide. If that’s going to be difficult for you, come back next week. We’ll be back…

… But now we have a story for you, and we promise you: it’s true…

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ENDCAP

Well done, you’ve survived another story. What did you think of The Fruits Of, by Chelsea Davis? If you’re a Patreon subscriber, we encourage you to pop over to our Discord channel and tell us.

 

My Nan died from Alzheimer’s, in 2015. It’s a strange illness. Most things have a start point, somewhere. A line where you can say, “they weren’t ill, then. That was before they were ill.” But with Alzheimer’s you find yourself constantly thinking backwards. Wondering about that time they didn’t notice something, or got something wrong, and then you didn’t think much of it but now, in hindsight… “was that it? Had it started even then?”

And when it’s a blood relative, well, you can’t help wondering, when you can’t remember a word, or find yourself doing something out of character, “is this it? Is it coming for me, now?”

And you don’t know, of course. It’s probably better that way.

…

The opening lines of this piece are ominous:

“They’d long since passed the point where road gave way to trail gave way to forest.”

Whenever I see a forest or woods in a story, I immediately start thinking about psychology. Dark forests – not unlike another favourite of ours, the deep ocean – often represent things hidden in the darkness of our subconscious, unrecognisable sounds, scents and feelings. Confusion, fear. Monsters.

And here that’s set up from the very beginning. We’ve left the nice, clear road, Davis tells us. We’re not even on the less orderly but still straightforward trail. No. We’re in the forest now. Two walkers, lost and silent.

Is it two? Is Anton real? It’s hard to be sure. He seems it, at the start. But there’s something about his “powder keg” personality. The way he wears his clothes like a mask. His spotting of unfamiliar faces in the trees…

The mention of Harriet Beecher Stowe also caught my eye. She was an American author and abolitionist. Here, we have the line that Lincoln, reputably, probably, spoke:

“So you’re the little woman who made this Great War”

We ran a story by Beecher Stowe a year ago, by the way, episode 916. Check it out. But back to this story…

After Amber’s eaten the nightfruit, Anton just walks away. Vanishes.

And Amber sinks into confusion, her memory broken.

Or had that already happened?

I couldn’t help wondering… is she in a real forest? Is Anton a man she met behind Danny’s Pub? Were the faces in the tree trunks… just faces carved in wood? Is the nightfruit, fruit?

Or is she… somewhere else…

With someone else…

Swallowing something else?

We don’t know. We don’t know.

It’s probably better that way.

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Terrifying and thought-provoking work from our audio producer, Chelsea. Thank you, Chelsea, for sharing your story with us.

Now, onto the subject of subscribing and support: PseudoPod is funded by you, our listeners, and we’re formally a non-profit. One-time donations are gratefully received and much appreciated, but what really makes a difference is subscribing. A $5 monthly Patreon donation gives us stability and allows us to keep coming back, week after week.

If you can, please go to pseudopod.org and sign up by clicking on “feed the pod”. If you have any questions about how to support EA and ways to give, please reach out to us at donations@escapeartists.net.

Those of you that already support us: thank you! We literally couldn’t do it without you! And just a reminder that if you are signing up as a new Patreon, you should go through a browser – including one on actually ON your phone – it’ll be cheaper than if you go through the Apple Store app in particular.

And, if you can’t afford to support us financially, then please consider leaving reviews of our episodes, or generally talking about them on whichever form of social media you find yourself… consuming… this week. We have a Bluesky account: find us at @pseudopod.org. If you like merch, you can also support us by buying goodies from the Escape Artists Voidmerch store. The link is in various places, including our latest social media posts.

PseudoPod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Download and listen to the episode on any device you like, but don’t change it or sell it. Theme music is by permission of Anders Manga.

 

Next week we have… Where the Brass Band Plays, by Katie McIvor. You’re going to love this one. That’s the way to do it! (That will make sense when you listen, I promise!)

 

And finally, PseudoPod, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, know…

“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”

See you soon, folks, take care, and… put down the nightfruit.