The Unfinished Fruit

Writer's block can be avoided with a Kumidillo as a muse.

The Unfinished Fruit
         Ryan McAllister had the sort of talent that made his high‑school English teacher sigh with both admiration and mild terror. In his sophomore year he’d turned a three‑page essay about the existential dread of a cafeteria tray into a piece that actually got a B+, a triumph in a school where the word “B” usually meant “barely passing.” Since then, the boy who once made a teacher weep for the misery of a soggy sandwich has become a one‑man literary juggernaut; if he could ever get past the starting line.
         The truth, as narrated by the omniscient narrator who knows more about Ryan’s inner monologue than his own mother, is that Ryan has started seventeen different stories and finished none. Not even a paragraph. Not a single ending. He is the sort of writer who can conjure a dystopian city where rain tastes like lost sock lint, a medieval romance where a dragon prefers poetry over fire‑breathing, a sci‑fi thriller about sentient vending machines, and a cozy mystery in which the butler is actually a sentient cactus, yet each manuscript sits on his desk like an unpaid intern, waiting for a manager that never shows up.
         When the last of his seventeen ideas finally began to gather dust beside a half‑filled bottle of cold brew, his girlfriend, then known simply as “the ex” because she had stopped answering his texts weeks ago, delivered the parting gift that would haunt his creative subconscious for months. She stood in the hallway of their tiny apartment, arms crossed, the kind of smile that suggested she’d just read the entire Britannica and decided it was time to give Ryan a reality check.
         “You know,” she said, “a stuffed cow writes better than you do.” She paused for dramatic effect, then added, “Maybe you should get a real job like walking cats or being a water boy for the local swim team.” The ex’s words were, in a way, an insult wrapped in a motivational poster, and they lodged in Ryan’s brain like a reluctant bookmark.
         Instead of taking up the cat‑walking gig (a job that, according to urban legend, would involve a lot of wool, minor injuries, and a Ph.D. in feline psychology), Ryan doubled down on his failure to finish. He tried genre after genre, like a culinary student tasting every sauce in the pantry and never deciding which one to serve. He flirted with horror, an abandoned amusement park populated by sentient cotton candy; with romance, a love triangle involving a mime, a mime‑translator, and the silent film industry; with comedy, an adventure about a rogue GPS that only speaks in dad jokes. Yet every time he began typing, the cursor would blink conspiratorially, as if daring him to finish the first sentence.
         One rainy Tuesday, while Ryan was rummaging through the back of his refrigerator for any leftover sustenance, he found a slice of pizza that had been, by his own admission, six days old. The cheese was a shade of orange that could have been described as “sunset after a nuclear apocalypse,” and the crust was as hard as an over‑cooked cracker. He stared at it, half‑hoping it would transform into a culinary masterpiece. Instead, the slice stared back, and in Ryan’s imagination (which—considering his track record—tended to be the only place where inanimate objects could have personalities) it began to whisper: “I want to be an avocado.”
         The notion struck him like the soft thud of his head against the refrigerator door. In the panic of a six‑day‑old pizza and an empty stomach, Ryan’s mind had brewed a story that was simultaneously absurd, oddly heartfelt, and, most importantly, finished. The pizza slice, named Nîkâh, after the Navajo word for “buffalo,” embarked on an odyssey to become an avocado. Nikah’s journey involved intense self‑reflection sessions with a prairie dog therapist, a daring escape from a night‑time hippo raid by a rogue feral prairie vole, and an apprenticeship under an elderly allergic guacamole guru who taught him the art of turning an avocado into green mush.
         Ryan’s fingers flew across the keyboard. The narrative marched forward with a relentless, almost cinematic rhythm. There were flashbacks to Nikah’s early days as a Business major at Prairie University, “PU,” complete with a rebellion phase where he tried to become a calzone but was thwarted by an over‑protective cheese mother. There were heart‑wrenching scenes where Nîkâh, now half‑armadillo, half‑kumquat, had to confront the existential truth that some fruit can’t be both a fruit and a half-breed fruit at the same time, and that the only way to reconcile this was to start a new culinary genre: “Kumidillo.”
         When Ryan finally typed the last word, glazed, he leaned back, a grin spreading across his face like a sunrise over a field of basil. He had done it. He had taken a random, slightly rotten kumquat, given it an identity crisis, and delivered a story that could plausibly be turned into a children’s book, a short film, or, at the very least, something to impress his mother’s book club.
         At this point, the omniscient narrator, who has been watching Ryan’s mental gymnastics with an amused detachment, notes that the ex’s snide comment about the stuffed cow has metamorphosed into a gentle, if not slightly mischievous, muse. In some parallel universe, the stuffed cow, crafted from a plushy cow-shaped pillow that Ryan bought on a whim in a discount store, sits on his desk wearing an imaginary tiara, pointing a plastic hoof at the manuscript, and whispering, “Don’t forget the subplot about the jealous kale.” The cow never writes, but it does provide a comforting presence, a reminder that inspiration can be found in the most ridiculous places.
         Now, Ryan has a story. He also has a backlog of sixteen unfinished drafts, each one a potential future crisis. He knows the temptation to dash off into another genre will always be there, but he has also learned that a relevant story doesn’t have to be born from grand, sweeping ideas; sometimes it can be sparked by an aged kumquat that wants to become something else entirely. He also, after a brief moment of self‑congratulation, started to consider the ex’s alternative career proposals. Walking cats, it turned out, was not as simple as feeding them and letting them stroll down the street; the cats demanded contracts, water bowls, and a monthly dose of live jazz. Becoming a water boy for the local swim team required him to lug a 5‑gallon jug every practice, a task that made his arms ache in a way only a truly unglamorous job can.
         In the end, Ryan decided to keep the water boy gig as a side hustle, just in case his next story takes longer than expected to finish. He told himself, “If I can wrangle an armadillo into an avocado, I can definitely survive an hour of splashing water at teenagers who can’t swim without a life jacket.” And with that, he placed the finished manuscript on his desk, next to the stuffed cow and the half‑eaten pizza slice and finally felt the odd satisfaction that comes from turning a chaotic swirl of ideas into something tangible.

Word Count: 1,199