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Hermione knew about waiting.
She waited days and weeks and months on that tree. So many days that she forgot what change was, until some woman gave her a squeeze.
With a tug, the life that tied Hermione to the tree was severed.
Just a twist of the woman’s wrist, but suddenly Hermione’s lungs choked for air. Her blood still beat, but in a throbbing echo of what she was used to.
If that was bad, the drop from the woman’s hand into a basket brought pure agony. The pain bounced around inside her skin. She was bruised, maybe even broken. At the time, it was a sure thing.
But she recovered, and she grew used to her new existence separate from the tree. She waited in the basket, and then in a bin. People passed and they bent over, eyeballing Hermione and the others pressed on all sides of her. Sometimes they gave one a squeeze, just like the woman had. Sometimes they brought the others to their nose and sniffed, long and slow.
Nobody squeezed Hermione. Nobody smelled her. That was okay, though, because those who got sniffed and squeezed were, more often than not, taken away. To where, she couldn’t guess.
But it was alright in this bin, with the knobbled skin of others rubbing against hers and the sun warming them all. It was the best she’d felt since the tree still pumped its blood into her, anyway.
Then—there he was.
Dark hair, tousled and a little curly where he must’ve sweated along his forehead and temples. His eyes went right to her, and she knew.
She knew he would take her. And quite suddenly, she wanted it.
But first, just like all the others, he performed his ritual. His fingers—how long, how pale against her skin!—wrapped around her supple body.
He squeezed, and this was ecstasy. This was the life she used to suckle from the tree, except bright like she’d taken all those days and weeks and months of life and condensed it into one perfect constriction.
He brought her to his nose and sniffed twice. His lips brushed against her and she moaned. The woman’s hands were always so rough, their callouses making a good match for Hermione’s nubby skin, but his lips glided smooth as water across her.
Oh, it was too much. So much that Hermione hardly noticed as she was dropped into a bag. Others dropped around her, one by one, but she swam in the beautiful ache of his fingers. Again and again she relived the memory of him squeezing the tender flesh of her insides. She’d never be the same, even if he hadn’t picked her after all.
The others were strange. Their bodies made odd shapes, and though they were nothing compared to the man, their company was better than nothing.
She learned their names: Lime. Garlic. Tomato. Onion. Cilantro.
That last one tickled her. It had leaves, and that reminded her of the tree again.
Hermione was brought to the man’s home. The cilantro was stuffed into the refrigerator without so much as a goodbye. The rest of them—Hermione included—were dropped to the countertop.
She hoped for another squeeze, or maybe some new euphoric experience she could only dream of, but instead she sat. She and the tomatoes, the lime and garlic and onion, they all sat.
The others chatted. They insulted the ones who never got picked, or the ones who lay bruised in the dirt and didn’t even make it into the basket.
Hermione just watched the door. Sometimes the man would pass by. Sometimes he’d come in and grab a stick of cheese from the refrigerator, or pour himself a glass of water.
And so she learned how to wait again.
It happened one more time. He was up late at night, just his plaid baggy pants on and nothing else. He drank his water and stared out the window, and then suddenly, he was staring at Hermione.
He gave her a squeeze. Her skin warmed and her mushy insides molded into a new shape under his pressure, just slightly. It was almost pain.
He dropped her to the countertop and sighed. That was it.
The others burned with anticipation on either side of her, but the man only turned away and went back to wherever it was he spent his time.
What did it mean? All she could do is be thankful.
Because he treated her differently, the others took note and stopped talking to her. Hermione didn’t care, even as they gabbed about her knobbly skin and her tight navel and her soft spot, which they couldn’t possibly see.
Minutes. Hours.
Hermione discovered the clock, and then wished she hadn’t. It ticked away her life in the tiniest of increments.
The man returned in the morning. He made coffee in that stinking machine that spat hot vapor and sputtered when he lifted the lid. He looked at her again, then at his watch.
Then he was gone. More quiet.
Hermione waited. Something in the hard pit of her stomach told her she didn’t have much longer to wait, even as the clock cut her time into slivers and slivers again.
And she was right, because when the man arrived home, he came straight to the kitchen and pulled a bowl from the cabinet.
The tomato went first. He nearly drowned it under the faucet. But the uncomfortable sputtering from that was nothing compared to the sounds the tomato made when he set it on a flat board and brought out the knife. The blade broke through skin and flesh like it wasn’t even there.
The tomato screamed. Hermione screamed.
Bit by bit, he carved the tomato into thin slices, then chopped it. Juices flowed over the board and pooled at the lip of the countertop. Its seeds lay scattered about the mess of its body.
The tomato’s screams turned to groans, then a gentle, wet sobbing.
The man merely scraped the guts into the bowl and went for the lime.
To its credit, there was no screaming this time around. No drowning, either, just one quick slice and the lime was severed into two halves that rolled in place.
The man cupped one half in his palm, held it over the bowl, and squeezed. Juice rained down over the tomato.
These hours and hours, Hermione had thought of nothing but getting another squeeze out of this guy. But now she wondered—would it still feel that good when it was her guts oozing into the pile?
Hermione screamed again. The lime only panted in a tight sort of way. One of its seeds dropped into the bowl.
The man patiently plucked out the seed, then plopped the ruined half of the lime onto the board and went for the other. Innards hung loose from the lime’s body, viscera still dripping fluid.
She cried for it, and for the tomato, and for herself.
Just after he scraped the remainder of the lime into the trash, his phone rang. He answered it.
“Tom speaking.”
His name. The man had a name.
Hermione shook herself back to reality. So what if his name was Tom? Name or no name, any minute now he was going to be chopping her up into little bits or squeezing the life out of her…
Even as another sob rose to her lips, she couldn’t suppress the shiver of excitement at the thought of Tom taking her in his hand and squeezing. She shouldn’t want it, especially not after watching the lime’s wet guts spill its juice into the bowl.
Tom hung up the call and turned to the fridge, but instead of opening it and bringing out another of her acquaintances to be torn apart, he rested his forehead against it and sighed again. His eyes closed, and for a hundred ticks of the clock, Hermione waited.
Her skin tingled, like those bugs from the tree had returned. Tiny things with their many, many feet, always tip-toeing over the surface of her. She never liked them then, and she sure didn’t like the feeling now.
The onion shivered. The garlic huddled closer and let out a whimper.
Tom gave them all a long look, then yanked the fridge open and pulled out the cilantro. Its leaves shook from how he manhandled the bundle, and a few stragglers fell to the floor.
He tossed the cilantro into the sink and ran the water over it. The cilantro’s sharp shout of surprise cut off with a burble of water. He was drowning it.
“I don’t even like coriander,” he said, and shut off the water. “For fuck’s sake. What a waste.”
Wrong name, Hermione thought, but who was she to correct him? Something on that phone call upset him terribly. Probably best to let him stew in his own incorrectness.
He left the cilantro and grabbed the garlic and onion. The garlic let out a high scream that continued as he tore the skin from its body and shoved its little bulbs into some metal torture device. He gripped it tight in his fist and squeezed.
Hermione shivered.
The screams cut off as little tendrils of garlic came pooling out of the other end of the metal contraption. One by one, Tom pressed the garlic into minced up bits, scraping the mess into the bowl with not so much as a flinch.
The smell hit her, and she gagged.
He peeled the skin off the onion as well, large dry sheaves of it. At least the onion held it together somewhat, though it let out a few low groans as he chopped it up into tiny slivers and dumped it into the bowl with everything else.
More stink of death and guts and bodily fluids. Hermione coughed and sobbed.
There was nothing left. Just her and Tom and the cilantro still sputtering in the sink.
He reached for her, and—
squeeze.
She let out an ecstatic wail as her flesh yielded to his grip. If only she could stay like this, held tight in his hand until she rotted away, her blood cooling and her hide shrivelling.
He dropped her to the cutting board and set the knife to her skin.
She didn’t want to scare whatever was left of her mangled acquaintances, but when the blade tore through her skin, she couldn’t contain the screams. The sound of her own flesh ripping against the sawing motion of the knife tunneled deep into her pit until the horror of it all nearly overshadowed the agony.
He cut her in two from top to bottom, then slid the blade through her inner guts like they were nothing.
He cradled her in his hands, both of them this time, and for a moment she could believe he was regretful—until he gave her a twist.
Her flesh peeled loose from the hard pit at the center of her. She became two, both halves shaking in shrieking torment.
He notched the blade into her pit and pulled it free, tossing it aside.
Hermione wept. The clock spun and she could taste the remnants of the tomato’s juice. The onion’s stink lay in a heavy blanket over her body. Everything hurt, and all she could do was cry and hope he would end it quickly.
Tom gripped the countertop and stared down his long nose. There were no secrets anymore. He could see everything, all her private colors and all her tender textures. The hard and soft of her. Everything.
His fingers found her. She screamed again, expecting more pain, but instead he stroked the cup of flesh where her pit used to rest.
A shudder ran through her, so violent that surely he must’ve felt it quiver up through his fingertips. Nobody had ever touched her here before. It was wrong, so wrong, because with her body opened up like this she wouldn’t have long to live…
But her skin prickled again, tightening as he followed the curves of her. He could shove his fingers into her body and tear her to pieces with his bare hands. Maybe that was what made the sensation so exquisite. Knowing he could, and yet he still did not.
Hermione let out a long, strangled moan. If this brief moment of pleasure was all she had left in this life, then she wanted to take it for everything it was worth.
“Tried it once when I was a kid,” he murmured.
It was difficult to focus through the high of pain mixed with rapture, but she did her best.
“My friend put me onto it.” He brushed his hair back, leaving a bit of juice at his hairline. “He used a watermelon, though. I didn’t like the idea of the texture. Too…I don’t know. I just didn’t like it. And my mom had just bought a whole bunch of avocados for some silly party she was throwing.”
He picked up one of her halves and gave it a squeeze. Without her pit, her flesh folded in on itself, and she moaned again. It hurt, but not enough to stop the wave of ecstasy from saturating her body.
“I’d never cut an avocado before. I didn’t know about the pit. By the time I had the thing ready to go, it was completely mangled. Still worked though, with a firm grip and a bucket between my legs to catch the goop going everywhere.”
He cupped her other half and looked at her, all of her. His thumbs traced the cut marks where knobbled skin met green meat.
“It was great up until my mom caught me. I didn’t hear the front door.” He laughed and squeezed her again, then pressed her back together like he could heal her right up. “No mom to catch me now, though, huh?”
Hermione managed a laugh, too. A faint one.
He was so pretty when he smiled.
Out of sight, something zipped open. Fabric rustled, and then he took her halves in each hand, her skin against his. He brought her to his cock and pressed her there, flesh-side-in, sandwiching himself between her halves.
The pressure! Hermione wailed as her guts molded to his cock.
“More!” she yelled. “More, please! Please!”
He must’ve understood, because he gripped her harder and slid her down the length of him. Bits of her innards left her to coat his skin, but that was alright, because she was in heaven.
This was her purpose.
He dragged her up until she cradled just the tip of his cock. She didn’t like that. How empty it already felt without him filling her spaces.
She didn’t have long to suffer, though, because he began a steady pumping rhythm. Between his body heat and the friction, her flesh warmed up enough that soon she was oozing around his fingers and falling to the floor in slippery clumps.
Hermione whined for more, for faster. She called his name and he smiled back, twisting his wrist so more of her guts dragged along his cock.
It was getting close, now. Her flesh ran thin down to the inner shell of her skin. There wasn’t much of her left, but she held on—no, the unbearable agony of the world’s greatest pleasure gripped her too tight. She had no choice but to hope that by some miracle, it would last an eternity.
Tom braced his arm and began to thrust his hips, holding her still while he worked over her.
“You like that?” he murmured. “You like when I fuck you like the dirty little whore you are?”
“Yes! I’m your creamy whore!” she warbled. Her little body wilted around his. She mustered up another layer of green flesh to lubricate him.
He came long ropes that unfortunately missed her body by a long shot, so depleted she was. When he was done, he peeled her skin from his softening cock and brought her to his face.
“Oh!”
He lapped at her insides, his tongue probing at her inner slime. She shook violently at the hot rush of new ecstasy. When he flattened his tongue and lapped up the curve of her, she came so hard that for a moment she was back at the tree, the sun on her skin and the wind gently shaking her branch.
Tom slid to the floor, still licking. Occasionally he let out a moan, and she echoed him. She tried to come again, but there wasn’t enough of her tattered avocado body left to catch that peak.
“Thank you,” she rasped as his tongue scraped the last of her flesh from her skin. “Thank you…for picking me.”