The sigh the pepper let out when Samantha sliced through him blew most his teeth away. Well, his seeds. Yellow peppers don’t really have teeth.
Sam almost dropped the knife. Not because he had a face. She was used to seeing faces and even carried a bag of assorted googly eyes and a sharpie to reconstruct those that lost a part here or there. She talked to them. But she wasn’t crazy enough to think they’d talk back.
Until the pepper did.
Sam should have eaten him when she had the chance, but by the time she realized how cajoling he was, the pepper had awakened the pinecone with two broken scales that gave him a smirk and a winking eye, and the pinecone was the recruiting sort. A talker. And loud. Pinecones speak over winds, voices carrying over the muffling snow, Sam was told. So the pinecone couldn’t help but rouse the others. But when all the outlets started voicing grievances and the stove lashing out, the pinecone winkingly smirked and Sam couldn’t tell if he was laughing at her or not.
Her house became inanimate central. Everyone had something to say. The bed springs told her how imbalanced her spine was and the pillow pffted. The spoons, given voice, were picky eaters and refused to ladle soup and insisted that frozen yogurt gave them panic attacks and could Sam please just stick to ice cream?
She wore noise canceling earbuds, but they refused to cancel inanimate words. She locked herself in her closet, but the clothes wouldn’t shut up.
Leaving the house was no relief because the contamination spread. Sidewalks pointed out that her socks didn’t match and the knot in the oak trunk said she’d get skin cancer if she didn’t stick to the shade.
She wished they would shut up, she wished she could wish them dead, but they mostly weren’t alive to begin with.
On the kitchen counter, the pepper began to wilt. Began to stink. But how could Sam throw him out given what might happen if he awakened all her buried trash?
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