|
Jyrosen awoke the next morning to find that he did not
have a good night's sleep. His usually green eyes were blood struck and his
joints all ached tremendously. However, his stomach no longer bubbled irritably
as it had the previous evening.
A ray of light shone from the window in the living
room, dust particles dancing vividly in the illumination. The Lupe swallowed
uncomfortably while examining his surroundings -- he had fallen asleep on the
living room floor, which would probably explain why his bones were hurting so
terribly. He sniffed, and rolled over onto the surface of his stomach. No one
appeared to be awake yet, so he guessed it was still pretty early in the morning.
After fidgeting and whining for twenty minutes,
Jyrosen managed to stand in an upright position. His spine felt as if electric
currents were racing down its structure, and his fur felt as if it were on fire
- making his skin irritably burn.
"Well, I've waited 'til morning, and I still
feel awful," he mumbled, and dragged himself into the bathroom in order to wash
up for the day.
Having experience with an older sister who happened
to be a Uni gave Jyrosen the thought that the bathroom would be occupied. However,
he found his assumptions incorrect. The bathroom door was ajar, exposing the
empty room, where he managed to crawl into.
While rinsing his forepaws, Jyrosen began to
wonder what had happened to the apple that made him feel so horrible. It was
common sense to know that all everlasting apples did not give all Neopets such
bad effects as the particular one that he had eaten. The Lupe thought that something
was terribly wrong; the whole situation did not make any sense whatsoever.
He finished washing his paws and dried them with
a towel, heading back into the kitchen to try and contemplate his situation
further. While arriving back into the kitchen, Jyrosen found that his younger
brother, Krawker_oth, was sitting quietly within one of the chairs.
"Hey Jyrosen," he said, offering a wobbly smile
and then allowing it to slowly fade. The Krawk seemed to be gazing at the apple
in the center of the table. Jyrosen waved and helped himself slowly into a chair,
trying not to make his pain too evident.
"Hey Krawk', why are you so down?"
Krawker simply shook his head and arched one
of his shaggy eyebrows. His small frame was propped up against the chair comfortably.
"Well, I don't know.. it's just this whole apple thing that apparent was talking
to us about last night."
Jyrosen looked towards his brother with curiosity.
If there had been any discussion about him last night, of course he'd missed
it -- due to his long slumber. One of his white ears swiveled uncomfortably
while waiting for his sibling to continue with his explanation. It wasn't quite
often that Krawker felt bad unless if he was dealing with a problem of his own.
"She said she wants us to monitor what you eat
from now on because the apple seemed to have made you sick. She even called
up the doctor to ask him about it.. and he said there was nothing he could do.
Apparently there have been other Neopets dealing with the same problem. He hasn't
been able to assign anything for cures."
"But why does this make you seem so down? I
mean, apparent was going to put me on a diet today anyway, so the whole eating
thing doesn't make much of a difference."
Krawker simply shrugged and began to finger the
apple cautiously. His expression was quite solemn. "It's not every day that
you eat something and it makes you so sick, Jyrosen. You should be careful,
there's plenty of ways that food can be infected in Neopia. And with the doctor
not knowing if there's any cure.. well... there's a lot that can happen."
Jyrosen sighed and began to scratch the fur on
one of his legs. Krawker was right - he did need to be more careful, but nothing
seemed wrong with eating an apple from the Food Shop at first thought. As a
matter of a fact, Jyrosen didn't know how such an apple could wind up in the
kitchen in the first place -- a lot of the stock was inspected before put out
for sale.
"Thanks for the warning, Krawker," he responded
tiredly, rubbing the surfaces of his eyes. Suddenly he felt very tired, and
wanted to catch up on some sleep, since he wasn't going to be able to go to
work that day.
With following moments of silence, Krawker looked
towards Jyrosen as he continued to rub his eyes. Then, almost after five minutes
of observance, he cried, "Jyrosen! Stop rubbing your eyes."
Jyrosen groaned and stopped rubbing his eyes
with his balled fists, looking towards his brother irritably. His eyes began
to burn, just as his skin had, and he tried not to show it. "What?"
"Your eyes are--"
"Yes, yes, I know my eyes are red. That's what
happens when you rub them too much, that's no reason to--"
"No, I mean your eyes are really, really red.
And your paws are turning red, too."
Jyrosen gaped and then looked down towards his
hind paws. Sure enough, his white fur had begun to sport specks of pink. Then,
raising his forepaws, Jyrosen noticed that they were a vicious red as well.
The red color seemed somewhat off; similar to the color of the apple he had
eaten the day before. Krawker blinked as Jyrosen began to rub at his head.
"Aw, man, this doesn't look good."
Three days later..
As found out later on in the week, Jyrosen's apple had turned out to have a
bad effect on his body, one that was quite unexplainable to the average Neopian.
As the author of the story, I am unable to describe the events that happened
after Jyrosen sullenly stated, "Aw, man, this doesn't look good" on the particular
evening when everything began to go downhill for the Lupe. The types of things
that began happening to his body are somewhat indescribable at this point in
my writing career, so instead of making an effort to give the reader a good
idea of what had happened, I will simply skip those dreadful parts.
Throughout the 72 hour time period, Jyrosen had
morphed to a bright red color, including his eyes and fur. After well amounts
of rest and excessive amounts of baths, the Lupe only found himself gaining
a plump amount of weight. His eyes merely turned into black slits, almost unable
to be seen unless you knew they were present.
On the third evening, the whole family had been
gathered in the kitchen while waiting for their expected guest, the doctor who
lived closest to their neighborhood. Apparent had resented to having to call
him, for the fact that he "is overly expensive and isn't something I want to
be my first resort" despite the fact that Jyrosen simply continued to display
very eccentric symptoms.
The sun had begun to set as the hour of 7 o'clock
PM NST began to approach those that lived within Neopia, and the family of five
who were usually highly energetic, found themselves sitting in a room filled
with despair. (No, despair isn't a gas found in the air -- yet a feeling that
felt as if it were patrolling the room at this very moment.) Krawker_oth and
Saigru found themselves sitting within a corner playing a very tired game of
Goldkikos, and Swirlyhorn was chewing nervously at her hooves rather than polishing
them, and the owner, Apparent, was the most anxious of them all - cutting and
re-cutting various vegetables for no obvious reason.
As the minutes ticked by, Jyrosen eventually
slid into the living room, feeling a bit dizzy and wanting to lie down. He was
tired of looking like an apple, and he felt guilty for even taking an apple
from his job to eat. As several moments passed, he struggled to close his pudgy
eyelids shut.
A few moments later, the doorbell rang. Apparent
skid to the door, disregarding the fact that her Lupe was asleep on the couch,
or at least appeared to be, and immediately yanked the doctor (literally) into
the home.
"Please, we have no idea what's wrong with him."
She motioned for him to come into the living room, bits and pieces of carrots
sprinkled all over her shirt. "Can you give him a check up?"
"Sure, just give me a..." the elderly Chia began,
wiping his thick eyebrows with the back of a paw while heading into the room.
However, his expression suddenly morphed from "I have a migraine and I'm checking
a patient" to "the patient is an inanimate object!"
The room fell silent as each Neopet (and human)
began to notice the expression on the Chia's face. And, soon, everyone looked
towards the couch. The Chia doctor, having a joy in finding Lupes at a misfortune,
stuttered as he replied:
"H-he's... an apple?!"
At that moment three things happened:
- Apparent shrieked, looking towards the couch to find a large apple on it's
seat as opposed to her red-colored, chubby Lupe.
- The Chia doctor dropped his spectacles, shattering all over the surface
of the floor.
- The narrator found a good saying to use to apply to the pitiful end of this
story:
You are what you eat.
The End
| 
