Just apple

 Somewhere in a metaverse, there was someone shaking their hips to the music. The singer was singing a song about apples. Apples turning green and yellow; apples in the sky, apples being thrown, the apple…

 Then, one video later, there was someone holding an electronic product in their hands, an unboxing video in a silent, brain-tickling style. The product has a bitten apple logo on it.

 One video later, there was someone giving a recipe for an apple pie. The woman seemed old enough not to know internet memes, but still cracked jokes about current audios and trends.

 A health guru was speaking about why eating fruit was important, and another one was holding a podcast microphone to warn about the sugar in fruit. Screen filled with absurd warning signs.

 Evelyn was scrolling through her phone to find an idea. Dinner was being prepared by their private chef in the background, and a lot of cooking noises filled the kitchen. She was trying to find some inspiration for her next post since she had a sponsorship from a company that sent you a food item every month for you to promote. She was supposed to find something groundbreaking to promote the apples that were in front of her. She didn’t even like apples; she never cared for them. Her chef was gushing about their nutritional values, but she wasn’t listening. She needed a way to promote the fruit.

 Her husband briefly walked in to check out the dinner. He was apparently hungry. He saw the apples on the polished counter and looked at his wife from the crate’s location.

 “Hun, you are not supposed to eat apples; they have fructose in them; you cut sugar.” His tone was curated, as if he wasn’t talking to his wife but rather explaining to a child. 

 “I know; this is not for eating.” Said Evelyn briefly, continuing on her search in the social world. Her husband left the kitchen after lifting some lids and checking the food on the stove.

 An apple-shaped woman was cheating on her husband with another shaped fruit. Their voices didn’t match their movements; they were running and floating around the furniture with absurd mannerisms that couldn’t be created with a living mind.

 Someone was talking about fun facts, saying apples were better at waking you up than a cup of coffee.

 A dentist was preaching that everything should be cut into bite-sized pieces so you wouldn't lose a tooth while biting into an apple.

 Apparently, Newton was sleeping under an apple tree, getting hit by an apple, waking up and discovering gravity as a theory. Evelyn needed that; she was supposed to find an idea, maybe she should have thrown one against her head to gain an insight.

 There was a scene, a cut, of someone holding an apple above their head to be targeted by an archer. Evelyn was captivated by the close encounter between characters; there was something magnetic about being in the hands of someone's mercy. There was an apple in the scene as well; she could do a skit. She didn’t know any archers, though.

 Lastly, God was telling Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit from the sacred tree. The fruit was symbolised by an apple. Eve-lyn was not fond of the idea of eating an apple just to get punished, but the advertisement made it so worth the sin, but Evelyn was not amused by the religious ideas being used; these days, everything was sensitive. She could be easily ‘cancelled’. God forbid, she worked too hard for her image; waking up early for get-ready-with-mes, filming every milestone she had passed, waking up early to put on some make-up before filming and a lot more…

 She wouldn't have it crumble like an apple-flavoured dessert.

 On the white marble, red apples were bright and inviting. Almost telling her to have a bite. She wondered if the devil was nearby to trick her like it had her namesake. She shook her head to wipe that idea.

 A woman named after that fruit was yelling about something in a movie scene to her friend. This forbidden fruit approach seemed less cancellable to her, but she was no actress; she was a woman who made her life a movie set, two completely different things.

 There were apple-flavoured dried fruit chips, juice bottles that made apple-biting sounds, face masks that were made out of real fruit with a machine, and lip products that smelled like fruits, especially apples. Everything could be related to apples, apparently, and she didn’t like it. She was supposed to sell the fruit, not write a book about it. There must be someone who was only talking about a singular piece of fruit to make it inviting to the mouth.

 Suddenly, her chef put a steaming pie on the table in front of her. She stared at the pie as if it would attack her. She was offended by the idea of sugar. Looked at her chef knowingly, almost reminding him that she cut sugar. It was the hundredth time that she had told someone that day.

 “Before you say anything, I made it as a prop for you to use, if you want, of course. The apples are not gonna promote themselves,” said the chef flirtily, winking.

 Evelyn amusingly raised her eyebrow to assess the situation. Apples would turn into a sweet treat after all; they were not just punishment for her that was sent from above specifically.

 She took a couple of pictures, with the lights adjusted, the pie looked terrific, almost angelic. She put her ring light on to record herself enjoying it. The chef was watching all the hustle; he saw the knife that cut through the piece, saw the fork sticking into the bite-sized piece, her parting lips welcoming the bite into her mouth, her tongue grazing the fork clean. She let out a hum to show her followers how much she enjoyed the apples in the pie.

 When the ring light made the kitchen a bit darker, she took a napkin to spit out the piece. The chef looked away, annoyed that his work was going to waste. Evelyn wrapped her mini set to edit the footage she had, planning to add her apple video to the pile of other apples on the net. While passing in front of the counter where her chef positioned himself she took a bite from an apple in the crate. Liking this little rebellious act, she realised her chef was watching her movements. Deciding a bite was enough as a forbidden act for that day, she walked to her office, calculating the profit she would make.