The Peach

The Peach

Mr Harley loved peaches. He ate two a day and sometimes more than that. Mr Harley was always confused by his wife, Judith, who wouldn’t touch them. Mr Harley died. Sitting in his favourite chair, he had a stroke, and died. He wasn’t an old man. He left a decent insurance policy and a fruit bowl full of uneaten peaches, which Judith found repulsive. She cried as she dropped each one into the rubbish, but other than this, the house stayed as it always had. Hr Harley’s shirts hung in the cupboard and his chair sat empty for thirty years.
On the day that Judith moved into the nursing home, she finally directed someone to move her husband’s chair. The nursing attendant, who would drive her to the home, dragged the chair out into the van, revealing thirty years of dirt. A thick layer of dust covered a scattering of detritus, and in the middle, sat a peach. It looked as though it had been bought that day, but Judith Harley knew, in a flash of haunted amazement, that it must be at least thirty years old.
The article which appeared in the local newspaper, a week later, brought a string of curious visitors through Judith Harley’s new flat. The attention the peach received led to a sceptical graduate student from the local university, jokingly offering to carbon date it. The peach was found to be over 100,000 years old.
The glass case, in which the peach now sat, collected dust while the peach continued to look fresh enough to eat. After a while, like all ancient artefacts of the time, the peach was moved into a vacuum, where it was suspended, motionless, forever.
A string of people visited, over tens of thousands of years. Religious leaders, scientists, politicians and philosophers. Rock gods and writers all visited, viewed and donated their various ideas, before they died.
In the end, everyone died. Every soul found its way to the end. They stood in front of the figure known by so many names; loved by so many billions, feared by even more billions and ignored by the majority. On the eighth day God examined men’s souls and cleared up behind them on Earth. God finished his eighth day of work.
It was then, that the celestial week started over again. God stood on Earth; on the first day of the second week. He took the peach and planted it in the ground. God got on with his work and by the sixth day the peach had grown into a peach tree. God pointed out the tree to the people who lived there, and specifically told them not to touch it.