The Holder of Strange Fruit

In any city, in any country, go to any garden you can enter. Find the gardener or groundskeeper, and ask to see "The Holder of Strange Fruit". The groundskeeper's eyes will gloss over and he will lead you to a tool shed - he will pull out two spades and show you a patch of unbroken earth. There is only one action to take: Dig.

Once you begin digging, do not stop. Unless you fancy a shovel driven into the back of your head, do not stop digging. You will toil for what seems like hours and days, but you mustn't stop. At last, the gardener will motion for you to cease.

Close your eyes. When your eyes snap back open you will be out of the hole you've dug. You will again be in a garden, but the one at the start of your quest has been left behind.

You are surrounded by trees loaded with pears bursting and ripe. The juice that drips from the leaves onto the leaf-scattered ground looks and smells like pus. You're standing in a patch of guards that look suspiciously like human brains. All around you, there are vines the color of rotted gums, sprouting snaggle teeth instead of leaves. Clusters of human eyes hang from these vines, dripping with yellowish tears.

In spite of their gruesome appearance, a sudden and sharp appetite will overcome you and your body will clamor to take a bite of these fruits. Do not partake, or you will suffer a pitiful and lengthy death. This garden is fertilized with the corpses of those who dare partake.

A path will open up before you, and you must follow it to a clearing where a group of figures is gathered around a bonfire. They are robed and wear pointed hoods of the deepest crimson. Their chants in a repugnant alien language may cause you to flee. If you turn and run and run and run, you may escape to the world from whence you came. Once you approach, there is no turning back.

One of the hooded figures will come to you with a piece of meat roasted on a skewer and you will be too hungry to turn it away. The taste of human flesh fills your mouth, and a deep sleep claims you. Once you awaken, you will find yourself sleeping at the base of a tree in this garden. A desiccated corpse hangs the neck; it is tied to one of the trees' highest branches. You will also note that your belly is bloated and distended. If you are a woman that has been through childbearing, then you will know what you are feeling. If you are either a man or a woman that has never been pregnant, you may not understand the strangeness of the experience. The child can be delivered only by cesarean section.

There will be a knife in your hand. Use it to cut yourself open and remove What Is Within You. The pain of the procedure may drive you insane. If you fail to take the creature out in time, it will offer an eternal pain far more horrible than the delivery.

Once it is out, you will stare in horror and love at your deformed child. Just as you hold it in your bloodied hands, it will grow larger and older. Once it is matured, twitching and groaning on the leaf-strewn ground, the men in red will come, cut down the corpse on the tree, and hang up your offspring in its place. If you try to stop them, the torture you will endure at their hands will destroy you, body and mind.

You notice your child is alive still as it hangs. It will respond to one question only: "How shall I know them?" And it will gasp, "By their fruits, you shall know them." The creature will die as it sighs these words, and utter a revolting retch as it vomits out the Object you seek.

A single perfectly round pomegranate is Object 576 out of 2538. It holds a universe of pleasure and untold knowledge within its flesh, but a single taste will warrant a thousand more. Be warned: its final seed holds a fate more ghastly than death itself.