Blossom

Galen Sellars, the noted tenor, grew up in a small town just outside of Cambridge, England. His teacher attributed his wonderful singing abilities to his enormous “barrel-like” chest, a trait that everyone but Galen defined him by. As a child, Galen had heard the rumours that to eat the seeds of an apple would cause a tree to grow inside of him. In the playground, confronted by this rumour, a dare, and a group of savage classmates, Galen agreed to eat an apple whole—core and all—on the condition that it was a crab apple, his reasoning being that if any tree were to grow inside of him, it would be better if it were a crab apple as he rather liked the look of the trees, this despite the apple’s famous tart, disagreeable taste. Naturally, nothing adverse happened to the seeds inside any of the boys who partook in the apple eating, Galen included, but that didn’t prevent the worry that something had happened within Galen. From the day that he consumed the apple forth, Galen believed a tiny sapling was growing inside of him. Although Galen’s barrel-shaped chest was merely a genetic variation, he presumed that his chest cavity’s size was due to the apple tree growing inside of him following that incident in the playground. This had little effect on him till he moved to London to train, formally, as a singer. As he developed into an adult and learned to sing, every time he reached a difficult note, his lungs expanding, Galen believed the tree inside of him grew a little bit larger. In one of his early journals, he wrote that he felt the leaves tickling his ribs whenever he’d reach for a particularly difficult note. He felt this as a constraint, that he could, if he were willing to take the risk of the tree blooming, reach higher and greater heights. Though he could understand no Italian, he was particularly drawn to Handel’s aria “Laschio Ch’io Pianga,” the opening lines of which held him in a hypnotic sway. On desolate, soul-searching nights alone during his studies, he would repeat the opening lines as a mantra. As an adult, during his infamous “Grand Tour” of Europe, Galen took to worrying that his head had grown into an apple, on account of the rigours and strains the tour caused and would often fret about his “waxy” complexion with anyone that would listen. To his tour manager, Isobel Delores Diggory, a woman alleged to be one of his many mistresses (but who was, in reality, the closest relationship he ever experienced to love), he confided that he’d started seeing other people with apples for heads. Of the great pianist, Willhelm Theobald Frieburg, who accompanied him for much of the tour and was a notoriously difficult performer to work with (and who insisted on signing his documents with his initials only), Galen said had a head like a Bramley apple: large, green, and plain. After meeting the King of Monaco, Galen remarked that the King was a Golden Delicious—hard, rosy, and versatile. As the tour wound on and the pressures on Galen increased, he no longer saw his own face in the mirror, only the lumpy, misshapen guise of a crab apple. As with many performers of his age, Galen turned to drink. Although his performances were unaffected (perhaps even improved by it, if audience reports are to be believed), Galen’s demeanour off the stage became sour and hostile. It was around this time that Isobel and Willhelm first became secretly entwined. Though Galen never found this out explicitly, the rumours, like childish superstitions, held sway over his heart. After the Rubicon incident of 1919, and Galen’s subsequent committal to a sanitorium, the nature of his condition became the subject of widespread gossip to the public at large. Fortunately for Galen, he was completely belligerent to this fact. Large already, his abdomen had expanded to enormous proportions, and the orderlies said that he had a tart, acidic smell about him, not unlike rotten apples, when he was admitted. His medical records show that his liver had likely failed, and his internal organs were slowly following suit. But at the time, Galen was convinced the roots of the tree inside of him had finally wound their limbs around his heart. Both Isobel and Willhelm disappeared without a trace, taking with them most of Galen's fortune. Penniless and of unclear mind, Galen Sellars passed away in the sanitorium garden at the age of thirty-one, just three months after admission. The other inmates remarked that he didn’t so much as faint but collapse, like a pail of cider spilled across the ground.