reviewed by Isaac Fox
Zoe Raine centers her flash story “When My Girlfriend’s Head Becomes an Orange in the Middle of the Night” around a relationship that is messy at best and abusive at worst. She paints this all-too common dynamic in vibrant, wild images and a reasonless, free-flowing dream logic.
Upon seeing that their girlfriend’s head has a peel and seeds, the narrator doesn’t ask how or why. Instead, they ask themself, “I wonder who it’s for? I’ve always hated oranges.” Their mind skims over a wild supernatural phenomenon to focus on being suspicious of their partner, an absurd mental move that feels psychologically real. The story’s dream logic, then, is the dream logic of many romantic relationships.
The narrator “dig[s their] chewed nails into the skin—her skin?”, takes an orange slice, and eats. Other than that one tiny moment of questioning (“her skin?”), the narrator shows no real concern for their girlfriend. This act’s carnal, visceral messiness feels sexual, but not in a way that compliments any healthy relationship. One partner quite literally nourishes themself by diminishing the other.
Raine never clarifies how sentient and aware the girlfriend is throughout this process, whether she can change back, or to what extent the orange is still a head. (It apparently has “veins.”) These unanswered questions make the story’s stakes eerily vague. Remember that Raine filters this story through a first-person point of view: readers can’t make out exactly what’s happened to the narrator’s girlfriend because the narrator doesn’t care.
For them, the act of peeling an orange also has old family associations. They remember watching their aunt eat oranges, “seem[ing] as if she was peeling away her own bitterness with every thoughtful puncture.” Although they never enjoyed oranges, they peeled and ate them alongside their aunt. They saw something that appeared important and didn’t fully understand it, and as kids will, they imitated.
For them, peeling and eating the orange that is/was their girlfriend’s head means more than its odd face value. Certainly, it’s cyclical. Maybe, it’s an attempt at renewal, or perhaps rebellion within the relationship. Or maybe they’re doing exactly what their child self did: imitating a thing they don’t understand, and simply, selfishly, absorbing its sensations.
Invisible City is a literary magazine from the University of San Francisco’s MFA program. Its spring issue came out on March 16.
Isaac Fox is a student at Lebanon Valley College, where he majors in English and creative writing. He spends his free time reading and writing things that aren’t assigned, shooting pictures, and playing the clarinet. His fiction and photography have appeared in Rune Bear and Heart of Flesh magazines, as well as Green Blotter’s 2021 issue. You can find him on Twitter at @IsaacFo80415188.