Excerpt from the short story "Adam."

Of course it would be apples. Ridiculous, Carter thought. When his fraternity brothers found out, they would start calling him Adam or something. Especially after the story he wrote about the Garden of Eden.

The lump appeared on his chest overnight. Carter had gone to bed with an ache along his sternum, which he attributed to heartburn thanks to eating one too many slices of the pizza. His roommate, Andrew, had made them from scratch, adding a hearty dollop of Tabasco to the sauce and pouring crushed red pepper over the cheese as it bubbled under the broiler. When Carter rolled onto his side the next morning, his entire body was throbbing. He felt a sharp pain between his pectoral muscles. When he looked down, his skin was bloated like someone had blown up a water balloon and stuffed it beneath his skin. He threw himself into the bathroom, the fluorescent light burning his eyes before they adjusted. Carter was convinced he had fast-moving cancer or some kind of horrible spider bite that was going to stop his heart. But then, when he pinched his fingers along either side of the tennis-ball-sized mass, his skin split open with a painless crack that eased the hurt strumming through his limbs, and a freckled red Fuji apple popped out. His body zippered itself up like nothing had happened, his skin smooth and clean where the muscles met. Carter, dazed, managed to catch the apple in the basket of his hands before it plopped into the clamshell basin of his bathroom sink.