Cherry ripe! (IP)

“Cherry Carlson?”, asked a white uniformed nurse with a clipboard entering the waiting room, “Is there a Cherry Carlson here?”.

“Sherry”, said an eighteen year old red-haired girl standing up, “That’s Sherry Carlson”.

“Dr Popper will see you now, Cherry”, said the nurse.

The girls mother hugged her, “Don’t worry, Cherry”, she said, “I’m sure Dr Popper can help you, they say he’s Cherry good”.

“Mom! My name is Sherry, with an ‘S’!”, yelled the girl, stomping unhappily down the corridoor towards Dr Poppers office.

“Take a seat, Cherry”, said Dr Popper, sucking on a red lollypop.

“Sherry”, said Sherry, “My name is Sherry, with an ‘S’”.

“Alright, Miss Carlson. What is it that seems to be the problem”, said the Doctor, opening his cherry red notebook and taking a cherry red pen out of a cherry shaped pen holder.

“Well. It started when I turned seventeen doctor”, said Sherry, “My name has always been Sherry. It is written on my birth certificate. My mother and father and everyone I know have always called me Sherry but, the moment that I turned seventeen, everyone started mispronouncing my name all of a sudden; calling me Cherry”.

“I see”, said Dr Popper, turning round in his swivel chair to face his office window and the blossoming cherry tree beyond, so that she could only see the back of his chair, “Go on”.

“Well that was only the beginning, Doctor”, said Sherry, starting to cry, “Because, after that, I started to hear the word cherry everywhere. Not just when people were saying my name but whenever they were saying a word like very or merry”.

“Cherry interesting”, said the doctor, “Go on”.

“Well. At first, I thought that it must be a problem with my ears and so my mom took me to see a doctor at the hospital; an ear specialist, but he couldn’t find anything wrong with me. It was around then that I started seeing or noticing cherries everywhere”.

“Would you like a lollypop, Cherry?”, asked Dr Popper, “There’s a big jar of them on my desk; cherry flavoured and they’re awfully good to suck on”.

Sherry looked at the jar labelled “Cherrylicious lollypops” on Dr. Poppers desk, “No”, said Sherry almost gagging; screwing up her face in disgust and backing her chair away from the desk, “No thankyou, doctor”.

“How were things at School, Cherry?”, asked Dr Popper, his voice taking on a more comforting, fatherly tone, “Did you get teased at school, Cherry? Did the other boys and girls at school ever call you names?”.

“Yes, doctor”, she said, looking down at the floor and noticing that it was a pink carpet with a red polka dot pattern on it and that each of the red polka dots had two little green leaves and a small stem at the top.

“And what did they call you, the other boys and girls at school?”, he asked.

“They called me a cherry. They’d make that popping sound, you know, when you pull your finger out of your mouth and it goes pop. They’d say, “Have you popped your cherry yet, Cherry?” and then they’d sman”, she said, looking up at the ceiling and noticing the same strange red polka dot pattern on the wall paper and all around the room.

“And have you yet?”, asked the doctor, casually.

Sherry curled up uncomfortably, like something shrivelled, within her chair, tugging down the hem of her skirt so that it covered more of her knees, “That’s a very personal question, Doctor”, she said, startled and embarassed.

“In my profession, young lady, we have to ask personal, probing questions”, said the doctor, “Tell me, Cherry. Why do you think the other boys and girls said those things to you?”.

“Because they were all sleazy perverts and sluts”, she said, spitting out the words as if they tasted sour, “All the girls in my year had already slept with boys. It was disgusting”.

“I see”, said Doctor Popper, scratching more notes in his notebook, “Well, Cherry, there’s only one solution to this problem, as far as I can see”.

“What doctor?”, asked Sherry, starting to smile as her spirits lifted and her heart filled with renewed hope.

But, suddenly, the doctor turned round in his swivel chair and Sherry screamed as she saw that he had turned into some kind of horrible, enormous, red, grinning cherry with glaring, glowing red eyes.

“Pop your cherry, Cherry”, growled the doctor, lasciviously; laughing insanely and waggling a long pink tongue up and down.

“Cherry? What is it? Whats wrong, Cherry?”, asked Sherry’s mother, as her daughter ran screaming out of Doctor Poppers office.

But Sherry didn’t answer. She just kept running; out of the waiting room and out of the hospital but everywhere she turned, she saw Cherries; a billboard for cherry cola; an ice-cream truck selling Ben & Cherrie's Cherry Garcia ice-cream, a smiling couple on a bench feeding each other with cherries from a grocery bag; a cherry nosed weeping clown selling cherry balloons filled with helium, even a cherry-red suited street corner Santa, ringing a bell and shouting “Cherry Christ-mas! Cherry Christ-mas!”.

“Cherries!”, screamed Sherry, “Cherries! Cherries! Cherries!”, then the snow beneath her feet and the sky above turned cherry red and she fainted.

Jerry pulled up the zipper on his jeans and Sherry woke up.

“Oh, thank the good lord Jesus. It was just a dream!”, she said, clutching the silver crucifix pendant round her neck tightly.

“It wasn’t a dream for me, Sherry. I can tell you that”, said Jerry, her boyfriend for nearly two years.

“What happened?”, she asked, sweeping the long auburn hair out of her eyes and clutching her head, dazed and confused, “Did we do it?”.

“No”, said Jerry, pulling on his sweat shirt over his head and scowling moodily,“You screamed and passed out and I didn’t want my first time to be with someone who was unconscious. You’ve got some real hang-up’s about sex”.

“I’m sorry, Jerry”, she said, smiling and grabbing hold of his hand as he was about to leave, “Come back to bed. I won’t scream or pass out, this time. I promise”.