(c) Jerold's Magic Grapes [PG]

Title: Jerold's Magic Grapes
Rating: PG - just to be safe, potential unsavoury imagery?
Author: Me
Genre: fairy-tale type thing
Status: One-shot/complete
Summary/Exerpt: A fairy-tale about a pig, a farmer, and his magic grapes.



There once was a farmer. His name was Jerold and he farmed vegetables and had a rather nice little vineyard. The grapes he grew were special and could make the driest cow produce the tastiest milk and fatten any vegetable for market or show if the juices were squeezed over their roots or stems.

They could also cure the common cold and heal burns, scrapes, grazes and numerous other ailments and skin conditions. Jerold was a favourite in the nearby town; other farmers would buy him drinks on the house and send baskets of cookies, still warm from the oven. Children picked him flowers and gave them to Jerold in the prettiest arrangements.

One such farmer and one such child gave him a pig one afternoon.

“Jerold,” said the farmer in a big gruff voice. “The name’s Bill. I live away way with my wife Beatrice and this here’s our daughter, Samantha. We heard bout you and your magic grapes. This here’s our pig. The wife and I would be happy to help you around the farm if you would fatten this here pig up for market.”

Jerold agreed and ran back to the farmhouse to tell his wife, Amanda.

The pig moved in with the other animals, and Bill and Beatrice worked around the farm every day, feeding the chickens, tending to the flowers in pots beside the house, and fixing the fence next to the old broken shed. Jerold fed the pig grapes and his finest and oldest wine. The pig looked a sickly purple colour and hiccupped and burped, and Jerold just fed him more.

A month went by and the pig grew as big as a cow, then a small whale. Eventually the day came.

“Righto,” Jerold said as he strapped the pig into a trailer and hitched the trailer to his ute. “Me and ‘manda will ride in front. Bill, Beatrice, Samantha, you three follow on.”

The market was filled with noise and smells and animals, and the four of them unclipped the pig’s fastenings. Everyone watched in awe as the pig stepped out of the trailer, which was the size of a litter box compared to the massive body.

Samantha led the pig to his allocated spot by a thick rope around his neck, and he moved with great swaying steps, flicking mud up with his trotters as he went. His skin was still a shocking shade of purple and stood out among the perfectly pink pigs scattered around the marketplace.

The pig tried to sit back on his hind legs to fit into the cramped space between two dusty utes, but his large size and drunken movements wouldn’t work for him, and he toppled. People screamed and scarpered and pigs fled with frightened squeals.

“Mother! Father!”

“Jerold!”

Samantha and Amanda stared as their parents and husband were flattened under the pig’s enormous rump. The pig gave a grunt, a muffled squeal and began to vomit.

Ten minutes later and a normal-sized pig trotted away calmly, leaving three crushed farmers and two shocked individuals covered in purple ooze.