Planet of the Grapes

edited story I first wrote age 13
Chapter 3

Flek waited in the bucket. It was dark and his body hurt from all the grapes lying on top of him but he didn’t care. Not at all. He was certain that something was going to happen now, this was the way to Planet of the Grapes, through this bucket. If only he could see.

Flek was vaguely aware that they were moving, he felt slammed into the grapes below him and the grapes on top of him and then they were set down somewhere cooler and even darker than before.

“What do ya see up there?” The grapes below were calling up, telephone style the reply came back, “cold and a lot of dark, pass it on.”

“dark, and a lot of cold, pass it on,” Flek repeated listlessly to the grape below him. None of those grapes at the top had any imagination. What he wouldn’t give to be up there.

Flek heard footsteps again, they shook the bucket, then excited cries form the top, “light! light!” Flek clung to his sister again. There were sounds from the top coming closer that Flek had never heard before, how to describe something you had never heard? Flek needed more words.

Flek waited for what felt like a month, in Earth time it was about two hours. It seemed to be getting lighter, not so heavy and not so dark. The grape on top of him was lifted away, like he weighed nothing. Flek was in the dark so long he’d forgotten how to see. Flek perceived the Earth he saw as the surface of the sun. His sister and the others howled.

They were lifted in the air next, plucked from their stem, and tossed into another bucket.

Some of his sisters and brothers landed beside him. Their stem which had born them, connected them to their mother, and sheltered them so long was gone, tossed away. Flek’s forehead was burning.

When all the grapes were in the new bucket it was lifted into the air.

Flek sat up high as he was carried. It was like some wonderful ride. Everything he saw whirred by so fast, but what he did see fascinated him. He saw brown things and red shapes. Blocks with arms and some with legs. Huge orange circles and long yellow squares. Flek didn’t have words for anything. This strange place might as well have been Planet of the Grapes for all he knew.

He saw the woman who had picked them eating a strange fruit that didn’t come from grapeville and didn’t speak grapish. He wondered if it were going to Planet of the Grapes. No, of course not, it wasn’t a grape. But then where did it go? Did it have its own planet?

He had never thought about any other fruit planets before. He wanted to go there too! He wanted to be a banana, or an apple! or a watermelon…

While Flek was figuring that out his brothers and sisters were being quiet for the first time Flek could remember when they weren’t sleeping. Not just quiet, silent. Flek didn’t have time to marvel at that or contemplate the difference between silence and quietness because it was just too exciting watching this woman spaceship. She was the spaceship to Planet of the Grapes, the better life.

She smiled at the small boy who carried the grape bucket, “Thank you Corduroy, you can set that bucket over by the cabinets.”

“What did she say?” Flek wondered. The boy set the bucket by the cabinets and ran off before his mother could give him another chore to do.

The lady leaned over, looking in the bucket at the grapes. From this angle her teeth looked bigger than the sun.

Flek cowered behind another grape he didn’t know but the other grape was trying to cower behind him too.

“Don’t be frightened,” He told himself, “She may seem big and scary but she is going to eat me.”

He stopped cowering and let the other grape hide behind him.

Flek looked up. It was so nice to be on the top of the pile. Now he was de-stemmed he was going to die sooner, he wondered why the boy person had de- stemmed them. They were going to eat all of them? Maybe- these people figures were awful big. Unless they were going to make grape juice, or wine.

Flek shuddered. He tried to push that word out of his head but now it was there it was there. Wine was the worst fate for a grape. His mother’d told him about it when he’d been three days old, a little nubby thing. It was like no grapes land and worse. When you were made into juice it hurt, it was a violation, all of your insides were on the outside and shared by everyone else, everyone was you. When you fell into No grape land you disappeared and never made it to Planet of the Grapes. But when you were made into wine the worst from both came in. The wine would be made like the grape juice but then it would sit on a shelf for years normally before someone drank them. Living that long before someone ate them would mean the grapes would surely die and never get to go to Planet of the Grapes. Flek shivered suddenly despite the heat of the room.

“Oh what a perfect grape,” The woman said spotting Flek as he moved. She leaned over him and picked him up out of all his brother and sister and neighbor grapes.

It all happened much quicker than Flek had ever imagined. He had time to feel excited after the fear and then before he could feel anything else he was in the person’s mouth. Sharp pointing white teeth poked him all over until he was in little shreds. Then Flek’s first life ended, he didn’t know what happened next.

The woman finished up Flek and ate two other grapes.

“Mmm,” she said, “delicious. You grapes will make an excellent wine.”