Saturday, May 14, 2011

James and the Giant Peach

        When my parents got eaten by an escaped rhino from the London Zoo, while shopping I had to move in with my two horrible aunts, Spiker and Sponge.  They are the worst, I wouldn’t want to live with them but I had no choice. They live on top of a hill in a little old house. Spiker and Sponge weren’t the happiest to see. Spiker and Sponge were selfish, lazy, cruel, and right in the beginning they started to beat me and the worst part is that they didn’t call me by my name. They called me either “you disgusting little beast” or “you filthy nuisance.” I didn’t like living with them because they weren’t nice at all. After three years of living with them I hadn’t gone off the hill or been able to have friends.
On a day that seemed like all the others, I ran out into the bushes and was crying miserably out of my aunts sights. I was surprised, I wasn’t alone. An old man stands nearby and observes me plight and reveals to me that he is in actuality a wizard passing through the area. He gave me a bag of tiny, glowing green alligator tongues which he reveals have magical life altering powers and instructs ma to dissolve them in water and injest them to turn my life around. The old man is gone as soon as he appeared and I speed off to get the tongues home to drink. As I run I trip over the root of a dried up old peach tree and the tongues scatter into the mud below it. It was dissolving out of my poor reach. Wretched with despair I return to my aunt’s house to continue with my miserable existence.
The next day my aunts and I discovered a giant house sized peach has magically grown on their old peach tree. My aunts cooked up a scheme to promote their giant peach for profit and soon their home becomes a popular overpriced tourist trap. I kept cooped up in my attic during the day watching children and their families file in to see the peach. I wish that I could play with them. But I am only allowed outside after the crowds are gone at night to clean up rubbish. One night I noticed an opening in the peach and decide to see where it leads me. I crawled all the way into the peaches center where the hollowed out pit serves as a house to human sized talking anthropomorphic bugs.
The bugs recognize their friend which is me and explain to me that they have been hiding in the giant peach to escape the wrath of Aunt Sponge. One of the bugs, the loud mouthed and sharp toothed Centipede bites through the peach stem connecting it to the tree. The giant peach rolls down the hill with me and the bugs safely inside. Sponge and Spiker notice that the peach is getting away and hurry down the hill in a vain attempt to stop its descent. Instead the much larger peach rolls over them and crushes them to death, then rolls over a cliff and into the English Channel below.
The peach floats along the Channel and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean where I and my bug friends encounter their next obstacle in the form of a swarm of sharks circling the peach and preparing to attack. I concoct a plan to use one of the bugs the wailing earthworm as bait to lure all the seagulls from the islands nearby and the spider and silkworm provide netting for me to lasso the gulls together to pull the peach out of the water and into flight. They succeed with earthworm both earthworm and the peach saved from being eaten and we float eastward and upward into the air. Rascally Centipede entertains them midflight with his egocentric tales and he gets so involved in acting them out that he dances right off the side of the peach and falls back into the ocean below. I again utilize silkworm’s makeshift ropes to go in after Centipede rescue my friend and pull us both back up safely of their flying peach. Already the bugs and I feel like a family unit for whom we would do anything.
The next adventure that we the inhabitants of the flying peach encounter are the Cloud-Men. The Cloud- Men create the weather for the earth below and when Centipede criticizes them for making snow and army of Cloud-Men attack us the peach with hail pellets. The hail shatters holes in the peach and causes it to spring leaks of peach juice, the peach to shrink smaller in size and the frightened seagulls pull their lightened load straight into the path of a rainbow shattering the Cloud-Men masterpiece. Cloud- Men artist launches himself onto a string holding the peach to the seagulls and I think quick and cut loose that string just in time to prevent the Cloud-Men from coming aboard. The peach finally floats out of the clouds making visible to me and the bugs that we are approaching the Manhattan skyline.
The bugs and I rejoice at seeing New York City in their midst of giant peach and believing it to either be a flying saucer or a nuclear bomb approaching, run to find safely in the subways and bomb shelters below as police and firemen storm the streets. The peach is no longer the only flying vehicle in the sky and a plane cuts so close to the peach that is severs the strings fro seagulls and the peach plummets down to earth. The peach is miraculously saved though when it becomes impaled on the top of the empire state building. The people on the observation deck demand to know what’s inside and I and the insect friends reveal themselves and tell their story of taking the giant peach across the ocean they became a press sensation and instant celebrities and New York City is so enchanted by them that they decide to throw a welcoming tickertape parade for the adventures and adopt me and the bugs as citizens of honor.
I encourage the children of the city to enjoy and eat the giant peach down on the pit. The hollowed out pit is turned into a house for me in Central Park. There I entertain the residents of the city and the tourist for generations to come, telling all my new friends my legendary adventure and I have everything I ever wanted. Friends, a home and my own adopted family of insects who visit me in my home frequently. The insects all find fame and fortune in New York in their own right. Old Green Grasshopper becomes a violin with the New York Symphony. Centipede becomes Vice President of Sales for a boot company. Earthworm becomes a face cream model with his soft skin. Spider and silkworm join forces to run a successful tightrope manufacturing company. Ladybug marries the head of the New York Fire Department. Glowworm lights up the torch of the Statue of Liberty and casts such a bright light that she illuminates the whole city at night.
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