Majestic

Did you know that fairy tales are sometimes allegories?

Well, did you know that sometimes they’re just straight up lies?

Welcome to this week’s fantasy flash fiction!

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“Yeah, that’s one hell of a beanstalk,” said Grandpa Jack, as we took him on a tour of the garden before dinner. “But it’s nothing like the one I climbed.”

We groaned. We all knew the story. Grandpa told it whenever he came to visit.

The weather was mild, and it looked like he was just going to tell it again, right here, with the sound of a distant lawnmower floating in the air, but the words caught in his throat and his frame jerked as coughs wracked his body. His hand was bloody when he took it away from his mouth.

“Time to tell you what really happened up there,” he said, after we’d made him comfortable in the big armchair, and soothed his throat with a glass of milk.

“Most of the story is true and you know it,“ he said. “I never understood how I got away with the bit I lied about. We were poor in those days. Everybody was. That’s how I had nothing to lose. Not in this life.” He coughed. “As for what happens next, well, we’ll see.”

“Stealing’s not so bad,” I said. “Not when you have to, to survive.” That was something my family all believed, having profited from Jack’s adventures as a young man.

“No,” he said. “But there’s stealing, and there’s stealing. That’s why I said I stole from a giant, so it wouldn’t seem so bad. And it didn’t. I was even a kind of hero for a while. Got in the papers, and everything.”

He let us think about that while he drained the milk. The wash of white milk had traces of pink as it flowed back down the sides of his glass.

“So who did you steal from, if it wasn’t a giant?” I asked.

“You’re sure you don’t know?” Grandpa looked at each of us in turn.

I shook my head.

“Big fellow? Lives high above the clouds, watching everything we do? Angry when you cross him, but doesn’t otherwise get involved?”

I kept shaking my head, but it was because I didn’t want it to be true.

If he’d stolen from Him, there’d be Hell to pay for all of us.

I didn’t hear it until the lawnmower’s engine shut off outside, but then the scratching under our house was impossible to miss and getting louder all the time.

Something was climbing towards us to steal Grandpa, and anything else it could get its hands on.

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Tonight is “Stand Up for Ukraine,” a two and a half hour show with ten top comedians, including Delaney favourites James Acaster and Sara Pascoe, to raise money for the Ukraine. Tickets are 10 pounds each and the link is good for a week, so if you miss it today, you still have time to watch it. Get your tickets here!

(I call it “Putin” your money towards a good cause… yeah, well, I’m not a comedian, am I?)