A Giant Peach & Three Thousand-Odd Goats
"You might be surprised to know that it is pretty hard to sleep with jellybeans coming out of your ears."
Originally published for a collaborative project in 2023, I’ve made some new edits to publish again here. I hope u like (-:
James had jellybeans coming out of his ears. A little concerning, his parents thought, but likely to pass with a bit of camomile tea and rest. James felt that there was something off about the way his parents brushed this aside, telling him to go back to bed, but what did he know about medical afflictions, or parental incompetence? He was only nine.
His mother would poke her head into his room and ask if he needed a cold towel; from his place on the couch, his father would tell him to go back to bed and rest. James was perceptive, even if he struggled to contemplate things fully, and he could see that his parents avoided looking directly at him. With a vagueness of mind, perhaps not entirely due to being nine, he wondered if it was because there were jellybeans pouring out of his ears. He was a shy kid, and he trusted his parents; he supposed it was an icky thing to look at.
You might be surprised to know that it is pretty hard to sleep with jellybeans coming out of your ears. James would lie on one side, and after a minute or so he’d feel the building pressure against his head as jellybeans would squeeze through his earhole and press up against the pillow and his ear. It wouldn’t stop. He’d lay on his back, which felt better, but still he could feel the jellybeans pouring from both ears, rolling off his pillow and making little click-clack sounds as they tinkled against each other in growing piles. Camomile tea didn’t help at all either, but I don’t know why you needed me to tell you that.
A week went by and there was no stopping with these jellybeans. James ended up staying home from school, because on the Monday just gone his classmates kept trying to eat the ear-jellybeans (and then complained of them tasting a bit like earwax), and the teachers were alarmed about the hygiene of it all. Unfortunately, this just meant that he had to take part in his classes via Zoom.
When Saturday came, his kooky aunt Rachelle came over. She took one look at James, while the only sound for a moment was the tinkling of jellybeans on the tiled kitchen floor. Turning to James’s mum, she said, “This is obviously because you had him vaccinated recently.”
James’s mum sighed. “You don’t have a choice; you know the school makes sure you do it. And it was for the usual stuff, chickenpox and whatever.”
“Yep, well, they put different chemicals in the vaccines every year. That’s why we never suffered from ours.”
James was wondering what chickenpox and chemicals had to do with the jellybeans pouring out of his ears. He left and went to his room, trailing the jellybeans, followed closely by the Roomba.
By some turn of eerie miracle, the jellybeans stopped by Sunday. Rachelle, who had stayed overnight, squinted at James as he sat at the dining table, having been begged to come out of his room and be social, though he still felt uncomfortable and sore. Rachelle gave a huff, turning now to stare at her phone, and said, “That won’t be the end of his problems, Clara. It’s those vaccines. No end to the biological and mental issues once you get them jabbed. You’ve effectively crippled your son.”
“Rachelle.” James’s father, passing through on the way to the bathroom, spoke in a warning tone.
“I’m just being honest. You know that I am always honest.”
If James had any opinion of his aunt’s bold statements, it was hard to say. His face remained impassive, his expression wincing just a little with the soreness in his head. He glanced between his parents, who weren’t paying him any attention at all, but were looking at Rachelle; his father with a look of immense irritation and his mother with confused awkwardness. Rachelle, lips pursed with a righteous air, kept scrolling on her phone, ignoring them.
James’s parents and teachers often seemed worried that James was slow, that not much was happening in his little skull. But the truth was just the opposite: he could not keep up with or organise his thoughts. The words that powered through his mind didn’t align into sentences very well, but they kept on pushing, attempting to form coherence, trying and trying all day. It was energy-draining. All James could wonder with any clarity was whether the jellybeans would be back.
Just when one might lower their guard against the jellybeans, something new and much more agonising came out of James’s left ear while he was tucked into bed for the night. It was a banana. The brown tip of the peel protruded from his earhole, and then with pushing one could compare to childbirth, it forced its way through. When the pushing turned into a tearing pain, James began to cry aloud; he was usually so quiet that this very act panicked his parents, and they rushed into his room and glimpsed the banana with wide eyes.
“That does not seem normal,” his father said.
“Oh, god— your little ear!” his mother shrieked, diving forward to grab her son’s head and peer at it with horror. James sobbed and winced, as she inspected his ear, as the banana continued to squeeze its way out, despite no sign of blood, or even tearing. Where the banana met at the earhole, it would be squished to fit the space— it was absurd, to put it simply.
The doctor was called, and his parents were instructed to dash him straight to hospital. The banana had by now exited the ear, with one final squeeze and a pained squeal, and now it lay beside James on the bed as though it had been plucked from a bunch at the grocery store. His mother picked up the banana with a hand-towel, and they bundled James into the car. (“Is it squishy like earwax?” James heard his father ask his mother.)
James pressed his hand to his ear throughout the whole car ride, feeling an ominous pressure.
At the hospital, his parents showed the banana to the doctor. “It came out of his ear!” his mother cried.
The doctor regarded the banana, and James’s parents’ panic-stricken faces, with unfazed knowledgeability. “Oh, we see this thing all the time,” he said. “Take some ibuprofen and you’ll be fine.”
“Pardon?” his mother spluttered. “He needs a brain-scan! Or something! What if there are bananas all stuck in his skull?”
The doctor shook his head. “Most kids his age don’t actually have anything in their heads. It’s quite marvellous, really; the landscape of the brain for children has changed quite a lot with the overreliance on technology… microplastics… yada, yada… My kids started using three social media apps just to do their homework by the time they were six! It’s quite normal, I assure you. He just needs to take these.”
He handed them a packet of ibuprofen. (It wasn’t even the strongest dosage).
James felt something big and bulbous push against the inside of his head.
So, they went home, James leaning against the car window, letting his head bounce and smack with the roughness of the car ride, just to distract from the immense pressure. His parents bickered a little in the front— his mother, unsure that the ibuprofen would suffice, suggesting maybe he needed antibiotics as well, and his father insisting that the doctor knew what he was talking about, he knew all that stuff about the technology and tiny plastics, didn’t he, and they didn’t even know about these things, so clearly the doctor was smart and informed.
“He’ll be fine, you’ll see.” His father wrapped an arm behind his mother’s seat and smiled at her. James groaned from the backseat.
James was made to take the ibuprofen with a glass of water and was sent to bed. He tossed and turned, and while no more bananas seemed to make an exit of his head, he still felt a pulsing, growing pain. Somehow, he did fall asleep, but around midnight, he awoke to a strange presence just before his nose. As sleep faded, he became aware of a numbness on the side of his head exposed to the night air, and in the darkness, a large, round entity was on his pillow. He sat up and his eyes adjusted to the gloom.
It was a giant peach.
We’re talking as big as his head.
He blinked and stared. The maths wasn’t adding up. He assumed that the peach had come out of his ear, but… He fingered at his ear and could only determine that it was the same shape as usual. Then a pressure rose, and he lurched against the wall, knocking the peach onto the floor. It landed with a heavy thunk and a slight squelch.
This is what happened next:
The jellybeans returned with a vengeance. They poured with such ferocity that soon they had flooded James’s room and covered the floor, rising to swallow up the bed; James was lifted into the current, which was so strong that it pushed the door (which had been left ajar) open, and James, along with the giant peach, spilled out into the rest of the house.
The house was alive with a roar as jellybeans filled every crevice and submerged furniture. James’s parents, screaming, had emerged from their bedrooms, and tried to swim through the jellybeans to open windows and make an escape. James, meanwhile, had clasped onto the peach, and was being carried out now to the front door which had been blown open by the sheer force of the jellybeans. Out he went, and soon enough, James’s jellybeans, now intermingled with bananas, were flooding the street.
Eventually, James wound up clinging to the branch of a tall tree. The world around him was filled with screaming as adults attempted to get to high places, or were stupid enough to get into their cars, thinking they could out-drive the flooding. But it wasn’t just jellybeans and bananas anymore. The flood included watermelons, strings of sausages, and cats. The cats were having a field day as they bundled along the flood, screeching and slapping each other over pieces of sausage. The watermelons were a hazard and occasionally knocked a cat flying. James witnessed one unlucky man, climbing onto his car, and trying to get to his roof, be bundled over by a rogue watermelon that smacked right into his gut.
James found himself surprised when a goat tumbled out of his ear and slipped into the deluge below. When the second one fell, he decided to count them, to pass the time. He got to three thousand and stopped, exhausted and stunned at all that had come out of his head.
Then it hit him: he had the clarity to count. Three thousand in a row!
Man, if his maths teacher could see him now! In fact, he felt clearer than he’d ever felt in his life. He wanted to read books and learn about the Roman Empire! He wanted to know how politics worked, and why his father was always arguing with his aunt Rachelle about it! He wanted to ask Rachelle what vaccines were! He wanted to learn card games!
The singular giant peach that he’d produced earlier came bobbing along in the deluge below him and he leaned down to pick it up, seconds before a goat tried to bite it. He held it up and marvelled at what had come out of his head. No one, least of all himself, had ever suspected that so much could be inside of him.
He just had to get it all out to begin his life.
The End.
this is like a reverse very hungry caterpillar! Very absurd and entertaining.
OMG! At first I didn't understand what was happening, but OH MY GOD!!! This is the best thing I've read today 🥹 So so good!!! Oh to be able to write like you 💕💕