The Vain Vegetable King

The Vain Vegetable King

Once upon a time there was a king who was the most mischievous king that had never existed before. He was so vain and loved to look good. He used to look at himself all day long in front of his mirror. He wanted to be the only handsome man in his kingdom so that he had ordered to kill whoever he thought was more attractive than him. The King thought he was almost perfect, the only defect he had was that he had been chubby since he was a little kid.

He had been trying several diets to lose weight but nothing seemed to work. One day one of his personal advisers told him about a secret garden he only knew about where miracle fruits and vegetables were grown. These fruits and vegetables were supposed to cure the sick, make ugly people beautiful and handsome men even more handsome, also they helped people to lose weight and gain muscles without exercising.

When the king heard this news his eyes sparkled and started jumping and screaming of happiness; of course, he had found the key for perfection. He told himself “I’m going to become even more handsome and get muscle without exercising”. The king didn’t like to exercise because he was very lazy. The adviser told the mischievous king the secret path and he started his trip. What he didn’t know is that the adviser had planned this as revenge trick, as revenge, with the rest of the people whose brothers, fathers, husbands, boyfriends and sons got killed because the king had considered they were better looking than him.

When the king arrived in the garden he saw that it was even more beautiful than he had imagined. He immediately began to eat all the fruits and vegetables he could, suddenly he slowly was transforming in a living tree that contained all kind of fruits and vegetables, he looked very yummy. He got really scared and went back to his kingdom.

The people were doing their daily routines when the king appeared at the entrance of the kingdom. The first who saw him were the poor, since they had been extremely hungry for a long time they started to eat him. He screamed and screamed out of pain but nobody could listen to him. Finally, just a piece of log remained; however, the king was still alive, in agony but still alive.

An old lady was passing by the street when she saw the piece of log. She got really happy because it was exactly what she needed for her chimney; it was going to be a terrible cold night. When she arrived home all her family got really happy, they were going to be warm that night. Therefore, in the end the vain king did something good for his people, he fed the poor and gave one family a warm night.

Written by: Valeria Narvaez

(Note: Please, help me improve my English! If you want to correct the mistakes please do so. I would really appreciate it. 😊😊😊)

I wrote this story in my fourth year of college. I absolutely LOVED this assignment. The challenge was to create a story using narrative tenses taking as inspiration a postcard that our teacher had given us. I got one with a painting called Summer made by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. At the beginning I was like “What the heck is this????” What am I supposed to do?” “Ok, wait a minute. This is creepy!!!” The funny thing is that I came up with an even creepier story but I ended up falling in love with it. As a result, I started feeling the desire to write stories for kids (but not as weird as this one haha). So, maybe… one day… who knows! 

PC: https://www.wikiart.org/en/giuseppe-arcimboldo/summer-1563