Eat Your Vegetables

Once upon a time there was a boy falling in love,

but now he's only falling apart

because he wouldn't eat his vegetables and got scurvy

THE END

The Boy Who Threw Stones

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In a time long ago, o best beloved, there lived a naughty little boy who liked to throw stones at people. Every day, after telling his parents that he was going hoop-rolling, the boy would walk to a nearby park, clench up a handful of stones, and climb a large oak tree, where he would then spend the afternoon cruelly pelting innocent passersby.

The boy took great delight in the way his victims would bray and yelp when they were hit, and every time one of his stones met its target, the boy would titter to himself, rub his hands together, and ready another rock to do it all over again. But one day he was foolish enough to hit the town vagrant, a drunk who lived in a cave by the river, whose breath stank like a minotaur in hot summer rain, whose beard was a crass and ramshackle congress of fleas, and whose vagrant-trousers were held up with handstrung suspenders of cat sinew. In short, o best beloved, woe betide the child who trifled with this mangy, decrepit soul. But he had been trifled right in the head by this naughty little boy's stone.

The crapulent wretch looked up, wild eyes swimming in gin, froth spuming from his blistered maw, face burning red as though being egged on by a hallucinatory mob. With a great cry that skinned the boy's composure alive, the man rushed at the tree and began ripping off sheets of bark with the ferocity of a Tartar. The boy quailed from atop his perch, which now wobbled as if it had succumbed to the same deranged tremens that possessed the jaundiced beast below.

With a ferocious ululation, the vagrant gave the tree a mighty shake and dislodged the naughty boy. Down he tumbled, squealing as each branch larruped him raw. He hit to the ground with a great thud, and the vagrant stood over him, breathing heavily, each dull gasp flecking forth rank sputum onto the wounded, cowering child.

Wot arm d'ew use to lob that rock, 'ew 'ittle cretin?

At the vagrant's query, the boy timorously held up his left hand, for he was left-handed. And then the vagrant, drawing the arm taut, sank what teeth remained in his skull into the quivering wrist, leaving a macabre constellation of gashes filled with bacillary pools of blood and slobber.

The boy ran home and told his parents. And they in turn told him that he had gotten what was coming to him. However, because they could not bear the idea that the boy would be permanently maimed and thus unable to take over his father's lucrative blood-letting business, they called a local healer. The healer told the boy to keep his arm elevated and applied an odoriferous poultice, which smelled of gin and offal and aniseed, which is in fact what it was composed of.

The boy's wrist would eventually heal, and it is true, o best beloved, that he became an ambidexter, having come to rely on his right hand during the healing process. Yet, in spite of now being able to use both arms with great dexterity, the boy's ordeal taught him to never throw rocks again.