For this one: You must save your life and strike a deal with a giant.
JACKIE (any gender, mid to late teens)
Please don't.
Mister, do you really want to do this? Sorry to speak out of turn but... I... guess I've got nothing to lose. Either you squash me with a giant club or I get away. And maybe you come after me. And maybe that beanstalk cracks under your weight, you fall a few miles and then YOU'RE the one who goes squish, not me.
It's no good, mister.
Think about it: even if I don't get away... you swing the club, squash me into a meat cookie, grind me up and eat me up with some... some what? I don't see nothin' ta eat around in these clouds, mister.
And me? I'm sticks and bones. I wouldn't fill you up neither. You're not looking too well fed. I think I get it: You might be a giant up here but you really can't go nowhere, can you? You're trapped. What do you and the wife live on? Sea gulls?
And I know what it's like to be starving. See, the landlord is squeezing us dry. We don't have any money to do decent farming and if we can't do decent farming we can't get money-- you see how it is, mister.
But here's this: I now got myself a beanstalk, don't I? I could haul just a bit of your gold down from this beanstalk, if you were keen to a... a kind of a deal. I could probably rig a pulley for ya to get a lot of food. Cows, horses. Hey maybe even a delicacy or two. You like the blood of Englishmen? I'll tell ya mister, if there's one Englishman who AIN'T sticks and bones, that's our landlord.
Copyright 2016 by Matt Haynes. If you would like to use this piece, please credit: "Courtesy of Matt Haynes and The Pulp Stage"