Saturday's Storyteller: "When the seedpods opened, the little farm girl screamed."

by Belinda Roddie

When the seedpods opened, the little farm girl screamed. But the truth was, there was nothing to be afraid of whatsoever. For out of the pods emerged the greenest, plumpest, tastiest giant peas that one did ever lay her blue eyes on.

Her uncle, rugged and superbly masculine as he was, laughed and clapped his large hands together, then stooped down to pull a pea the size of a fist out of its opened, fleshy womb. He held it out to her niece, but the girl wildly shook her head.

"Self-opening pea pods," her uncle tried to explain. "I swear to you, the peas will be the best you've ever eaten."

The girl was not interested in eating something that came right out of a giant green shell without the need of human hands. Besides, she didn't like peas.

Uncle Jared owned the patent on the giant genetically modified vegetables that he farmed now, having once operated the company born out of the genetic study, "Allegranto." In truth, he was perfectly happy with being on his own private farm, though he did not at all mind the millions upon millions of dollars poured annually into his bank account. True, it wasn't all in vain - the whole goal of creating the self-sufficient, self-harvesting crops was so those less fortunate in third world countries would be able to eat, and heartily. Jared's giant peas especially yielded a larger output than all of the United States' farmers' pea yield combined. He was a mogul, a mastermind, a maniac - and he was feeding billions upon billions of people each day.

And he had no problem with that. Every night, after tending to his farm, he'd go down to the basement where he had arranged his personal laboratory. He'd examine the strains and bacterial specimens he kept on standby - finding new ways to protect vegetables and grow them faster. He'd analyze genetic strands and equations for each plant he ever laid his eyes on. Right now, Jared was focusing on rejuvenating the cacao bean, considering how over farmed it was. If modified to endure dry earth, even tundra, then perhaps chocolate could remain a sizable commodity and not an expensive luxury similar to that of caviar.

What he did not know was that, each night, he was testing and experimenting with a set of genetic material that he did not suspect was around. For the niece, over time, had collected skin cells, tissues, and blood of her own, out of morbid curiosity, and placed them in a petri dish marked "Carrot Cells." And wouldn't you know it, that was just what Jared planned to plant, modified, into the soil by the next month.

***

By the time eighty days had passed since the planting of the allegedly modified carrot seeds, Uncle Jared could not wait for harvest. Ergo, he was a little concerned when he walked outside and noticed something rather strange about the carrot stalks.

He wasn't quite sure how he hadn't noticed before. GMOs may have been different genetically, but their physical appearance was never quite altered. Garlic bulbs never came out red with him, and spinach certainly never turned out to be a shade of purple, not even when it had gone bad. But these carrot stalks, well, that was something different entirely.

Pushing up the brim of his very masculine cowboy hat, Jared turned to see his niece peering wide-eyed from inside the house, her hands pushed up very flat against the kitchen window glass. She stared so widely and so unblinkingly that her uncle could see the veins pulsing under the membrane around her irises, deep blue as they were. She seemed so enthralled with whatever Jared was doing that he almost forgot about how terrified she had been of the hand-sized peas. He was more alarmed by the carrots.

Instead of green, thick, leafy stalks, the carrot stalks were brown. Very brown. And they seemed to be made of hair. It certainly didn't feel like hair when he touched it, but it certainly didn't feel like carrot, either. It was as if Jared were pulling a horse's tail out of the soil, and he sniffed loudly through his left nostril and dabbed at his eyes.

"Hmmph," he uttered. That was all he said: Hmmph. Then he grabbed the carrot hair stalk and yanked.

The strange guttural cry from beneath the dirt was muffled, but clear. Jared jumped back. His very masculine boots slid in the soil. The tug on the stalk had been enough to loosen the dirt somewhat, and soon, a rough, harsh scratching could be heard until Jared could swear he saw little fingers emerging from the earth.

"Uncle Jared," came the tiny, familiar voice from the ground. "It's not nice to pull on your niece's hair."

All at once, the other hairy carrot stalks vocally agreed. And Uncle Jared screamed, as each alleged carrot rose from the bursting earth, white-skinned and brown-haired and blue-eyed - miniature versions of his nieces, planted on his farm. When they smiled, they had orange teeth. And when their creator smiled back, from the kitchen window, her molars bore the same hue.

This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.