Flash Fiction Friday

Jack And The Bean

He’d been tricked.

Half of his animals and three pieces of silver traded for one dried up bean.

Jack wept, staring at the ground, waiting for even a miniscule green tendril to appear. He’d planted it in the sun, just like the old man said. He’d watered it, kept the ground free of leaves and weeds around it. Tended to it for weeks.

Nothing. 

He was starving. Slowly he dug up the ground and found the bean right where he’d put it. Unchanged. Dry. Dead.

He brought it in the house with him just as a thunderstorm began to crackle in the heavens. Rain pattered in the hole he left, began to fill it up. 

He washed the bean and sat down at the table, poured salt and pepper on it, and downed it in one bite. 

Jack went to bed, his stomach still crying out for food. The storm raged above his small house, making the walls shake. 

And in the middle of the night, the bean began to grow.