The Birth of SuperCabbage

just another one of my humble tries of writing short stories in English - this is a bit autobiographical short story, accompanied by my 2(rather quick and sketchy)illustrations (please read it, if you have time, and if you read it i'd be very grateful if you wanted to share with me Your opinion, hopefully it shouldn't be too boring to read)

thank you to my dear dA-friend Kenneth (great writer himself btw) for encouraging me to write it down

"The Birth of Supercabbage"

A tiny green caterpillar kept trying to pass a park's path from the very dawn. Around 9 am it was just centimetres from the dream land, nearly there – past the concrete desert of the path, on the green lawn under a fragrant forest of thistles. And it would probably manage to get there happily, if only exactly on that spring day - 26th of April 1986 – one clumsy puppy-eyed clerk didn't take a day off to wander in the Jordan Park in Krakow peacefully and think over if there is any way under the sun how he could make his wife come back to him. Unfortunately for a little green traveller, that clerk had his day off precisely on the 26th of April and a few minutes past 9 am his right foot, led by the clerk's absent-minded brain, brutally aborted the caterpillar's journey, immediately turning the little creature into a wet splash of an unidentified colour.

A little 6-year old girl Alina that happened to be a horrified witness to that scene made a few quick leaps in the man's direction and with her face full of rage she started shouting fiercely: "Why did you do it, mister?! It was just a little bug and now it will never turn into a butterfly because of you! I hate you!" The clerk's eyes turned all watery when he heard the girl's last exclamation, so full of reproof, because "I hate you!" was exactly what his wife told him on the day before. So instead of complaining to the girl's mother - sitting on a park bench a few metres away – about the ill-mannered child, he just mumbled "I couldn't see it" rather shyly and walked away quickly, himself feeling very much like a caterpillar smashed on a concrete path.

Little Alina couldn't know that maybe the caterpillar would have escaped the cruel fate if - right before the clerk stepped on it - it didn't stop for a longer moment, to smell the air that seemed to bring some strange ominous scents on that morning.

The girl couldn't sense the strange subtle scents filling the air though, neither could Mrs. Malinowska who was just trying to explain to her little daughter: "Don't worry, darling, it surely didn't hurt, it must have been a quick painless death for the little caterpillar." But Alina shaking her head with terror said dramatically: "But it's dead now, anyways!" Her mom stroked her hair comfortingly and said "You never know, my dear, maybe there is some afterlife for caterpillars. There was one old clever scientist once who kept saying that life never dies, it only changes its form. There may be some forms of life that we know nothing of." The answer didn't sound clear at all, but Alina decided not to interrogate any further, because it seemed to her that mother was not an expert in the topics of caterpillars' afterlife and old clever scientists. She was really brilliant though at telling Alina's favourite fairy tale of three brothers (among whom one was a good fellow, but the other two were incredibly nasty) a talking pumpkin and the bad brothers falling into abyss in the end. So the girl started begging her mom to tell her the fable once more, and soon Alina was sitting on the bench very close to her mother, with bated breath listening to the story, having forgotten completely about the whole tragic incident that happened to the small green caterpillar.

Beside a child and her mother there was something more on the bench, however - a cabbage, relatively big one and freshly looking, lying in a plastic bag. Mrs. Malinowska managed to buy that cabbage early morning on her way to the park with her little daughter, which was quite a success if we consider buying anything (especially anything more or less edible) in Poland in the year 1986 without having at first spent long hours in a queue was nothing but a rare gift of fortune if not a real big time miracle.

All the 3 beings - the woman, the girl and the cabbage - were occupying a park bench on that warm April morning, when in the most gripping moment of the talking-pumpkin story, its narrative got interrupted by an appearance of a very unexpected newcomer.

A young student running very fast from the direction of a nearby Institute of Chemistry looking pretty scared stopped for a moment in front of the bench and shouted with his voice tuckered out: "Ma'am, there was an explosion in Chernobyl…and now there's a radioactive cloud approaching Poland… everyone have to hide in their houses, quick! Especially children!" and he ran further into the park to warn everybody else staying in the park.

In the blink of an eye Alina and her mother were half-walking half-running speedily back to their house. But suddenly Alina cried out to her hurrying mother: "Mom, but we forgot our cabbage!" "Oh nevermind!" – replied Mrs. Malinowska - " Go, go, darling, quick!"

Little Alina was right – their cabbage was left on the bench. What's more – it was still there when the radioactive cloud came over Krakow. Something strange was happening to it, the cabbage felt – oh yes, it felt! - as if it was changing.

Rinsed in a radioactive air, deep in the centre of the cabbage numerous cells of its cabbagish body were turning into something more complex, something very much like a brain, also its leaves were gradually turning more elastic and it seemed to the cabbage that they were capable of moving according to its will.

Inspired by the recently heard story of a talking pumpkin the cabbage tried to move some of its leaves as if they were lips, like humans do when they speak words out of their mouths. At first it didn't work, but after a few tries the cabbage managed to make a few swishing sounds that later started resembling some quiet demoniac swishing laughter. It moved all its leaves at once triumphantly and decided to try out its motion abilities then.

Cautiously, it made a first timid jump. It looked around suspiciously to check if none watched. But there was nobody in the whole park anymore, everybody was hidden from the radioactive cloud in their warm safe houses, the whole empty park belonged to the cabbage.

No other cabbage from the beginnings of times was given a chance to test its superpowers in daylight, so completely away from human eyes. The cabbage decided to make the best of it, tried hard and finally jumped out of the plastic bag where it was staying and - still laughing demoniacly - jumping away and away from the bench and the path soon it disappeared in the dark green thickets of of the park.