The Chilling of Louise

This is an older tale from 2011. I'm sure I had posted it on the site, but couldn't find it. It's had a slight tweak since. I'd been going through older stuff to get ideas for newer stuff. Something like that.

***

Louise woke up in the pantry. She blinked a few times, then sat up in the butter dish and noticed a leaf of lettuce giving her a crisp and curious glance.

"What's going on?" she wondered out loud.

"I'll tell you what's going on," said the leaf of lettuce. "You've angered the giant! That's what's going on!"

"Giant?"

"Yes. You called him a pompous sack of—”

"Yes, yes, I remember it now," she interrupted. "I fell in a puddle of the giant's grog. Oooh . . . my head. What else?"

"You said that if you had a castle as big as his, you'd fill it with hungry people who would raid the pantry and never go hungry again."

"I said that?"

"You also shook your naked fanny and made a rude noise that caused the giant to wonder why anyone would be so impolite to one so exalted as he."

"Then what did I do?"

"You peed in his finger bowl."

"And I don't suppose he liked that?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"You knocked over his neatly stacked row of gold coins."

"Ooh. Then?"

"You fell asleep in the butter dish and were placed here in the cellar pantry with us perishables. The giant hopes you'll change your ways by the time he's ready for breakfast."

As the leaf of lettuce finished speaking, the giant descended the cellar stairs and spoke to Louise.

"You can warm yourself by the fire," said the giant. "If you promise to be good."

Later, as Louise walked away from the burning castle, the sky turned purple with the giant's rage.

Photo courtesy of Wiki Commos:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ogrodzieniec_gothic_castle_ruins...