Michael Cirino & Amanda Glass
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Geronimo is a green grape, happily living with his family in a grape vineyard. One day, he stumbles across a horrible sight. His family is being slaughtered and turned into champagne by a toothsome but lumpy and deformed grape. She asks, “Are you thirsty?” As Geronimo watches in horror as his innocent parents are crushed in a wine press, while the villainous grape stands on an operating platform to control the wine press. The grape calls on her giant human minion to gather Geronimo and his fellow grapes, ready to create the next batch.
Geronimo and the other grapes are tossed into the wine press, and the minion begins to stir and mash them with the press. Geronimo cowers in a crevice in the press between its wooden slits, safe from the carnage, but seeing it all. The other grapes are mashed to bits and turned into a liquid before his very eyes. Geronimo has to quickly escape before he’s fermented as well. He slams himself against the wine press’ cork, creating a hole for him to escape through.
He falls to the floor, some of his family’s innards spilling out with him. The mysterious grape’s minion calls in more giants, saying, “Now it’s time for the tasting part of the tour.” Geronimo is further disturbed as the giants sniff tall glasses of grape blood, before putting it in their mouths and swishing it around before spitting it back out. Geronimo cannot understand these barbaric actions.
He shouts at the other grape, asking how she could do such a horrible thing. She reveals that she is Geraldine, Geronimo’s third cousin twice removed, a deformed grape who, from her angle on the vine, could see Geronimo, though he could not see her. Due to her disfigurement, she was mocked by their family and, seeking revenge, she created the winery.
Geronimo notices a forklift with crates of champagne bottles and a running furnace, and he forms a plan to stop her. He operates the forklift, positioning the bottles near the furnace. As they heat up, their corks fly off with such speed and with the correct trajectory to hit the support beam of Geraldine’s operating platform. The evil grape falls into the wine press and is mashed along with her relatives.
Geronimo leaves the winery, a changed man after the horrors he’s witnessed. He runs away from his past and retires in California, becoming a crotchety old raisin.
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The random objects that we used were: cork
adjectives were: thirsty, innocent, and toothsome.
Our random conflicts were: loss of loved ones, character vs. environment, escape, character vs. character.