The Cropping of Life

It all began with an assault, an assault by a strong odor on Richard Grant's nose. The odor wasn't unpleasant, it smelled like yeast, which is a very odd smell for one to encounter in the bedroom all things considered. Richard Grant gradually opened his pale blue eyes as he tried to raise himself up off his bed. The waking man discovered that he wasn't in a bed, but rather on the ground surrounded by a sea of brown and yellow; most strange. Mister Grant ran his hands across his beard-clad face in dismay as he quickly arrived at a couple of realizations: he was in a decaying cornfield and he was as nude as he had been when he went to sleep. How the hell did I get here, he wondered. He had no history of sleepwalking and despite being a firm believer in there being a first time for everything, Richard Grant viewed this as too extreme to have been a case of having sleepwalked. "Shit, only one way out of this," he muttered to himself as he began to walk through the sea of cornstalks. Pests of all kinds buzzed around and gnawed at the naked man as he rushed through the cornfield; the once fairly blemish free body now began to take on red bumps, bug bites. Relief hit Richard as the pests bugged off and a clearing with an orange tree stump in the center came into view. Richard slowed his pace to a walk as he approached and proceeded to sit on the odd tree stump. Although the coloring of the stump bewildered poor Richard, more important thoughts pressed their way into his mind as he starred at the red sky. How did he end up here? What time was it? Was he late for work? All of those questions, the last in particular ate away at him, for life as he knew it fully depended on him keeping his job. Richard Grant was a man with a crushed spirit. He etched out a living as a Trash Man, he simply rode on the back of a garbage truck and collected trash, he could barely afford rent if he skipped a couple of meals a week and was forced to live paycheck to paycheck; this was the last thing he needed. "What have I done to deserve this? Haven't I suffered enough," Richard howled up at the sky in a combination of frustration and despair. Richard let out a sigh that was drowned out by an overhead sound that could best be described as a jet engine. The cornstalks that surrounded the clearing shook with intensity and a few could be heard snapping off in the distance. The spiritless man reluctantly stood and walked back into the cornstalks in the hopes of making his way out. A lone high pitched cry came from within the cornfield, it was a cry of terror and it was abruptly silenced. Richard paused and crouched as if to shrink himself down to the size of a mouse as he pondered whether he should head toward the scream or away from it. "Fuck this," he muttered to himself with fear ebbing out of his voice. Richard headed in the direction that he believed to be opposite of the scream, believed to be. Richard Grant had never seen cornfields as creepy or even given much thought to them in the past, but now... -now that he was in the midst of one and couldn't see his way out, was dealing with something that had frightened another man and had potentially silenced a man's scream- now he was afraid; afraid of cornfields in general. If Richard had his way he'd never go near another cornfield for as long as he lived, assuming that he got out. He wandered desperately and aimlessly constantly turning and shifting direction in an effort to avoid the area in which the scream had originated and to hopefully find an exit. Due to either bad luck or the predatory skill of the beast, perhaps both, Richard Grant came face to face with a bear. No, it wasn't a bear, his mind had attempted to categorize something in which it had no way of categorizing had simply assumed it was a bear at first glance. A very large, rough skinned creature with various black spikes jutting from its back and a fist shaped face with large ragged teeth poking forth stood before Richard Grant. True terror stood before the hapless garbage collector and terrified he was. Had Richard been wearing pants he would have pissed himself, instead his urine dribbled onto the ground. Although he could not control his bladder, he could control his legs and ran in the opposite direction he did. Richard didn't care about the cornstalks anymore, nor the bugs, or the human remnants and bloody cornstalks that he stumbled across as he ran, no, all he cared about was escaping from that... thing. Despite what one might think about a creature of such stature, slow and clumsy it was not. For every step that Richard took, the beast took two. Richard's lead diminished and soon the beast splayed its arms and... They sat crowded around a large screen in an area that could best be described as a stadium. Their black cloaks embraced their blue skinned bodies and shielded their deep crimson eyes as they hissed at the screen. The hissing of the extraterrestrials should not be confused for displeasure as it is in fact a sign of the opposite in their culture. They hissed repeatedly as the naked man on the screen unknowingly neared the Uventral that they had dropped in by ship. As the beast came into Richard Grant's sight, a few of the aliens turned to each other and clacked their fingers; their primary way of communicating. Eventually the inevitable had happened, the naked man had failed to find the exit as had the thousands before him, which lead to the Uventral sweeping him up in its arms and eating his skin and muscle. The hisses grew louder as the beast moved on to carefully scooping out the eyes and licking the jelly off before eating them; a most peculiar habit for such a beast. The event was done and their daily entertainment had been had. The box shaped ship was dispatched and the creature was recaged with care, for they could not let it roam free as their future abductees slept, as it would have been unsporting and against the spirit of their daily event. The alien craft shot out a bright purple beam composed of a special element into the corn causing symbols to form which in turn caused the ship to disappear in a blue flash of light. The ship reappeared over a cornfield on Earth. The corn was the perfect anchor as that it was the only similarity that the two worlds contained. Human scientists had spent years looking for signs of alien life in space, if only they had known that they were looking in the wrong place. Alien life doesn't exist in space, it exists in another dimension. The robed visitors beamed themselves into the bedrooms of those they wished to abduct. They abducted at random with the exception of a single rule: take no more than one person from a single area at a time. The blue spacemen, their ship, and the abducted disappeared like a ghost in the night as they shot that same symbol into one of Earth's many cornfields. Donald Prior's allergies began to act up causing him to sneeze viciously, he drowsily opened his hazel colored eyes and stood up with the intention of going to the bathroom to take some allergy medicine. He wasn't in his bed, he was lying in a cornfield.