The Deadliest Crop

The darkness was approaching, cascading over the sky in ominous waves of an ashen midnight blue. The last rays of light held on, just as Clifford Freeman held on hope he would make it through one last night. They were growing in size.

He bounced his leg as the shotgun remained firmly gripped in his palm. A glimmer of the final light disappeared below the horizon and reflected from the pile of sharp objects sitting before Cliff. He was no fool, he was ready. Everything from his kitchen cleavers to the wood-cutting axe had been collected and lay before him in an arsenal ready to take out an army. He had even decided on the gas can and the box of matches, just in case.

The newly dew-covered twilight usually brought with it sounds of the nocturnal animals rousing from their slumber. There would be no crickets chirping tonight. Not even the bats would squeak their echo location. The animals somehow knew to not go near Cliff’s farmland anytime after dark. 

He grunted and spat a brown wad of chewed tobacco at the ground, but nothing happened. The longer Cliff sat in his chair in the silence of the night, the more his hair began to stand on end. But it wasn’t the chill in the air that caused it to rise, it was them. He could feel them crawling closer to the surface and his breathing involuntarily began to quicken.

“Come on, Cliff, you’ve worked hard for this all summer, you deserve this! Don’t let a bunch of them take you out! You created them, you old fool!” He wondered if he’d heard something, but was too busy pep-talking himself to know. He listened closer still, but couldn’t take the wait. Cliff jumped from his chair in anticipation, turned on the first lantern, and picked up his gun, ready for anything. 

First were the roots, always the damn roots. They used their spider-like veins that spread underground for moisture, and turned them into legs, crawling up and out of the rich soil. The ends of the roots were like a prehensile appendage, surprisingly agile. "Ssssss," he tensed at the wriggling of their bodies moving along the packed earth like an army of slithering snake bodies. 

Cliff spat at the ground again, this time the dirt responded. It bubbled and broiled like a muddy volcano by his boots spitting rocks and black dirt back at him until it grew still. Then shooting up from under the ground like a spring, it attached itself to Cliff’s face with a set of barbed teeth. He ripped it off, cursing, with a wad of skin from his cheek, and took a good look at the violent culprit. 

It was a giant white radish with eye slits of freshly opened red. It snapped its mouth in loud smacks at Cliff in an attempt to find more flesh, and revealed mucky, blood colored root hairs and cruel, razor edged teeth.

He threw it into the first hole and quickly pushed the dirt mound over it with his shovel, burying the screeching, demonic radish. He heaved a heavy bag of sand over the mound and hoped it would hold for a while, all night if he was lucky. 

The carrots came at him next in an army of a deep, bloodlust orange. The massive growths used their tails to crawl across the dirt at an intense speed and Cliff felt they wanted a taste of him in the moonlight. They sprang at him in a planned formation and he grabbed hold of the wooden pantry door he’d taken off from its hinges in the kitchen. With the extra sets of handles he'd screwed into the middle, the heavy oak door was easily lifted and he ran at them from the side. Cliff yelled a battle cry as he ran at as many of the carrots as he could, barreling them into the dirt pits he’d dug in preparation. Their bodies were much larger than a usual carrot's, causing the man and the door to jerk back with each "thunk" of fibrous mass.

He quickly covered the pits before the carrots could escape and heaved the bags of sand on top of the mounds, one by one. In the final pit, a rogue carrot crawled its way back to the top before he could bury it and Cliff gave its massive root body a push with the heel of his boot. As the carrot fell back, it wrapped its end around Cliff’s ankle, caught itself, then attacked him with the thick green carrot top. It threw the greens around him and spit fine, hairy needles through his pants and into his flesh. 

"Ockkkkkk!" Cliff cried out as he quickly put on a pair of gloves from his back jeans pocket and pried the carrot off, the body muscular, like wrestling a python. Once Cliff unraveled it from his leg, he couldn't help but pause to admire the beauty of the carrot as it threw its body around and screamed in his grasp. That one will do very nicely, he thought. He grabbed a large cleaver and gave it a good chop to the middle, splitting its coarse body in two. It hollered in a fury at him and he ignored it, chopping away until it was down to fibrous splinters. That would buy Cliff some time before dealing with the beastly carrot again. 

It became eerily quiet, as if something else lay dormant waiting for its moment. Cliff sat back down on his creaky lawn chair, took a swig from his beer and dreamily thought about the roots he'd just done battle with. They were splendid specimens, nothing like he'd seen before anywhere. His beauties! 

Never in a million years did he think he'd be lucky enough to have found the land for sale when he did. He'd won it in an auction seven years ago when the house was a dilapidating mess. It took a lot of fixing, and most of it he'd left alone, living around its crumbling walls for some time. The repair costs were too much to start, but it came with some acreage and he was excited to use it for growing his crops. 

Cliff had first been warned by Charlie Radson, the old geezer in town that was always hanging in the bar. Turns out he'd been born in their little town of Milton and all the rumors, superstitions and stories that came with it were passed down through the generations in his family. 

"That land is cursed!" He'd yelled when Cliff went to town for his farming supplies. "My own Daddy said nothing of any good can grow there! You best off not even trying!" Cliff disregarded Charlie’s words as ramblings of a drunken old fool, but realized quickly that, perhaps, they weren’t ramblings after all, and maybe, Charlie wasn’t as much of a fool as he’d thought.

 Cliff discovered for himself something wasn't right when he first started farming. First, he noticed the way the lightning hit his land in great, powerful successions during a storm, almost as if something attracted it. Then, when he finally planted, it was relatively harmless tomato plants first. He'd begun to hear the house creak at night. By the end of the first month, he'd found the vined plants had worked their way up through his house floor boards at night and into the bedroom where he slept. 

It wasn't until they were mature, sagging with bulbous tomatoes, that they had tried to first kill him. Cliff remembered that night, waking in a gasping need for air as a vine had wrapped tightly around his throat in his own bed. He was lucky to have a pair of shears laying on the bedside table, what he had thought was the result of a momentary paranoid thought that week, had saved his life. It was the last time Cliff would sleep through the night.

That vine he’d clipped from his throat was from the first plant he’d collected. The bloodlust that particular one had, was impressive. The tomatoes hanging from it were larger in size and were of a darker, blood red color. He kept its seeds for the next season, tightly tucking them away in his old, metal chest. He knew those seeds were going to be special, he could feel it. 

The next season was the first year the vegetables themselves began coming to life at night, taking on human-like characteristics with body parts and noises. And each year, Cliff saved the best; the largest, meanest and strongest for the seeds. Now here he was, face to face with his most fantastic and evil crop yet. 

As if in reaction to that thought, the corn began on queue. The popping sounds of the stalks spitting their cobs from the bottom of the hill broke the silence. It happened all at once, the popping filled the air like fourth of July firecrackers. When that had stopped, the thundering sounds of the rolling began. The cobs rolled over the acreage and worked their way up the dirt hill where Cliff sat waiting. The cobs rolled together forming one big wave of green and yellow, an ocean of loud creaky husks. When they reached the top of the hill, they created a formation Cliff had never seen. He watched in awe-struck horror as the cobs weaved together and formed a towering, menacing flower that looked down at him. The flower head bloomed, unraveling more cobs from its center, and created sharp, cob-mouthed petals with a husked, ominous center.   

It began to open and close its bloom rhythmically, an electrified jellyfish, with silk that floated in the air from every cob’s mouth. The silk tendrils danced to tempt Cliff into touching them, but he knew better, regardless of how delicate they seemed. He could feel the electricity pull at his own hairs on his head and forearms, buzzing and tickling the skin.

Then the flower stopped its captivating dance and dove at him instead. Every cob opened back to reveal a set of small yellow teeth as they chomped at him like a hungry animal looking to devour its next meal. He rolled off to the side just in time, avoiding the bite, but some corn silk swept at him and electrified his body in a jolt of horror. 

He’d had enough with this thing, as marvelous as it was, it needed to be put down. Cliff grabbed his chainsaw and started it in one swift tug. He waited until it came down in another bite, then sawed right through as many of the cobs as he could in one slow swing.

The corn cob halves dropped to the ground and the flower sagged. He took his chainsaw to the weaved flower stem next, halving up all of those cobs as well. The cobs were left hobbling and rolling around on the earth, as if in agony.

Cliff's focus shifted from the cobs as he looked to the bottom of the hill. His biggest concerns were awake now, and they looked for him. He saw their vines come up over the hill before seeing their bodies. The vines held all their weight as they lifted the enormous jack-o-lantern pumpkins and carried them over the ground, walking them like legs. Three massive orange bodies rose over the hillside emanating an orange sun rising from the horizon. Oh, how Cliff wished it were the sun. 

The first pumpkin's vines immediately threw its vast body up in the air and it came crashing down at Cliff in a body slam. It would have crushed him easily, as it was almost double his body's size, except Cliff took a rapid dive off to the side, narrowly avoiding the assault. 

Another pumpkin came crashing down with its body at Cliff once again, and this time he stuck its gourd flesh with the head of his axe. He was able to get a couple of good chops in before one tried rolling its giant mass at him, but it luckily missed and went rolling back down the hill. 

The one pumpkin had it's seedy sludge dripping from where Cliff had opened it with the axe and had now turned into a gaping mouth. It smiled at him in mockery, eerily similar to a carved jack-o-lantern on Halloween. It laughed a deep, devilish laugh and Cliff shivered, he'd never heard one of them laugh.

They swept at Cliff's legs with their vines and he went down unexpectedly. Still with the axe in his grip, he began swinging and chopping at the leaves, trying to keep them at bay, but because they were thick and had many shoots, the chopping seemed to be fruitless. 

He missed dodging a pumpkin's body in time and it came down, crushing him, as he felt his head get slammed by its globe, then the wetness of blood trickled down his forehead. The body was lifted back up on its vines, prepared for another tackle, and as it came back down, Cliff winced and closed his eyes, unable to move. This was it, the end would be with his pumpkins. Befitting, he thought, as they were his most marvelous plants. But instead of feeling the crushing power he'd expected, a man hollered, enraged, then Cliff felt the heat of a flame. 

He opened his eyes and saw a scrawny man's figure hidden beneath a welder's helmet holding a torch turned on full flame. The welder's torch was connected to a couple of cannisters strapped to the man's back and he had an aerosol can he used to blowtorch the pumpkins. They visibly shrank back from the heat until their vines caught fire, then the pumpkins scrambled back down the hill while attempting to put out their flames.

The scrawny man turned towards Cliff and lifted his welder's helmet to reveal the tired old face of Charlie. 

"I knew you were up to something!" He spat angrily at Cliff revealing some missing teeth. 

Cliff shook his head in disbelief, "None of your concern, Charlie!" 

"The hell it ain’t! It becomes my concern when I have to swoop in and save your ass!" Charlie offered his hand to help him off the ground and Cliff looked back at him, feeling pretty sheepish. He pulled him up to standing and let him catch his breath.

"No more, Cliff. You gotta promise me, this is it. You'll kill yourself playing with this land cursed by hell." Cliff wiped his brow and scoffed. 

He was saved from having to answer because the roots had worked their way out of the ground, mended themselves back together, and came at the men in their last round of attacks. They fought the men with every last bit of dark fury. 

Cliff brandished his shotgun and began to blast them back to splinters as Charlie equipped his welding gun, setting them aflame. They fought side by side until, finally, an orange sphere on the horizon began to glow at the top of the hill, and this time, it wasn't a dreaded pumpkin. The vegetables began to disappear back into the ground, ready for their comatose slumber.

"Okay," Cliff conceded, "I'm done. This is it." Charlie looked at him and raised his fly away brows. They both joined in together in a sudden relief of laughter. "But you have to admit, they are spectacular specimens I’ve created." Cliff said with pride.

#

One week later, at the Milton County Festival, a booth was covered with cups and ribbons as Cliff stood proudly with his beautiful crop. His produce was selling for a ridiculous price and people were willing to pay. 

“I’ve never seen such magnificent carrots,” some would say.

 Others would comment, “Just look at the size of those tomatoes!” 

But it was the enormous pumpkins the people really talked about. The biggest he had ever grown was on display, the size of a small shed, now forever docile in the sunlight away from Cliff’s land. 

It was his pumpkin seeds everyone wanted. They were going for $5.00 per seed, guaranteed to grow. People had heard of Cliff’s pumpkin’s from out of town and made their way to the fair just to get their hands on one of the special seeds, especially after he'd announced this would be his last. 

Young Travis Baker came from upstate and had traveled all the way to the festival with his granddaddy. He'd heard of Cliff’s amazing pumpkins and was determined to get his hands on a seed. He was going to make him and his daddy rich by growing a mass of gigantic pumpkins from the one he’d grow with that seed. He'd saved up a long time for one, but the investment would be well worth it. 

When he got to the front of the line, he pulled out his clean sock full of coins, ruthlessly dumped out the contents onto the table and counted out the $5.00 for Cliff, beaming with pride. Cliff smiled and handed him the little baggy that held the large pumpkin seed in it and Travis was immediately satisfied. 

He began to walk back to find his granddaddy but stopped and dumped out the seed in his hand to have a good look. The feeling of it in his palm gave him goose pimples. The seed went flying out of his hand, almost as if it had jumped! Travis was beside himself as he frantically searched the ground for the lost seed and cursed himself for letting it go. Thankfully, he found it again by his shoe and breathed a sigh of relief. He put it back in the little baggy and secured it safely into his jean's pocket as he ran to find his granddaddy.

Travis knew that seed was going to be special, he could feel it.

THE END