Something Purple This Way Comes

Chapter 1: Teddy Rockenmoff-1

Chapter 1: Teddy RockenmoffMay 25, 20—

Conclave, Pennsylvania, next to Lake Erie

No. No. No, Teddy Rockenmoff thought. The circles aren’t real. They can’t be real. At five in the morning he stood at the edge of his porch with his hands in his pockets and stared into the May day, shaking his head in slow motion. His heart thudded within the cave of his chest and sweat formed on his forehead and cheeks. His left eye twitched, but that felt normal; it had done that ever since he was a little boy. He wasn’t a little boy anymore, though. His driver’s license stated his age at thirty-three. Those in Conclave knew that he was a serious farmer and business savvy. He knew how to grow wheat, when to harvest the crop, and who exactly to sell it to. Teddy wasn’t starving by any means, but he wasn’t a millionaire, either.

Killerdane, or Killy, as he called the all-white feline with short hair, rubbed and twirled around his ankles. The pesky cat attempted to divert Teddy’s concentration from the crop circle in his field of silky wheat. The field lay three hundred feet from the three steps where Teddy stood. Killy had probably heard the unidentified flying object creating the crop circle last night while Teddy slept. Maybe the cat even saw its spinning, circular dome while hunting field mice. Teddy didn’t really know, but he wondered. Hmmmm. The cat mewed twice, twisted around his ankles a last time, and scampered away to get on with its morning cat duties of a nap, cleaning, and playing with butterflies in the nearby flower garden.

The main crop circle looked around forty feet in diameter. The golden-brown wheat was pressed to the ground, counter-clockwise, and looked as if a machine had constructed the piece of field art. The wheat itself didn’t look burned, but the grass was discolored and not the lush green it was the previous evening, before Teddy went to bed.

Seven smaller circles (ten feet in diameter and perfectly shaped) were scattered around the single larger one. Teddy thought they looked like planets in the solar system. Mars. Jupiter. Neptune. And others. Among the seven smaller circles were a dozen or more even smaller ones, which were approximately three feet in diameter. Between the circles was the knee-high wheat, plentiful and growing well. Profitable goods. Food in his belly. Truth was, the crop was higher that May than in other years. Maybe the recent aliens visiting, and their crop circle art projects in Conclave, had something to do with it. Maybe not. Teddy didn’t really know, but he definitely cared. He wasn’t complaining, though, since he was getting numerous cuts from the field, and money from it, a portion of his bread and butter. Cash, glorious cash.

The entire crop circle looked like a stop sign with rounded corners and edges instead of straight lines. It was eerie, as evidence by the hair standing up on the back of his neck. Shivers crept up his spine as he continued to shake his head, thinking, No. No. No. This can’t be happening. No way. I’m imagining this. There’s no such thing as crop circles. Not on my land. And there’s no such thing as aliens. No way in hell. I’m not a believer like that. Never have been. Never will be.

But…it wasn’t the first crop circle he had seen on his nine hundred-plus acres in the last few weeks. The first one was on May 8, teardrop-shaped and comprised of mostly triangles. The second one, constructed while he slept, of course, looked to be six hundred feet in diameter, and appeared on May 10. In form, it resembled a totem pole with circles and triangles on either side. On May 13, another crop circle appeared in the wheat field, on the west side of his acreage. The crop art looked like a Buddha with a chubby belly and bent legs, seated; it was the smallest circle of the lot, but just as shocking.

Teddy discovered the fourth, and final, crop circle on his property that morning. Of course he had to question such mystery and strangeness. Of course he feared its conception and who exactly had created the artwork on his land. While he had slept, encased in a dreamy world of winter fireflies and golden rainbows, foreign bodies (probably spacecraft maneuvered by extraterrestrial lifeforms from Jupiter, Venus, or beyond) visited his farm and used its fields as their galactical canvases. He assumed—never assume, always know—that spinning, silver-colored, half-sphere, paperweight-like spaceships were exploiting his crops as their medium. Using him, by damn. And their drivers, bug-eyed creatures of a gray hue with thin legs, arms, and no mouths, Milky Way Invaders as he sometimes called them, from maybe Saturn or Neptune, or beyond, were showing off their astrological art as if they were crafters at a summertime art show in Marlboroville, a sister town west of Conclave.

What the heck is going on, anyway? Teddy thought, continuing to shake his head, his right eye twitching, and feeling the back of his throat tighten with dryness.

One of the first things that had crossed his mind when the original crop circle appeared on his property was an alien invasion. Creepy, four-legged, and upright lizard-like beasts from the other side of the galaxy were on a colossal power trip and had every intention of destroying Earth, munching on humans as if they were Fiddle Faddle or Little Debbie snacks. The melodrama in his mind entailed aliens collecting humans, plumping them up with food-based steroids like farm chickens for resale, freezing every Tom, d**k, Jane, and Harry, and flying them off in giant coolers to their faraway planets for future human TV dinners. He thought that the unidentified creatures of deep space, gangly things with oversized heads, flat tummies, and thin necks, and maybe three d***s, whatever they looked and smelled like, had the potential of crawling inside a human and eating them from the inside out. Goddamn if he wanted that to happen. No way in hell. Not on his watch in Conclave. Hell no!

No matter what horror or freak show was about to go down in Conclave within the next twenty-four hours, Teddy knew that it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park or a Mr. Universe Contest. On the contrary, a big s**t storm was about to happen in the galaxy—and on Earth. And Conclave—pretty, desolate, and hand-to-mouth perfect—just happened to be the epicenter of something devastating and unreal in the country’s history. Teddy didn’t really have the ability to pinpoint the tactics or star-sparkling plays of Armageddon, but he could smell danger in the upcoming hours, in the air, and all for the wrong reasons. Damn right he could. As right as rain. And maybe Killy knew s**t was about to hit the Milky Way fan, too, and that was why the cat ran off. No doubt in his mind. None at all.

Bottom line: the world was starting to crash down and around him and other Conclaveites. An unknown and untimely tragedy began to unfold in his small lakeside town while most of its residents slept. No doubt the purple darkness around him was a safe haven for the boogeyman-like aliens, because, rationally speaking, that was when they seemed to create the circles in his wheat fields. Nighttime and the purple sky loomed dangerously. Teddy didn’t want to think what could happen when the sun went down in the west, leaving Conclave fully dark. He felt unsure of the awful and terrifying details, but he knew that it couldn’t be starburst-rainbows and golden unicorns. Not at all good. No way. Heck no. Life these days (and nights) doesn’t work that way. Hells to the no.

Being a smart man, he knew that he really couldn’t do anything about the bizarre situation, purple sky, and strange crop circles. All he could accomplish was to reach out to his husband and tell him to get home from Chicago, quickly, and without any questions asked. Then again, maybe being away from Conclave and the crop circles seemed best, safer. Who knew? Maybe the sky in the Windy City wasn’t purple?

As he contemplated the thought, Teddy continued to stare at the design in his field. He believed it must be special, unknown powers. Mysteries of the unknown. A doorway to a different world. Perhaps the circle was a welcome mat for a misunderstood and rather ugly space species with a hungry appetite. Maybe the circles were landing markers for future UFOs? Or maybe they were targets, or bull’s eyes, spots where red lasers could aim at, and annihilate, the world, blowing it to smithereens. Whatever the circles gave rise to, Teddy felt anxious, and certain that an apocalypse was just beginning, sooner than later.

* * * *

An hour after learning about the fourth crop circle, Teddy called his husband of six years, Nick Basto, in Chicago. Nick traveled too much, being away on business for most of the month of May. He was working on a deal with China to purchase purple-beamed lasers for eye surgery. Nick worked for Ophthalmology World Incorporated (OWI); a multinational company that purchased medical supplies; a wholesaler that sold the lasers to established eye boutiques throughout the United States, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and other countries. Nick’s work consisted of purchasing refractory surgery lasers that were ergonomically designed for corneal topography and keratometry. He traveled the world on business, gone for six to eight weeks at a crack. He made a lot of dough. Teddy missed his husband, and their romance. Nick was also a helper on the wheat farm. For four years Nick had worked for OWI: he was happy with his job, rarely home, and had never, never, never cheated on Teddy. Thank God.

Hands shaking and his mind racing, Teddy fetched his cell phone off the dining room table and tried to key in Nick’s personal number. Unfortunately, his cell phone had died overnight, so now he needed to plug in and charge. To add more drama to his already wild and crazy morning, Killy had decided to munch on the phone’s charging cord as if it were a mouse’s tail. Teddy hadn’t had the time to replace it, leaving him screwed. Fortunately, Nick had insisted they keep their landline in the house. Praise Jesus in heaven for Nick’s common sense and rational logic.

The landline was a vintage green in hard plastic; a rectangular box that hung on the kitchen wall with a coiled wire, a C-shaped handset such as you could only see in a 1980s movie starring Molly Ringwald or Richard Gere, and a numerical-stamped dial that moved both clockwise and counter-clockwise. The first time Teddy tried to dial Nick, he had the wrong number. He had accidentally called a business in downtown Pittsburgh called GFT, Guy Bangers Tonight. Some sexy pre-recorded robot-dude answered the line and whispered, “So, you want to have an all-you-can-eat man tonight, something tasty, a fine treat, something hard, right? I think I’ve got the right guy for you. Dial seven and…”

Teddy hung up the phone, redialed Nick’s cellular number, and finally reached his lover after two rings.

Unfortunately, Nick didn’t answer the call. Someone else did. A stranger. A young-sounding man-thing whom Teddy believed was just slightly over twenty-five years of age and sexually overactive. The stranger said, “Hello.”

Nervous, upset, Teddy barked, “Who is this?”

“None of your business. Who is this?” the man replied, sounding spritely.

Teddy grew curdled. “Is this Nick Basto’s cell phone I’m calling?”

“Is this his husband?”

“It is. Let me talk to Nick. Put him on.”

“Well, let me pull him off my c**k first. He’s just about done sucking every ounce of my jizz down the back of his tight throat,” the s**t-mouthed man said, and then hung up on Teddy.

Teddy mumbled something rude and vulgar under his breath and dialed Nick’s number a second time. After the third ring, Nick picked up and cheerfully said, “Teddy?”

“Who the heck was that?” Teddy barked. “Or don’t I want to know?”

Nick cleared his throat, sounded relaxed, cool, and collected. “Calm down. It’s just a drunk coworker. He spent last night drinking and ended up in my room. But not next to me, or under me, or inside me. You know what I mean. I would never cheat on you.”