As Farmer Jenkins leaned on a fence, overlooking his vast pumpkin patch, he sighed in contentment.
“This year has been terrible!” He said aloud to himself, hiking up his overalls. “If it weren’t for these pumpkins, I would be a goner.” You see, Misses Jenkins had pushed Farmer Jenkins to plant those pumpkins, for reasons unknown. Farmer Jenkins was a man who believed in the premonitions of a woman. That is why he obeyed his wife.
Every other one of his crops had died. Not the pumpkins, though. By some miracle, they thrived.
When the pumpkins were done, they would be sold for a pretty price, leaving the farmer with enough money for another set of crops- and a little extra.
“Tom,” A firm voice said behind the farmer. He jumped high, and landed screaming on the other side of the fence.
“Oh, Matilda, it’s you. What brings you out so far?” He asked from the ground. He had recovered quickly, as if practice had accentuated the process.
“You got caught in a pumpkin reverie again, Tom. It’s dinner time.”
“No, it’s-” He glanced at the sun. “What do ya know! It is!” Farmer Jenkins stole one last look at his beloved pumpkin crop before taking Misses Jenkins’ arm and leading her back towards the house for dinner.
Farmer Jenkins’ father had farmed this plot of land before him, and his father before him, and his father was a Royal British Knight. This plot was in his blood. He knew every kanker, every nook, and every cranny. He had planted pumpkins in most of them.
Seeing as his little family’s entire welfare for the next five years were relying on the pumpkins, you might understand how he developed a kind of obsession towards them. When he was awake, he thought about what he could do for the pumpkins. When he was asleep, he dreamed about the pumpkins.
Seeing as Farmer Jenkins had an obsession over the pumpkins, you might see how he would take a careful inventory of each and every pumpkin.
Seeing as Farmer Jenkins takes a careful inventory of every pumpkin he owns, you might understand his panic when he notices that one is missing. It wasn’t a particularly great pumpkin, or a quite majestic pumpkin, but he knew. He knew if one pumpkin went missing, many others would as well.
“A pumpkin is missing!” She didn’t react, so he continued. “It was number 416! He was a little guy, too. It was there yesterday when I checked the inventory. And the today it was missing!” He had turned around in many circles the midst of his arm waving and emphasizing, and paused, looking out of the window, to see if Misses Jenkins had anything to say.
She didn’t.
“I can’t think of anything to do about it! Except maybe...”
So Farmer Jenkins decided to have a stakeout. He spent all afternoon grilling the steak to perfection, setting up his lawn chair right outside of the patch where the missing pumpkin was, and preparing to wait.
“I am a patient man,” Farmer Jenkins said aloud. “I can wait for anything.” He began recounting, minute by minute, the incident in which he waited for three days at a tractor auction to make sure he won the best tractor there.
Close by, in the darkness, something stirred. It’s glowing red eyes opened slowly, witnessed by nothing but the darkness that surrounded it. Based on the way it began to crawl, it must have been old. Very old. Ancient, even. It woke up more. It began to go faster.
If someone had been there, all they would have seen was a shadow shooting through the forest.
Farmer Jenkins started awake. He looked around, mentally making sure all his pumpkins were present and accounted for and searching the darkness for the culprit. He uneasily took a bite of steak, his eyes searching.
“I do hope no one is out there,” he tried to say loudly, but the silence seemed to swallow it. The old man lifted himself out of his lawn chair. He poked the dirt with his foot. And reached behind him. “I know something is out there.”
Far away, a man was working in his rice paddy underneath an oriental sunset. A child peddled handmade toys to tourists, trying to earn enough money for lunch. Hundreds of people stood in line to be the first to own the newest technological advances. All unaffected by the creature that now was gnawing on one of Farmer Jenkins’ beloved pumpkins.
That is, until Farmer Jenkins kicked over the lawn chair and pulled the lever hidden underneath it.
The world shook. The man working in his rice paddy fell over, flinging fertilizer over all of his rice, finishing his work for the day and allowing him to get home to his family early. The child peddling his wares pickpocketed a selfish rich tourist in the confusion and got lunch for his friends, too. God called back his buddy the truck driver who was carrying the brand new technological advances, destroying all of it.
The first thing Farmer Jenkins registered was the lack of sound. Everything was oddly quiet. He felt his hair, beard, and clothes whipping in the wind. The white light ebbed away, showing the pumpkin patch. Shadowless and bright, it betrayed the creature.
It was an old lady. No...
It was Misses Jenkins.
That is the last thing Farmer Jenkins saw before he was swallowed up by his own explosion.