Room and board were included when I took the job as a farmhand. The farmer grew corn and I helped harvest it. That’s all we ate, too. Corn. Every meal. I was tired of it after the first few days. The crop was a good six feet tall when the real trouble began…

      After a hard day of work, I ate supper with the farmer and his family. Then, worn-out, I retired to the bedroom that had been made up for me. It was a second floor room. As we all went to bed so early—early enough that the sun was still up—the farmer had covered the glass with foil. This kept the light out and the room cool, but it didn’t keep the noises out. I could hear coyotes and crickets every night. It was another noise that disturbed me, though.

     ‘Sweat squash,’ the voice began. It came from outside my window. Far enough sounding that I figured it came from near the corn field. ‘Come look what I’ve made for you, my sweet squash.’

     I ignored the voice. Pulling the covers tight, I closed my eyes, hoping I wouldn’t dream of corn again.

     ‘Don’t he look just like a sweet squash,’ the voice said and it was right outside my window. My eyes were open in a flash. It was talking to me or about me! ‘Sweet Squash, come see what I’ve made for you.’ After a silent moment it said, ‘I know my sweet squash can talk. Why won’t you speak? Why won’t you come see?’

      ‘Tomorrow night,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow night, I will see.’

      ‘Tomorrow night, then. E-I-E-I-O’ With this the voice was gone.

      I didn’t sleep well. First thing in the morning I spoke to the farmer. He said he didn’t have any neighbors, certainly none that would come calling in the night. He said that there wasn’t any such thing as a sweet squash, either, much less someone who grew it nearby. The idea that it was all a dream crossed my mind and I figured it was. My new corn diet was perhaps messing with me. It had to be. The voice was right outside the window, after all, and the window was a good fifteen feet up.

       As I ate my breakfast of corn pancakes and cornbread, the farmer called out. He made quite the fuss and when the rest of us came running, he simply pointed to the field. There we could see that large portions of it were flattened. It took all day to salvage that corn. After dinner, I retired to my bedroom and opened the window to air the place out. Looking to the field, I gasped. The flattened area formed an image of circles connected by straight lines. A crop circle!

       I figured I’d tell the farmer in the morning and closed my eyes after laying down. A short while later the voice called, ‘Sweet squash, come see.’

        I ignored it until it repeated itself right outside my window.

        ‘I saw it already,’ I said dismissively. Quietly, I made my way to the window, curious. As softly as I could, I unlatched the lock. Then sliding it to the left, I cracked the window open. Strangely, there was a window facing mine. Looking to the left and right of it, it seemed at first there was nothing supporting it. As if the window were floating in mid-air. But looking closely I saw a large camouflaged curve. A UFO! Aliens! For a moment the window was empty. Suddenly it filled up with a strange looking person. The being looked more frog than human, with a great big mouth, wet skin, and great big eyes on the top of its head. Seeing me, it licked its frog lips with a long purple tongue.

        ‘Sweet squash,’ it said. ‘How good it is to see you.’

       Before I could recognize what was happening the thing’s large tongue shot out at me. It hit me square in the forehead and stuck there. With a great force the tongue retracted and pulled me with it, out my window and into the other one.

        I found myself pinned by an invisible force to a floating table. This alien creature took blood samples among other things and then began to carry me away on the table.

       ‘It’s been so long since we’ve had sweet squash,’ the alien said. ‘Been eating only corn.’ Turning my head, I saw no corn, only lines of people in tanks of some strange liquid. They were lined up like crops in a field. It wasn’t just people, though, it was the farmer and his family. Dozens of versions of them. They were all branded with a symbol that looked exactly like the crop circle I saw in the farmer’s field. As we continued, the alien shoved me past another room.

       ‘The sweet squash are growing so quick,’ the frog alien said. Then in a sing-song voice, it continued, ’And on his farm he had a squash. E-I-E-I-O.’

          But again I saw no squash. What I saw were tiny copies of myself in tubes just like the people in the other room. In a panic, I manage to break free. I ran until I saw my bedroom window and jumped from what I assume was a spaceship and into the farmer’s guest bedroom. I shut and locked the window and hid under the bed. I heard the thing scratching at the window, but it stopped.

       ‘See you at dinner, sweet squash,’ the voice said and it sounded as if it were moving further and further away. ‘E-I-E-I-O—’

      I stayed awake, afraid, until the morning. Over corn pancakes and cornbread, I tried to warn the farmer and his family, but they didn’t believe me. I really tried. Before nightfall I left and never returned. I haven’t seen the frog aliens since, thank goodness. I still have nightmares of them. They are cloning me for crop, after all. It makes me sick to think about how many of my clones have they culled at harvest time for a meal of “sweet squash” to rinse the taste of “corn” from their frog mouths…