Haley Thistle
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The God in the Field: Part One (complete)
🕑 Added 2020-10-29 19:00:03 +0000 UTC
Some days people are there and some days they aren’t. I learned this before I could even read, before I knew anything else of the world. I knew people had to go away and never come back. They walked into the field because that was where they belonged.
I remember the day my father walked in. My mother and I stood a short distance away, and I was terrified because of how tall the grass seemed. It was tall enough that when it would consume my father, there would be no sign of him. He stood there looking in, his back turned to us. My mother had told me that afternoon it was ‘his turn’ to go inside, and that eventually it would be her turn. Sometime after that, it would be mine.
When he finally walked into the grass, it was as if he never existed at all. Everyone just seemed to forget about him. I knew it happened to others, but it became a stark reality when it happened to my father. No graves were ever erected for anyone, no memorials, no funerals. It was absolute. Once you walked into the field, your real life began.
Years went by, and the grass crept closer with each passing day. There were days I was acutely aware of its presence, and it towered over me like it was judging me. Other days, I paid no heed to it beyond my window. It was like any other field in the world.
After school, I had a variety of jobs in our small town. I worked at the only restaurant as a waitress, I did checkout at the grocery store, and I even delivered milk in the early mornings. I liked that job because it was peaceful and easy. I drove all around the neighborhood, placing milk on stoops and taking away the old glass bottles. No one bothered me, and no one paid me any attention. I just did my job and then went home.
One early morning I was leaving the dairy when I saw a peculiar sight. On the edge of the road a car was parked, hood up and smoke was coming from inside. Beside it a young man was kicking the tire, cigarette clenched between his teeth. He turned right as I was looking and he broke into an embarrassed smile.
I had never found myself looking at a man before; I had known the boys here all my life. There was no point at looking at them. But he was new, and so very, very handsome. His blond hair was slicked back, with a few strands hanging in front of his face. His cheekbones were high, his nose was crooked, and his eyes were perfect storms trapping me in their power.
“Little help?” He waved and took the cigarette from between his teeth. “Trying to get out of this state, and it doesn’t seem like anything is going to let me.”
I looked around, uncertain what to do. I’d rarely dealt with strangers, and our little town wasn’t exactly a destination. “I have to start my deliveries,” I said to him. “I’m going past the garage if you want to be dropped off there. The mechanic is a drunk, though, so I’m not sure when he’ll open today.”
He approached me, looking over the milk truck before he opened the door and hopped in. He smelled like cigarette smoke, but beyond that stench, there was a waft of cologne that was spicy and sweet. The front of his shirt was stained with grease, as were the front of his jeans. Which, as I recall, were just the right amount of too-tight. He smiled at me, flashing dimples I could poke my finger in. “Thanks,” he chuckled. “I’ve been here for an hour, and I’ve barely seen a car pass by.”
“You’d be lucky to see a bird go by.” I drove away, feeling suddenly nervous in his presence, giddy and awkward.
“I thought it was supposed to be a milk ‘man’,” he teased.
I smirked, glancing at him from the corner of my eye. “Aren’t I?”
He looked me up and down, his dimples growing. He bit his lip before taking another drag on his cigarette. “I guess it doesn’t matter either way when one looks like that.”
I looked directly at him, a grin growing on my face. “Do you talk to all the milkmen this way?”
“Only the ones who save my ass.” He tossed his cigarette butt out the window, then leaned back against the seat.
“You could have walked. I didn’t save anything.” I looked back at the road. “Who are you, anyway?”
“A runaway, a tramp,” he chuckled. “You can call me Joey. Who might you be?”
“Sigrun,” I answered.
Joey’s brow pinched. “Interesting name there.”
“It’s a family name,” I answered. “Excuse me.” I came to my first stop, a small farmhouse tucked between a couple of fruit trees.
As I worked, he stayed in the truck, his mind seemingly occupied until I returned and closed the door. “No offense, Sigrun, but this place is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I thought I came from a small, strange town.”
“I know it isn’t much, but it’s all we got.”
His eyes flickered towards the field, and he pointed. “What is that? What do you do with it? Is it grass? Is it corn? I felt like I drove by it forever.”
I followed his gaze towards the field. “It lives,” is all I answered.
Eventually we came to the garage, and I stopped to let him out. “If he hasn’t opened by the time I come back around, I’ll pick you up again and take you to his place.”
“I’m kind of tired,” he said. “What about your place?”
I laughed, cupping my hand over my mouth. “Really? That’s all you’re going to do?”
He smirked and shrugged. “Not much I can do here out in the open.” he waved his hands while laughing. “Gotcha to smile, though.”
“We’ll see what happens.” I drove off again while he walked towards the garage.
I finished off my route, and when I drove back by the garage on my way home, Joey was still waiting for the place to open up. I took him home with me. The morning was still new, still early, and the comfort of my bed was calling.
I laid Joey on the sheets, taking off the dirty, stained shirt and kissing him all over. His hair became even more disheveled, greasy and clumped together from the pomade. His jeans eventually became far too tight, and I freed him from their grip. His naked body was perfect, and I’d had nothing to eat, so I gobbled him up voraciously. I took my time with him, exploring every inch of his body with my hands, my lips, my tongue. To hear him groan was a thing of pleasure, and the wetness that seeped from me almost poured out when his voice lifted. His hands were strong, grabbing me and pulling me, but he was gentle. His fingers were thick, rough from hard work, and ignited a heat within me that begged to be snuffed out.
When his cock slipped inside me, it felt like the drawing of breath. His hard, sudden thrusts inside, his lips upon my neck, made me tremble with anticipation. He drove himself into me, desperate to quell his own hunger. That desperation came out as deep moans and grunts, sounds that aroused the lusty woman in me. There was no stopping us, and all I wanted was him inside me. I needed his touch, his kiss, his hard cock. Something about Joey made me realize I had been starving, and now all I was was craving him.
He smoked while I lay there between slumber and agitation. He blew out smoke rings and then chuckled to himself. “It just occurred to me - I hope we’re here alone.”
“We are. No worries.” I rolled over onto my back. “No one comes here but me.”
Joey looked bothered by this. “You’re alone?”
“My dad left when I was young, and my mom did a couple of years ago.” I turned my head and placed my hand on his stomach. “I’m used to it.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“I’m twenty,” I answered. “Why does it matter?”
Joey snuffed out his cigarette and lay back beside me. “You’ve been alone since you were a kid?”
I could see the field swaying from my bedroom window. “No.”
He smoothed away the hair from my face and kissed me softly. “No wonder you didn’t know not to talk to strangers.”
I kissed him back, wrapping my arms tight around him. “Did no one tell you?”
“Of course they did. I’m just a horrible listener.” He placed himself on top of me again, kissing me hungrily. Our bodies tangled together again, and I took pleasure in his prowess.
Joey eventually got his car fixed and left the following day. I was used to people leaving, it was part of life. What was strange was when people returned, so when Joey showed back up a couple of months later, I wasn’t sure how to take it. This became the new norm. Joey would leave and come back, staying with me for a few days, sometimes weeks. If I was lucky, a month or two. He would leave again for work, or at least that’s what he told me. I didn’t need much more than what he gave. I loved his body, but I was slowly coming to love much more than that.
One day, as Joey and I were leaving the market, he stopped when he saw a family standing at the edge of the field. A woman was standing ahead of them, ready for her turn to enter into the field.
“What’s going on there?” Joey asked. “They lose a dog or something?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s just her turn.”
Joey gave me a perplexed look. “Her turn?” he scoffed. “Her turn for what?”
I took his arm and turned him away, leading him back to the truck. “Everyone here has a turn.”
By the time Joey glanced back over his shoulder, the family was walking away and the woman was gone. His expression was tense and the corners of his mouth were pulled tight. He kept his eyes on the edge of the field. Slowly as we went away, he turned to face forward, but he didn’t look at anything. He stared beyond, his mind whirring away. I knew he would have questions, and I knew he wouldn’t understand. This was life for us. Not everyone understood it
Joey was silent until we got home. Once we were inside, he set bags down and looked at me, as if expecting something. “I know this place is strange, but seriously, what was all that about?” He forced a laugh, as if hoping it was a joke.
I unloaded the bags and put everything away as he waited for his answer. “I told you, it was her turn.” I looked back at him and shrugged. “What more is there to know?”
Joey scoffed again. “Her turn for what? That’s what I want to know, Sigrun!”
“To leave.” I set down the bag in my hands. “My father did it, my mother did it, and eventually I will do it too.”
Joey grabbed me by the arm, and I dropped what I was holding. “What are you talking about? What are you leaving for? What’s out there to go to? Why would you even want to go to it?”
“Let me go! You’re hurting me!” I wrenched his hand off of me and rubbed my arm. I gave him a harsh glare, and contemplated not giving him any answer at all. I knew he needed one, though. “The field,” I said softly. “We have to go inside for God.”
He let me go and started laughing. “For God?”
I shook my head. “Not the God you know, if that’s what you mean.” I picked up things from the floor. “Just our God.”
“Of course! Yeah. Of course that’s what it is.” Joey snickered and covered his face with his hands. His eyes looked frightened, and his skin began to go pale. “What fucking God are you talking about, Sigrun?”
“They live out in the field, always have, and always will. They’re looking for a mate, so we take turns going into the field until they find their true mate.” I opened the fridge and put food away.
“You’re kidding.” He stared blankly at me, jaw slack, eyes wide open. “This sounds insane. There is no way a god lives in that field, waiting for a bride.”
“Not a bride,” I grumbled. “You’re not listening to me, Joey. Our God is looking for a mate. Only their true mate can accept their seed and birth the new god.”
Joey’s disapproving gaze bore into me, but I didn’t care. I knew what was right, I knew the truth. “You believe this?”
I simply nodded.
Joey ran his hands down his face. He rubbed his chin and shook his head. “You really, actually believe this horseshit?”
I frowned at him as I stood away from the fridge. “You somehow believe that radio can hear you when you yell at it. Don’t you dare call this horseshit when this is what I believe and what my parents gave their lives for, Joey! Don’t call it names because you don’t understand it!”
“But I don’t think that God is in the fucking radio! Holy shit, Sigrun!” I knew he was disillusioned, and maybe it would end his love for me. “I certainly don’t think anyone in the radio wants to mate with me, either!”
I sniffed and crossed my arms. “Obviously you’ve not heard of Orson Welles.”
Joey gave me a stern, cold look. He fussed with his hair, then sighed and planted his hands on the table. “What is this god?” He forced himself to sound calmer, and I thought for a moment he was trying to listen. I wanted things to work with Joey, to keep him close to me.
I approached him, placing my hands over his. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I don’t know who they are, or what they are. All I know is that they are searching, and they can’t rest until they have a child.”
Sitting back down at the table, Joey rubbed his hands all over his face. “How do you know it exists? How do you know what happens to the people who go inside?”
I shook my head. “I don’t. It’s not my place to know until it is my turn to go inside. I wish I had the answers to give you, and then maybe I could help you understand.”
For a long moment, Joey was quiet. His eyes were distant and his fingers barely moved. All he did was stare into the table. “So, for all you know, your parents just starved to death out there, and never met this god in the field?”
“Possibly,” I said with a shrug. “If they weren’t the right mate, who knows what the god did to them.”
Joey grabbed my hands and held them up. I knew he was desperate to get me to see his way, but I wouldn’t budge. “That doesn’t frighten you?” he hissed. “That doesn’t make you sick to your core? Want to run? Anything?” He blurted the words out in horror and disbelief. “You just blindly believe this?”
I looked down, then up, meeting his eyes before I shrugged. “It doesn’t affect you. Why does it bother you so much?”
His laugh was forced out by loss of breath. “Because it...” He choked and covered his mouth. He stood up, walked around the table and towards the door, and lingered there for a long time, his eyes fixed on the field. “You know what, you’re right!” He stormed out the door and across the yard. “It doesn’t affect me, and it doesn’t affect you. Because there is absolutely nothing out there!”
I chased after him, following him to the edge of the field. He stood there, his back turned to me like my father’s had been. “Joey,” I whispered urgently. “Come back inside.”
“Why? Is there a god in the kettle?” He turned back and looked at me. “There is no god out there, Sigrun. Your family, your friends, have all gone in this field to die. I’ll show you.” He stepped backwards into the grass.
My heart stopped and sank into the pit of my stomach. “Stop it, Joey!” I snapped at him. I tried to grab him, but he wrenched away from me. “Joey!” I barked again, but he vanished between the blades.
“Joey?” My voice sagged into a pitiful whimper. I foolishly waited. I thought perhaps he would eventually emerge. Hours went by, and there was nothing.
I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t believe me. So I went on with my life, just as I had done when my father left, exactly the same as when my mother left. I was sad, though. I truly did like Joey. He made me feel things I’d never felt before, waking up a part of me that had never woken to begin with. But I went on because he was gone.
It was his turn. Joey would never come back.
Days went by, and though I had thoughts about Joey, they were small and partially invisible to me. It was the small things I missed that came to me the most, but they were easily pushed aside as time passed.
The mornings were getting cold, so I often got up early to crank the truck so it would be warm when I left. On such a morning, I was stepping from the truck when I heard something in the field. The grass swayed, rustling as if someone was moving through it. There was a crunching and low, deep breathing. I stood there staring, waiting as the breathing quieted and the grass stilled again. I stepped closer as my breath came out in thick, white clouds.
“Hello?” I called with uncertainty.
“Hello.” The voice that answered sounded familiar.
I tilted my head to the side and furrowed my brow. “Joey? Is that you?”
“Have you been waiting?” he asked. “I have.”
I stood there, mouth agape and breath billowing upwards. “I didn’t realize,” I answered, almost without meaning to. “How have you been?”
“It’s cold.” There was a husky growl at the end of each sentence, as if his voice was retreating back into a cave. “I miss you.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Then why did you leave?”
Everything was silent.
“It was a shock, don’t get me wrong. But all of us here have our turn. I just didn’t think yours was then.” I looked towards the top of the grass to see it sway. “Did you find God in there?” I asked.
“I did, and so will you.” The low growl was growing louder.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just remained silent.
“I can smell how sweet you are.” The back of his throat sounded wet and thick. “I can almost taste your skin, your scent is so strong.”
My eyes shifted back and forth. “I showered...”
“You can’t hide yourself from me, Sigrun.” The voice was changing, sounding less like Joey and more like something else, something I had never heard before. “I know you,” it said. “I have known you since before time. I have waited all this time.”
I heard the snap of jaws. Hungrily the voice moaned, and my body reacted to the sound by growing warm and wet. “Who are you?” I asked.
“You know who I am,” Joey said again. “You have always known me.”
The grass moved with the wind, and I turned back to my house. It wasn’t my turn yet, and I knew that, but it was strange to hear the voice now. It wasn’t long, though. I knew that it wouldn’t be kept waiting either.
I heard the voice again one evening, and it sounded as though it were coming through the window. I was in my bathroom, combing my hair after a shower when I felt a sensation of cold crawl up my spine. I heard breathing, saliva dripping from wet chops. Yet when I looked out the window, I saw nothing there, merely the fog from my hot bath.
“Come downstairs when you’re through.” Joey’s voice spoke, with that rough grumble in the back of the throat.
I continued looking at the window, focusing on the glass and waiting for something to appear. “It’s too cold for that. I’m going to stay up here and go to bed.”
“Open the window, then. Let me smell you.”
My eyes narrowed and I gathered my damp hair, pushing it over my shoulder. “No,” I said simply. “You will not have me yet.”
“You were born to be mine.” Joey’s voice sounded hoarse and raw.
“Maybe I was, but you will not have me until it is my turn.”
The presence scratched against the side of the house, growling and panting so the window fogged even more. “You will love me.”
“You sound so certain of yourself.”
“I know you. You know me. We were made for each other.” The low, dark rumble of its voice and the words it spoke caused a dull ache between my thighs. “Our souls were born in the bounty of eternity, together, side by side. Our love is part of the deep, dark eternal; vast, unending, ours.”
I reached down to touch myself, finding I had grown wet with desire. I shivered, pulling my hand away and leaving the room. It had left, having delivered the message it wanted to leave with me. I wondered if it came to everyone like this. I did not recall my parents saying, and I knew for a fact that it never spoke to Joey, or else he wouldn’t have left the way he did.
It came to me again one early morning. It was raining out and the sun was not able to peek through the clouds. I was lying back in bed, half awake and listening to the rain. I heard it breathing as if against my ear. Low moans vibrated down my neck, through my chest, and against my belly. I felt it between my legs.
“You cannot escape me.”
My lashes fluttered with sleep. “I’m not running.”
“You will always want me.”
“Just as you want me now.” I rolled my head sideways on the pillow and gazed out the window. Through the rain, I saw a dark shape outside my window. Huge, endless, a living void. “To be inside me, to take me,” I whispered. “You want all of me in your hands, your mouth. But you must wait.”
“I ache!” it roared. “I hunger and I desire. To create life with you is my end and my beginning.”
I closed my eyes, as my hand trailed down my body and under the blankets. I touched myself again, this time with purpose. I breathed deep, feeling it moan against my legs. I felt myself grow wet and hot, desiring more than just its voice.
“I can smell your need for me.” It clawed against the glass. “I can taste you in the air.” I saw a bloodred tongue press against the window. “You will be ready to accept me, my seed, my power.”
“Yes,” I moaned loudly. My hips arched off the bed, and my fingers moved faster, harder. I rubbed myself, urging my end to come. I cried out with wild moans, rocking back and forth rapidly against my hand.
“You were made for life,” it snarled. “You were made for me and me alone.”
Was that why it took Joey?
“I will be the sole keeper of your pleasure,” it growled. “Your master, your friend, your lover.”
“Oh, God!” I cried out. I felt the heat rolling down my palm, the molten liquid inside me was pouring like honey. “Oh, God!”
“Your body knows who it belongs to,” it said. “It knows to respond to me.”
I fell back against the bed, gasping hard for breath as I quivered. My skin felt electric, my limbs tingled and my loins throbbed. I looked back at the window and saw nothing there. I lay back, limp against the bed, barely able to move. My legs were jelly, and it took time for them to become solid again.
I was surprised by the way my body responded to it. Every time it spoke to me, I craved it, longed for it. I felt that this was crazy, but I could not stop the desire it was kindling. I would hear it in my dreams, and wake to find myself wet and excited. I barely saw it, only shadows and flashes from the corner of my eye. I could tell it was massive, and unlike anything I have ever seen before. I knew it must be frightening, but I found that exciting too.
I awoke early one morning with frost on my window. There was a complete calm over me, not a single worry in my mind. I got out of bed and dressed like always. I had a cup of coffee and I went outside.
It was cold when I left the house. I stood at the edge of the field with no one to watch me. I stood there, gazing up in awe before I stepped inside. The grass clung to me, pulling me in deeper. I stepped over stones and brambles, and eventually came to stand on a narrow path through the field.
“Sigrun!” I heard Joey call. “Sigrun, this way to me. Come now.”
I took in a deep, cold breath. “I’m coming.” I walked along a well-worn dirt path. I shivered as the cold crept up my spine. “I’m coming.”
