The World’s Largest Turnip
You are a turnip. One night a truck carrying experimental mutagens crashes into the field where you live. In the dead of darkness, the men in black come and sweep the wreckage away, disappearing everything without a trace as only they can. Deep in the soil you absorb the mutagens. The next morning you are twice as large as you were before. The next day four times. Things go on as such.
You become massive. Against your will you starve all your turnip friends and become the only turnip in the field. Your farmer takes notice. He stands over you in bib overalls and says things like, “And how!” and, “Heee Doggy!” He quickly starts up an unrequited friendship with you. At night he visits you by lantern and eats his supper, speaking to you as if you are the reincarnated spirit of his dearly departed wife.
Things become strange, or stranger, between you and the farmer and he becomes the big spoon. Regardless of how big you get he is always the big spoon. There was a time, when you were small, when you thought, in your primitive turnip way, that the farmer was God. Now that you are large, and the farmer cries into your crisp white flesh each night, you cannot account for these past thoughts. You are as big as the house. Barn swallows and robins peck nests into you and feed their young with your endlessly replicating flesh, giving you a chirping, swarming crown. You feel benevolent. On a warm dusk you take notice of the town, and the word “I” emerges from your mind.
The town takes notice back. People come from all over to see the World’s Largest Turnip. The farmer charges 25 bucks a pop and makes a nice living. The men in black watch from the far side of the road, obscured in the fringes of a cornfield, speaking into their wrists and adjusting the malignant gleam of their sunglasses. Waiting.
Through your roots you begin to hear the Voice of the World. The Voice of the World expresses some misgivings about your growth, indicating, that if left unchecked it might become a problem.
One day the farmer’s son comes to him in tears. He tells the farmer that his dearly departed mother left him a note indicating that he is, in fact, the biological son of a car dealership magnate. He tells the farmer he is taking a paternity test but will always think of the farmer as dad. The farmer is disillusioned but tries to make the best of it. He wants to meet the car dealership magnate.
They have coffee. Across from each other, they appear to be extremes of the same man, the unfortunate farmer residing on the less attractive end of the spectrum. The car dealership magnate roller skates, owns a house in Baha California, and is effortlessly handsome in a way that implies generosity and ease. He is everything the farmer wishes he was made manifest.
The farmer continues to make the best of it although he is dying inside. He walks the fields at dusk and dawn staring daggers at you, as if the situation is all your fault. He stops making the best out of it. He starts carving symbols into the flesh of his forearms and yells aloud all the creative ways he is going to murder the call dealership magnate. He implies that your ultimate punishment will be to watch the long and creative murder happen. He is very, very confused about things.
On a golden October evening the farmer attempts to fornicate with you, using a paring knife to open a hole in your side. He fails multiple times and in multiple ways. You watch over his bumbling as a god, attuned to the world’s gravity, the magnetic shield that prevents the sun from broiling all living things alive. You realize that if you continue to grow, you will, one day, be broiled alive. The Voice of the World wails for you to leave so nobody gets broiled. You have dreams of breaking away, of soaring through the cosmic weave, a turnip planetoid with its own gravitational field, a bird kingdom aloft in the reaches of space. You watch, with mild amusement, as the farmer’s son witnesses the farmer’s lewd behavior, as the farmer’s son determines that he no longer views the farmer as dad.
Things get worse for the farmer. He goes unwashed and shuns human contact. He mumbles to heaven and earth. He haunts skinny dipping lovers, surprises hikers in the hills, becomes an urban legend. You start to feel worse and worse for the rapidly disintegrating farmer. You start to consider making him part of your escape plan, that perhaps your growing omniscience makes his happiness your responsibility. But every time the farmer comes back from the hills covered in feces and devouring a live fish, your sympathy resets, and you consider watching him broil.
After many months, Christmas comes around. The farmer, hiding from several arrest warrants, watches through a frosted window as his son mixes and mingles at the car dealership magnate’s yuletide bash. He looks happier than ever in a crisp green sweater, looking ever more like his replacement father. The farmer watches the car dealership magnate step out to count snow flakes, and before thinking too hard about it, opens the car dealership magnate’s throat with his paring knife. He really loses it afterwards.
You are now a turnip that can be seen from space. You are making plans for your escape, for when shear mass tears you from the complaining ground and sends you on you cosmic voyage. The farmer returns from hiding in the hills covered in magnate blood. He proceeds to hack at your massive body with a wood chopping ax, truly believing that you are the reincarnated spirit of his unfaithful wife. This is your life for about a day and a half. You think really hard about the farmer dying until his eyes roll up and he does.
For three days his body goes unfound, administered to by the curious beaks of the robins and the sharp, hungry beaks of invading crows. He is found by his grieving son, who, having been aged by the loss of two dads, is now the spitting image of the departed car dealership magnate.
For three days you are left alone in your kingdom, the roadside visitors scared away by the farmer’s downfall, interpreting you as a monument to his derangement. From your immense vantage point you can see the curvature of the earth, the red lidded eye of the sun retreating from all life, fleeing so it seems. From your immense vantage point you can hear the growing cries of doom and frustration erupting from the small inhabitants of the complaining world. You realize that it is time to get the hell out of dodge.
On a bright blue morning you find yourself surrounded by vast concentric rings of men in black, their arrival instantaneous as only they can arrive. Their stillness disturbs you to your very core and you realize that you have not grown fast enough, that you never could have grown fast enough, that as large as you are and could be, the men in black would forever dwarf you. You watch in terror as from the curving horizon the bright stars of surface-to-air-missiles launch and approach, the men in black heralding their arrival with a disconcerting, shambolic hum. In the moments of your impending destruction you wonder as to why you were given such a life, such a vast, strange life. From your crown nesting songbirds sing their loving reply, and you hope, that in death, your ashes sleep with theirs.
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John Waterfall is a writer living in Manhattan and a graduate of the New School’s creative writing MFA program. His interests include genre fiction and literature about animals. A proud father of two cats and one baby girl. His work can be found in Jersey Devil Press, Crack the Spine, The Colored Lens and others. Twitter @JohnCWaterfall.