The farm looked nothing like the one he kept in his memories. It reeked of neglect, left to shrivel up and die. Dust everywhere. The soil was hard and closely packed, the barns in need of repair, the farmhouse itself falling apart, the nails rusted over. The air was still and quiet. It was death's robe unfurling, decay in motion, stagnation at their heels.

So much was missing—the chickens pecking away near the coop, the rank odor of horse sweat, the noisy mooing of cows and bleating of sheep. All the little things that cinched at this childhood and anchored it to the ground.

Not to mention that it was now in Technicolor, not in sepia. And the background music was different; somehow it rolled out a distinct hue of sadness. Nothing at all like the nostalgic music-box melody of the past years, and if he closed his eyes he could even hear the child singing "Na na na, na na na na, na na na…"

Jack frowned, opened his eyes, and shook his head. He realized that the flashback he was thinking of was the opening sequence of Back to Nature. Oops, he thought. Wrong game.

"Hey!" a fat-mayor-in-red-sounding voice said. A fat-mayor-in-red-looking man huffed and puffed his way over to where Jack stood. The name on his portrait showed six question marks. The man himself projected the illusion of being a human ball: his forehead was rounded, his cheeks protuberant, his nose bulbous, and his chin weak—it was so that his entire head was almost a full circle; every feature of his face had roundness in some form or another. He coughed into his fist and said, "The owner of this farm died a while back. You can't just go waltzing in here!"

Ever obedient, Jack stopped waltzing and straightened his slouch. "Sorry," he said. "About the owner…"

"He died." The man took off his glasses and wiped it on his shirt. He put it back on. "A while back."

"Oh." Jack's face fell.

"What the hell!" the man yelled, hopping away, his hat tipping. "Your face just fell! Pick it up, you ruffian! Good, now put it back on." He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Kids these days."

"Sorry," Jack said again. "Happens a lot these days. Anyway, how did the owner die?"

"Er…" The man seemed to mumble something that sounded like, name in the Death Note.

"Uh, sorry, I didn't seem to catch that…"

"Well, uh—he died of—of—yes, he died of old age."

"But he was only—"

"Old age!" The man took a step back. "Anyway, that's about it. He left the farm to someone named Jack."

Jack's eyebrows rose—what a coincidence, he thought. "Cool. My name's Jack, too."

Six-Question-Marks's face brightened. He grinned, showing his straight teeth, his cheeks bulging out. He said: "Really? Then that means you're the new owner of this farm."

"W-wait a minute. What if I'm just another guy named Jack?"

"Simple. What's your name?"

"Jack."

"And the one in his will?"

"Jack."

"See? Even if you're just another guy named Jack, it's your name on the will, so that means it's official: you are now the new owner of this farm."

The logic of it bothered Jack so much that his face almost fell again. How could anyone even think like that? It was inhuman. Animalistic. It was wonderfully brilliant, a genius of unspoken caliber. "Okay," he said. "I'll take it."

The man clapped his hands once. "Great! From now on, this farm is yours. It won't be easy, but if you try hard you can do a job to make him proud."

Jack nodded, and the man nodded, too. No one spoke for length of time. He couldn't find anything appropriate to say, so Jack nodded again, and the man reciprocated. They stood nodding in silence for a while before Jack started shaking his head. The man shook his head, too. Soon they started clucking their tongues in dismay.

"Unfortunate."

"Very."

"How awful."

"Breaks my heart."

"What were we talking about again?" Jack said.

This seemed to catch the man off guard, as he spoke while shaking his head. "Not the weather? Oh, yes, the farm."

"Of course. The farm." Jack nodded sagely, and the man nodded with him.

"The will."

"Yes."

All the nodding and the shaking of heads started getting to both men. Jack asked, "Anyway, how do you pronounce your name?"

"My name?" the man asked, bewildered. "Why, it's Thomas. Tho-mas. Simple as that."

Jack shook his head in confusion, and Thomas shook his head, too. "Wait, wait. So your name isn't Six-Question-Marks?"

"Heavens, no. Why would anyone have a name like that?"

"Oh, that makes sense now. You better check your portrait name once in a while. You appear as Six-Question-Marks to strangers."

Thomas nodded, and Jack did the same. "Will do. Thank you, Jack."

Jack waved at Thomas' retreating figure. He surveyed the farm, taking in the damage time had wrought, all the while calculating the expenses required to jumpstart the place and keep it up and running. He went in the little farmhouse and collected the old tools. Once outside, he started working—he hacked away at rocks, brought down the hoe against tree stumps, swung the sickle round and round until the world spun faster than normal. He was profusely sweating by the time he got halfway through the fields; dust and grime gathered underneath his fingernails, dark crescents lining the tips. The neckerchief he wore stuck to his nape. He turned back to survey his work, and saw right away that nothing had changed.

Jack shook his head. "I have no idea what I'm doing."

Farming for Dummies

Humble Beginnings

The surface of the pond rippled and shifted, shimmering like silk, stabbing at his eyes where the sun struck it; it sang of such wholesomeness and utter purity that he was almost afraid of dipping his fingers in it—it might have been an untainted remnant of Eden for all he knew.

A miniature rainbow curved at the base of the small waterfall. It was Eden, he thought, whittled away to the last crystal bone, the last piece of paradise on earth.

The water lapped at the slope of the pond, and at once he had the irresistible urge to cup his hands and drink it in. He was aware, though, that doing so would be an act of desecration—to what, or whom, he did not know—so he stood his hand. Human fingers, with their fine creases and soft sour whiff and uncontested expertise at poking into crannies where putrefaction thrives, must never touch anything as unpolluted as this.

So Jack took a step back, picked a particularly moldy rock near a tree stump, and lobbed it into the pond.

A bright light bloomed from the center of the basin, and for an instant everything was white—shapeless, solid, impenetrable white, the kind that masticates green-grey boulders and spits out sand. He could feel his hands waving frantically, his feet stomping, he could still make out the soft roar of the waterfall, yet he could not see them, nor anything, for that matter.

"So…" a female voice said, smooth as the velveteen wings of a butterfly. "You have decided to make an offering."

Panic bound Jack's tongue to the roof of his mouth. All he could think of was that he was blind, he was blind, he was blind.

"Stop doing that silly dance, you oaf," the voice said again, with a touch of unmasked irritation this time. "I'm talking to you."

"I'm blind, I'm blind!" cried Jack. "I can't see anything!"

"What do you mean you're bli—oh. Oh. Sorry."

The white wall dissolved in patches, in circles and blurred triangles; for a fleeting moment, it seemed as if Jack had a swath of moth-eaten fabric hanging in front of his face, flapping, swelling in a serpentine dance. His vision cleared.

In front of him was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, next to his former landlady and that pin-up girl in the poster tacked to the wall of his old apartment. His eyes, without permission, strayed to her hair—the strands were messily, artfully gathered into two round buns, from one of which dangled a long braid over one shoulder, but the thing that fascinated him the most was the color: green, like jade, like evergreen leaves, like moss clinging to the latrine whenever he forgot to scrub it every three months.

The woman's eyes narrowed. Below the fold of the eyelids clung dark lashes, thick and lengthy, curving upward and almost touching the ridge over her eyes; above them, like a pair of archangels poised for battle, arched meticulously shaped eyebrows, tapering gently at the outer tips. The manner in which she held herself suggested a wry playfulness throughout, like that of a cat's—particularly a cat about to eat a tasty mouse, baring its curving canines, rearing to rip at the rodent's belly and feast on its entrails, to revel in the metallic tang of blood and guts and tearing flesh—

"All right, that's enough," the woman growled. "Your inner monologue needs work. Badly."

"Sorry." Jack rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. He cast his eyes around to distract him from his uneasiness, and by chance noticed something cylindrical clutched in the woman's fist. She saw him staring at it.

"My flashlight," the woman said by way of explanation, waving it around, "for special effects. Sometimes it blinds people, though. Whites out the whole screen. Mortals." She clucked her tongue in consternation. "Anyway, you made an offering. What do you want?"

Jack was confused; he felt his face scrunching up. "An offering?"

"A stone. You offered me a stone, you cheapskate."

He put one and one together and got three. He could work with three. "Ohhhh. That stone. It wasn't an offering, really, but since you seem to think it is…"

"Cheapskate!" the woman screeched. "I shall not deign to converse with you lowlife unless you present before me an adequate offering, one that befits a goddess such as myself."

"All right, all right. Stay here, I'll find something."

Hurriedly, Jack swept his eyes over the immediate area and spotted a slightly wilting moondrop flower near the hot spring. He yanked it out, roots and all, with a fair clump of soil still clinging to it, and flung it over to the pond.

"That's better," the woman said with a smile. "Now. What do you wish of me, O mortal?"

"Well…" Jack shoved his hands in the pockets of his overalls and shifted his weight on one foot. He had not thrown the stone in as an offering; there was nothing in his mind that he truly desired. He decided to stall for a bit. "Who are you, anyway?"

The woman seemed offended by this. "Who am I? You ask who I am? Foolish, impudent human." The features of her face took on a menacing demeanor—her eyes darkened and her mouth stretched into a terrifying scowl. Storm clouds gathered overhead; chilly gusts blew. Jack's knees wobbled in fear. In a ringing voice she proclaimed: "I am the Harvest Goddess, Guardian of the Mountains, the Watcher of Hearts, the Bringer of Rain, voted Most Likely to Live in a Pond in high school, and three-time winner of Underworld's Next Top Model. You will do well to remember me, human."

"I'm sorry!" said Jack, his arms protectively cradling his head. "I'm sorry, O most benevolent Goddess!"

Everything went back to normal. The Goddess returned to her usual cunning self so seamlessly that Jack was almost convinced that she was two different people—goddesses—switching places when he wasn't looking. "I tire of your ignorance, lowly farmer," she said. "For the third time, what do you want?"

"Um, um… could you show me how to farm?"

"What the—the Harvest Goddess asks you what you want—the Harvest freaking Goddess—and you ask to be taught how to farm?" She drew her palm over her face and tipped her face skyward, her braid falling past the ball of her shoulder down to her back. Even in distress, she was gorgeous. "Fine," she said. "Fine. I won't complain or ask or babble anymore. I'll show you how to farm. Come here."

"Where?"

"Here. Near the pond. I'm gonna show you something."

Jack stood at the very edge of the basin—one push from behind would send him plunging into the water—and leaned forward. "Is this close enough?"

"Yes, that's fine. Now watch."

The Goddess waved a long-fingered hand over the surface of the pond. It shone in an array of vibrant colors, spreading in all directions, bleeding into each other until they all swirled into nothing. A rectangle appeared, blurred at first, then gradually gaining clarity, sharpening, the edges growing more and more distinct.

It was a rectangle, spasming, shaking, engraved with the cryptic words "Congratulations! You are the 999,999th visitor! Click here to claim your prize." Behind the first rectangle emerged many others, all of them overlapping, each more arcane than the last, proclaiming things like, "Beautiful singles in your area dying to meet you" and "Enlarge your—"

The last one he could not read in full because it was overlapped by another rectangle.

The Goddess waved her hand again and the rectangles vanished. "Ads," she said irritably. The surface now smoothed out and showed a man swinging a hoe to till the soil. The image barely registered in Jack's mind before it faded out and morphed into a scene featuring the same man, this time spreading turnip seeds. This went on for a while—the images would change, one after another, like a storybook being read too fast.

"Please tell me you got all that," the Goddess said as the last image—the same man chucking vegetables into the shipping bin—thinned out and disappeared into the water.

Jack started shaking his head, but upon seeing imperceptible marshaling of unspoken venom around the Goddess' eyes, he nodded vigorously. "Yeah, I got it. Got it all. Got it so well I could give it back in pieces, inside little gift boxes wrapped in recycled brown paper—see, I use recycled paper 'cause I care about the environment."

"Riiiiight." The Goddess appeared miffed. "It's really simple, you know. Hoe for tilling, hammer for breaking rocks, axe for branches and tree stumps, sickle for weeds, and watering can for, well, watering."

"Gotcha." Jack tipped his hat to the Goddess and ambled away, hands in his pockets, whistling along with the spring background theme. The Goddess shook her head and said, "I knew I should've tried for Mount Olympus."

Jack cracked his knuckles upon reaching the farm, mentally reciting the mnemonic HG had taught him—hoe for tilling, hammer for breaking, axe for branches and all that. He stretched his arms up, to the sides; he bent down and touched his toes, then arched his back. It wouldn't do to sprain a muscle while working. This routine warm-up continued for a few minutes, and finally, with a big flourish, he whipped out the hammer from his rucksack. "All right. Let's do this," he said.

Just then, a bell sounded, a resonance that dived deeper into the coils of living ears, whispering and shouting at the same time, barring the windows of village houses and locking the doors behind it. Nighttime had arrived.

It was deathly quiet all of a sudden. All that Jack could hear was the distant, occasional, and slightly ominous hooting of an owl, and the sparse chirping of crickets. The hair at the back of his neck prickled. "On second thought," he said, walking towards the house, "tomorrow seems a good day to start."

a/n:

Please don't ask me what this is. I have no idea, myself. All I know is that it's some sort of parody, and that it has absolutely no plot.