Issy sat in her chair on her front porch, gentle creaks pinching the air as she rocked back and forth. Lanterns hung around her, containing small fluttery bugs that produced a green light from their wings. To her right were lines of crops drifting in the wind. Tall plants swayed on their tall stocks, wings attached to the cobs that were flapping aggressively, attempting to ride the wind to another place where they will not be uprooted and chopped to bits. Colorful pumpkins walked on short stubby legs, their vines restricting their perimeter as they waddled across the soil. Some of the crops wailed in the wind, wishing to be released from their roots, the weather vane at the top of the house spinning aggressively.
Looking above Issy saw the earth, shades of green grass and pale stones, tall trees scattered, sometimes able to spot a deer or rabbit from the great height that the farm was suspended in the sky. She sat with a straw hat atop her blonde hair, work clothes stripped and relaxed in a robe that revealed her fleshless limbs, pale bones the entirety of her body except for most of her face, which was now beginning to peel from the skull.
The flesh on her left cheek was now mostly gone, revealing her rows of canines, making it more difficult to use her pipe. Though her lungs were gone, smoking still created a sensation within her empty chest, the smoke seeping into what material parts of her body were left. She grew the tobacco herself, a crossbreed between Nicotiana tabacum—earth tobacco—and Necromantia nebula tenebris—a tobacco species from a neighboring dimension commonly known as necromancer mist. The smoke was dense enough to seep into the bones of her ribcage and give a light sensation that reached the remains of her brain.
Chander arrived on time as usual at the start of the new moon, his truck bouncing up the terrain until he was below the farmhouse. He got out and looked up at her between the clouds. She got up from the chair and plucked a black circular berry from a bush beside the planks, tossing it in the air, leaving the gravitational field of the farm and falling into his hands. He plucked the berry in his mouth and reached his hand in the air, a rope suddenly appearing in his fist that dropped onto the farm. He gripped the rope and it pulled him out of the gravity field of the earth, rapidly pulling him onto the farm. He landed neatly on his feet beside the fluttering crops and approached the porch.
"As wonderful as ever to see you, Miss Issy," said Chanler as he removed the baseball cap from his thinning hair. Issy remembered a time when his hair was dark and lush, and she still had flesh on her legs and stomach.
"Let's get this done," she said, stepping off the porch. "I've had a long day."
"Sorry to hear that," he said. "Hope my order didn't give you any problems."
"Not at all. It's the orcish weed. Recently bought to keep pests away, but they're becoming invasive and starting to grow into other plots. Spent almost the whole day spreading production-stunting fertilizer and hacking long vines off my winged zea mays."
They grabbed the crates beside the porch, made of enchanted wood planks that would keep the produce safe and fresh as they hooked the crates to the rope, pulling up to send them out of the farms gravity field and landed them on the ground beside the truck.
When they were finished they took a seat beside each other on the porch swing, Chander with a cigar between his teeth and Issy puffing on her pipe.
"As impressive as ever," Chander sighed, blowing out a puff of purple smoke. "I always love coming here. It's still a difficult place to find and challenging to find a vehicle that can get me up here, but man, this view! Never gets old."
"It's hard to find on purpose," said Issy.
Her farm had been invaded by unfriendly beings more than once. There was one night she found a blue-skinned demon rummaging through her crops, ripping out her blood rose bushes and taking the valuable roots. She had grabbed her pitchfork and ran after it, plunging the fork into its chest when it lunged at her with 5 inch nails and white teeth.
It was only after she got the corpse into the light did she realize this was not a creature but a blue-skin of royalty. His face was handsome despite the mud on his cheeks, horns protruding from his forehead and a gold star shape beneath his left eye that revealed him to be a prince. Panic washed over her momentarily before she grabbed the body and brought it inside, dumping it in the tub and filling it with a pink acid that caused the muscles fusing the skeleton together to rip apart to make it easier to cut up the body. She was dressed in a hazmat-like suit and had covered the floor and walls of the bathroom in a thin but durable plastic to keep the blood from getting everywhere, the black liquid thick and creating a permanent stains on whatever it touched. When finished, she scattered the parts throughout the farm, burying them 6 feet beneath the soil. She burnt the pitchfork and plastic and hazmat suit in a blazing bonfire of white light that turned the materials to ash which took to the wind and scattered the pieces. She waited for weeks, but no one ever came searching her farm for the prince.
"You have a talent Issy," said Chander. "Where I grew up there was not nearly this abundance in fresh food. I survived off of things that were mostly stale and rotten. But a sour upbringing like that can make you appreciate the little things more."
Chander looked at her with inquisitive eyes and if she had a heart it would have softened at the kind way he looked at her, even with her flesh falling off her body. At one point, they would have end the evening in her bedroom, but she could no longer perform those kinds of actions with nothing but a pelvis bone. She missed being that close to someone. He held her hand for a moment while he finished his cigar and kissed her on the flesh of her other cheek before exiting the farm, pulling on the rope that disappeared once his feet hit the earth.
Issy stayed on the porch a little longer, warmth in her face, relaxing as Chander's truck came to life and wobbled down the terrain, leaving the place quiet and still. She unbuttoned her shirt, letting a breeze rush through her ribcage. The weather vane began to spin; slowly at first, then excessively, coarse rushing across the fields and skies and through her pale bones. She could feel energy gathering below her. She stood up and looked to the ground of the earth. A shimmer began to appear among the rocks and trees, then light began to warp around a single spot and she felt a massive wave of energy rush to a single point in the earth atmosphere.
She had heard of such phenomena but had never witnessed one herself. Doorway formations were a difficult concept for most to understand, the patterns almost unrecognizable and knowledge of purpose only existed in theory. She didn't know where the doorway led to, but she was not interested in finding out.
The doorway appeared repeatedly for the next 5 evenings. She watched it closely through much of the night, but she never saw anything exit from the shimmer. On the 6th evening, she watched a van pull up under her farm and alarm rung through Issy, gripping her pitchfork as she looked down, waiting to see what the passengers were there for. In this new location she had put a spell on her soil foundation in the sky which kept it invisible to anyone or anything that did not have knowledge of the location. She was glad for that when she saw 3 users exit the van—2 girls and a boy. She could pick up little of their dialogue but watched closely. When the sun disappeared, the doorway reappeared, and the group went in. She waited, weather vane spinning, crops drifting, and then the boy and one of the girls ran out of the portal, falling to their feet. The doorway vanished and Issy wondered what happened to the other girl. She could not see their faces but their body movements told her they were in a distraught state. After a little while they got back into the van and drove off.
Issy watched the earth as the moon took its orbit across the stars, waiting for something, unsure of what. She was about to go inside when she heard a sound like glass shattering. She looked down at the earth and saw an arm reaching through space, the air cracking as someone pulled themselves into this plane of existence. A long, thin body dragged through the cracked air, onto the ground. Immensely tall, humanish but she could spot the carvings across his skin suggested different. But what exactly, she was not sure. She had never seen a living thing that could force its way through different dimensions or reality, nor knew that ability was even possible. She held her breath, hoping her enchantment would keep her hidden. The man did not raise his head from the ground and walked down the path and into the dark. She went inside. The doorway did not appear again.