Sleep did come. A little. Teddy knew it would eventually happen. Keeping awake and alert were not his great qualities. After two more rifts, a few blinks, and an exaggerated yawn, soaked in the purple light that ebbed throughout the living room, his eyes started to flutter close and he became groggy. Not even five minutes later, still seated and completely relaxed, he was out like a light, snoring in the recliner, semi-slumped over.

Two doors slammed closed and pulled him out of a dream. The erection at his center instantly deflated because of the abrupt scare. The loud bangs caused him to jump in the recliner and release a sudden gasp from his lungs, fully awake. He knew the obnoxious noise had come from upstairs and the spare bedrooms next to the bathroom, and guessed that a door had been slammed, not once, but twice.

Purple lightning flashed outside, to his left, somewhere in the field of wheat. It didn’t look like the normal electric show of stormy bolts that he was used to, though. Rather, the lightning resembled a bright blue and copper red that created the purple. The bursts of flashes flooded through every window, filling the house with an abundance of a purple-blinding hue, surrounding his now standing frame. The warm hue swirled around his nakedness: middle, back, neck, and between his legs, and grazed his flesh with a remarkable warmth that he had never felt before, but felt similar to a blanket that offered some cozy swaddling.

“What the heck is going on?” Teddy asked himself, looking from left to right, wide awake and no longer tired, or dreaming. His heart thumped madly within his chest and ears, and his mouth went desert-dry. Both hands started to shake like a Parkinson’s patient. He sat again in the recliner, felt uncomfortable, and stood. His head swirled with dizziness and he immediately sat back down for fear of falling to the living room floor, doing a face plant. After breathing a few times, two minutes later, huffing, puffing, panting as if he had just had sex, he decided to stand again. This time he walked to the base of the stairs that led to the second floor, peered up the seventeen steps, and called out, “Nick! Nick, babe! Is that you? Are you home? Come down and see me, Nick!”

Someone or something was in the house with him. He knew that. No, Teddy felt that. Someone or something that wasn’t welcome. A trespasser. An interloper. And it forced him to think, Something purple this way comes. Teddy wasn’t sure exactly who or what banged the door upstairs, still shaking his hands, having no control of the appendages. Something was in the house him. An it. A thing. Purple.

Lowering his head, feeling overcome with fear and confusion, he saw shafts of wheat on the floor next to his feet and the bottom step. They looked as if they were strewn over the boards, bitten, ripped apart, and crumpled, sticky with a purplish gel that looked similar to shampoo. Teddy thought about bending over, reaching for one of the torn shafts, but felt his stomach turn at the sight of the gooey residue on the plant, and its shit-like based smell that lingered against his nostrils. To no avail, he heard another sound upstairs, drawing his attention away from the wheat shafts. This time a thump mixed with a piece of furniture being pushed across one of the bedroom floors, scraping against its oak wood alarmed him. The sound became grating and loud, almost unbearable and blasting in his ears.

“Nick!” he called up the stairs again, sick to his stomach, more confused now, and somewhat disoriented. “Nick, babe, are you up there? Are you home? Stop messing with me with, sweetheart! Please! Tell me you’re home, honey!”

Nothing. No one answered. No Nick. Silence filled the farmhouse and mixed with the purple light that continued to flood through all its opened windows. Shining. Billowing. Cascading.

“Nick! Stop diddling around with me. This isn’t funny! You’re being a child! Come down here! Right! This! Minute! Don’t make me come up there!”

Teddy decided to climb the stairs, one step by one step. In doing so, a teasing coldness swept over the back of his neck and both arms. Ignoring the eerie feeling, making his incline, he grumbled, “Nick, you act like a boy sometimes. Do you know that? A stupid little boy that irritates me. Sometimes you need to be a man. And you make me wonder why I love you. Why does Teddy love Nick? Why? Why? Why?”

Purple pictures of family members hung on the wall to his right. Aunt Belinda smiled in a too-tight bathing suit and showed her midriff. Nick’s brother, Steve showcased off his bulging biceps in a purple tank and too-tight summertime shorts. Teddy’s Uncle Phil munched down a slice of purple watermelon like a fat little, oinking pig, smiling from ear to ear. Nick’s parents, Eve and Peter, held purple hands together in a purple park (not the same Teddy had dreamed of, his was more distant, somewhere far away in an unknown place and time). Millie Baxter, the preacher down at the Commonwealth of Religion for the last dozen years held her purple arms up to a purple sky, praising a purple Jesus on a purple cross. Such warm pictures of their lives together. Such purple pictures.