My Short Short for the Day

One night while a man was sleeping an alien landed in his corn field.  But what did this alien want?  Well, he landed his spaceship, concealed it with corn stalks and walked towards the barn.  As he walked, he came to a pasture with a bunch of sheep surrounded by a wooden fence.  The fence was weathered and leaning in places, so the alien decided to fix it up.  He enjoyed making things look nice, so he set to work repairing the fence.  He straightened it so it wasn’t leaning anymore.  Then he replaced the rotten wood posts with new wood that he had found in the back of the barn.  And finally, he painted the fence with a fresh new coat of weatherproof paint.  When he finished, he stepped back to admire his work. 

Happy with a job well done, he kept walking and came to a little patch of trees.  They were full of fruit.  He was feeling hungry but wanted to earn his snack, so he searched in the barn for some baskets.  He found them and brought them to the trees.  As he is an alien, he has certain abilities that humans do not.  To pick the fruit efficiently, he hovered around the trees and loaded the hovering baskets.  In short time, he had picked all the ripe fruit, then placed the baskets at the bottom of the trees.  Satisfied with his work, he ate a couple, juicy peaches.

It was starting to get late and the sun was beginning to rise, so the alien quickly made his way to the house.  Along the way, he saw some beautiful flowers.  He picked a few to make a small bouquet and carried it into the house.  Being an alien, he had no trouble teleporting inside.  Careful to be quiet, he made his way into the study where the most precious treasure of all was located, books!  He breathed in the scent of old paper and bindings.  After a moment, he placed a book on the desk and walked to the shelf where he had left off.  He carefully slipped the next book off the shelf and tucked it under his arm.  He left the study and went back to the kitchen. In the kitchen, he pulled the old flowers out of the vase on the table and replaced them with the beautiful, fresh bouquet.  He took the old flowers and teleported out of the house.  As he walked back towards his spaceship, he tossed the old flowers onto the compost heap.  He smiled and hummed softly as he walked past the fruit trees, and the old, red barn, and the gleaming new fence with the sheep chomping on the grass, and into the corn field. 

Once his spaceship was in the air, he fixed the corn field to look perfectly normal, just as it had before his arrival. 

“Edward dear, our friend has visited again.”  Agnes called up to her husband.  “And you should see the lovely bouquet he left.”

Edwards eyes popped open.  “Woohoo!”  He whopped, jumping out of bed.  He quickly dressed and whistled all the way into the kitchen.  “It’s gonna be a great day, Agnes!”