Harvest Time Again

The shire's population was getting smaller. Part of the reason was young people going to find their fortunes in the cities, but that was only a small part of it.

Many of the villages in the area were empty, as people left they became overrun by vermin and targets for hooligans. There was nothing to steal but they liked breaking things and defenestration.

Houses that still stood were boarded up and then left to fall down. There were no buyers because they could not either rent or sell the houses.

Every August another village emptied and no one knew why.

No one was reported missing, though people still here assumed they had moved away somewhere better.

This village knew its days were numbers but no one knew why.

Life went on but as August came around people began to worry. This was when it always happened. One day the village was fine, the next it was deserted.

They felt something was going to happen. At midnight on the first of August, it did.

There was a light and a huge building on the village green.

People were leaving their homes, whole families.

No one talked, they just walked purposefully towards the building on the green, which as they got closer looked more like an airship or vast transport vehicle.

They walked through the doors and were unaware of the blades that met them.

No one stopped.

And within the hour the village was emptied.

The aliens had what they needed for the next year, their August Harvest had been successful once more, and the ship took off.

They would be back next year and would find another village for their August Harvest, and the humans continued in blissful ignorance that they were a food source wanting to be harvested for alien menus.