They started coming up through the ground a few years ago. Not all at once, not like mushrooms after rain. More like trees—slow and deliberate. They’d emerge from the soil feet-first, calves next, rising like reverse roots breaking the surface. You’d be walking your dog and suddenly there’s a pair of shins poking out of the daffodils, dusty and perfectly still.

The first few frightened us, mostly by their nudity. Now, we just keep an eye out so we don’t trip. 

No one could explain what was going on—not the mayor or the botanist we borrowed from the university. Not the local preacher, though god knows he tried—long sermons, a lot of allegories, very few facts. “What does it mean?” someone always asked. “Why us?” The theories ranged from “spiritual migration” to “government experiment” to “climate change, probably.” The new people didn’t offer much insight, either. They were never hostile, never violent. Just startled. Confused. Like they were in the middle of something else and then they found themselves here, blinking up at the Texas sky, dirt in their hair.

We didn’t ask them any questions, like where they’d lived or what they had been doing for work in their previous lives. It seemed rude, somehow. We brought them a towel, a sandwich, something carbonated. We waited for them to ask where am I? or what year is it? and when they did, we answered gently. Sometimes they nodded, like that confirmed something they long suspected. Other times, they went quiet, as if mourning a dream they’d forgotten they were in.

Mom believed it was all Biblical. “The earth shall give up her dead,” she said, tapping her finger on the good book. She blamed it on our collective sins. She once tried to baptize one of the sprouters while he was still unconscious in a ditch. She wouldn’t touch him herself—she called it “playing in God’s dirt.” She made me say a prayer and spray him down with the garden hose before the neighbors called the paramedics. Since then, she stopped getting involved directly but would leave a bottle of Gatorade near the fence if someone was halfway out, purely out of courtesy.

Dad claimed the sprouters were probably God’s way of being metaphorical. “The world out there is so boring,” he said, “it’s no surprise they try and crawl into our town.” I think he was half-right. Life was boring indeed, inside or out. But maybe boredom was just a pause before the great flood. Maybe that’s when people surface—when the stillness stretches too long and they can’t take one more quiet afternoon underground.

Once, I found one of them dawdling about by the old water tower, still half-covered in mud, having recently sprouted from a nearby ditch. He looked up at me and asked, “Is this the right place?”

I glanced about: just a few lazy clouds and bored cows. “Depends what you’re looking for.”

“Paradise,” he said.

We know it’s not paradise here, but he was polite for assuming so. Some still wanted fences, or warning signs, or rules about who gets to stay. There was a whole Facebook war about zoning laws and the emotional implications of fraternizing with them. But most of us—quietly, stubbornly—we keep choosing hospitality.

Despite the efforts to the contrary, some decided to stay. They got jobs bagging groceries or washing cars, smelling faintly of soil and confusion. Others drifted off after a few days, chasing other cities. Half the towners worried that the sprouters would outnumber us in no time and start to unionize. The other half worried they’d take root again, gentrify our genes, our habits, with their odd ways.

We too adapted, eventually. We set up benches near the sprouting spots. Fixed sprinklers around to grow the sprouters faster. Kept a hose nearby in case someone came up thirsty. One of the elementary school kids started a welcome club. They made laminated signs that read, Hi! You’re safe now.

My son asked me yesterday, “Why do they come out of the ground?” I told him no one knows. Maybe it’s random. Maybe the earth chooses. Maybe they were just tired of where they’d been before and wanted something else. Something new. Or maybe they were planted long ago by gods, and it took this long for them to bloom.

He nodded like he understood something I didn’t. Then he asked if we could plant something in our backyard, just to see what happens.

***

Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Vestal Review, Fractured Lit, Hobart, HAD, Maudlin House, and Trampset, among other journals. His stories have been selected for anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. He’s currently working on his first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam.