"Cornfield"

by Evelyn Danna

A young girl walked down a desolate street, her pink unicorn backpack bouncing with each step. She was careful to stay to the side of the road, should any cars pass by; her mother always told her to mind the road. She rarely saw any cars, nowadays, but she stayed to the side anyway, just in case. 

It was early in the morning, and her bag was like an iron weight on her shoulders as she trudged down the long road, the sun bearing down on her relentlessly. It was already so hot; walking home would be absolute torture. 

She glanced around. It was always such a boring walk. All of her peers lived somewhat far away, and most were from wealthy neighborhoods that surrounded the school. Only a handful of students came from houses that didn’t exist within designated neighborhoods, like hers. 

The girl shifted the straps of her backpack a tad, holding them up with her hands in hopes of taking a bit of the weight off of her shoulders. With little else to do, and nothing but corn for miles, she sang. She knew she wasn’t the best singer, like her mother had been, but she could remember the words and tunes of her songs well enough. No matter how badly she sang, her father always told her she sounded beautiful. She wished she sounded more like her mother. Her voice had been angelic and soft, while the girl’s was high-pitched and scratchy. Maybe, when she was older, she’d learn to sing like Mommy had. 

She shifted her gaze from the sky to the road ahead. Grass grew from cracks in the asphalt, glittering with specks of dew; the trees on the horizon rustled in the slight breeze; and the fields of corn on either side of the road swayed, as though to music only they could hear. She sighed. There was nothing but corn along the road for miles. Just corn, corn, and more, stupid corn. She didn’t know why. Nobody farmed it anymore; nobody even ate the corn! From what she could tell, it only seemed to annoy people. She’d heard some of the teachers talking about it after class the other day, as she was gathering her things to make the long journey home. 

“Shouldn’t be leaving it like that, I think. Someone ought to have cut it down by now,” her homeroom teacher had said. 

The math teacher had scoffed. “And have to deal with whatever pests are lurking in there? Don’t be ridiculous.” 

“But what if they’d caught someone unawares? Wouldn’t be able to see ‘em until they were practically on top of you.” 

He’d waved her off, grabbing his coat. “Nonsense, Jen. You’d see the corn move when they got close. ‘Sides, these kids can take care of themselves.”

She hadn’t looked convinced.

The girl didn’t see the big deal; it was just corn. Even if they’d come out, her father had taught her how to deal with pests. She’d seen plenty of them around the farm, and had come to realize that they were only really dangerous if there were too many of them, or you were caught off-guard. She didn’t have to worry about that. Nowadays, people were always on-guard, if they knew what was best for them. 

Besides, the things weren’t all that fast, or all that bright. It didn’t take much to get rid of them. Honestly, Ms. Jenny worried too much. 

In all her days of walking to and from school, she’d never seen any in the corn. If they were there, she reckoned they liked it well enough to stay. 

She looked down at the watch her father had given her for her birthday last year. “Half-past six,” she murmured. “Should be plenty of time!”

Behind her, deep within the corn, something had moved. 

“I wonder if Jamie’ll be at school today,” she said to herself. “He told me his Auntie got him a stuffed rabbit last week, and he’d bring it in to play with!” She hadn’t seen a proper stuffed animal in years. She’d had many of her own, once, but they’d all gotten ruined when her mother died. Very few people still had stuffed animals, or, at least, good ones. 

I wonder what color it is, she thought.

The corn swayed and rustled beside her.

Maybe blue? Or purple? 

The rustling grew more violent, and the girl began to skip, humming. The keychains on her bag jingled with each movement.

Something stumbled out of the corn and slowly shuffled towards her. 

The girl came to a halt. 

The creature reached out. 

She smiled. 

It lunged for her, its mangled flesh peeling from its yellowed bones. 

The girl turned, flipping the latch and removing her pistol from her belt, raising it to the creature’s head and pulling the trigger in a matter of seconds. 

It fell with a sickening thump. 

She turned back around, slid the gun back into her belt, and continued on her merry way.