And then he couldn’t move any further. He was stuck, with one leg trapped awkwardly behind him and his arms at his side. The corn crowded around him, claustrophobically tight.
His breath caught. Panic choked him. Jeff thrashed, tearing corn stalks out of the ground around him, trying to clear enough space so he could breathe again. He forced his way forward, twisting and flailing, and then, all at once, he was hurtling out of the corn and back onto another trail. He sprawled in the dirt, panting, and looked up to find Anna standing in front of him.
“How did…you get…in front of me?” he wheezed.
“What are you talking about? You went in, crashed around for a while, then came right back out.”
“No. That’s impossible.” He shook his head adamantly as he climbed to his feet. “I went in a straight line, right through the corn. There’s no way I could’ve ended up back here.”
Even though these words terrified her, Anna couldn’t keep a smirk off her lips.
~ ~ ~
They slept that night huddled together for warmth on one of the maze’s pitch black trails. Anna was hungry, thirsty, and badly needed to pee, but her mind recoiled in horror from the idea of leaving Jeff’s side for a second.
Now that she thought about it, that had probably been her problem all along.
She sat awake for a long time though, listening to him breath with her ear pressed against his chest. Finally, she worked up the nerve to whisper, “Jeff? Are you awake?”
He grunted in response. He hadn’t spoken much since his episode in the cornfield, and he certainly hadn’t suggested they go back in.
“Do you remember that time in Destin? When we stayed out on the beach all night drinking and woke up on the sand in the morning?”
He sighed, a sound both exasperated and forlorn at the same time. “Yeah, baby. I remember.”
“Do you remember what you said to me just before we fell asleep?”
Jeff took a long time to answer. “That…that I…loved you more than the entire world.” The words might have been forced out of him at gunpoint, might have been a foul-tasting medicine he was making himself swallow.
Anna smiled against him in the dark, replaying that night in her head, when she had felt like the luckiest girl that ever lived. Back then, their love had felt as endless as…well, as this corn maze seemed to be. But at some point, she had become complacent, gone limp, and then Jeff had started to drag her through that situation, too.
In a way, she figured they had been stuck inside this maze for years.
~ ~ ~
The sun was high overhead once more, just hot enough to make them sweat. They trudged down the trails, Jeff in the lead, taking turns at random.
“HELP!” Jeff bellowed, his voice torn and hoarse. He had been halfheartedly screaming since they started off this morning, beyond embarrassment now, apparently. Even if her tongue hadn’t been swollen and stuck to the roof of her mouth, Anna doubted she would’ve helped him. “ANYBODY? PLEASE, WE NEED HELP!”
Jeff stopped so abruptly she almost ran into his back. He threw his hands to the sky. “This can’t be right! We must’ve gone miles by now! Miles! No cornfield in the world is this big!”
“Guess we should’ve stayed to the right after all,” Anna muttered.
It was the wrong thing to say.
He whirled on her, one finger coming up to jab at her face. “This is your fault, you dumb bitch!”
“How…on God’s green earth…is this my fault?”
“You’re the one that wanted to come here! You’re the one that wanted to go in this fucking maze!” He punctuated this by tearing a handful of corn leaves from the nearest stalk and throwing them at her.
Anna stared at him, unflinching, as the foliage fluttered down between them. “You’re awful,” she said, the statement simple and clean and true.
“You wanna stay to the fucking right?” Jeff demanded. “Fine, let’s stay to the right!” He turned and sprinted away from her, taking the next available right turn, and the next beyond that. His feet pounded against the packed dirt. He kept running until his legs ached and his lungs burned. When he finally came to a gasping stop, he realized he was all alone.
“Anna?” he called. Then, with sudden, blinding panic, “Anna!”
He turned and hurtled back the way he’d come, taking left turns this time. Everything looked the same; it was impossible to tell if he was going the right way. He screamed her name until he had no voice left, and then just kept running. With each turn, the trails appeared to get more narrow, the corn leaning in around him.
Jeff sank to his knees and wept.
~ ~ ~
After her husband ran off like a spoiled child, Anna turned and went in the opposite direction. She also kept to the right, just as her father had always told her.
Three intersections later, she turned the corner and saw the exit in front of her. Happy families milled around the pumpkin patch ahead.
The farmer—now in a red-and-black flannel shirt—still sat between the entrance and exit. He jumped when she emerged.
“Lord, but you gave me a scare, Miss!” he said. “I didn’t think there ‘as anyone else in there!”
“There’s not,” Anna told him, and started for her car.
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Russell C. Connor has been writing horror since the age of five, and is the author of two short story collections, four eNovellas, and nine novels. His book Good Neighbors won the silver medal for horror in the Independent Publisher Awards. He has been a member of the DFW Writers’ Workshop since 2006, and served as president for two years. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas with his rabid dogs, demented film collection, mistress of the dark, and demonspawn daughter.
His next novel—Through the Deep Forest, Volume 1 of the Dark Filament Ephemeris—will be available October 2016.
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