A Shucky Situation

               You should have known you would really, really hate corn mazes.
As soon as Jackson suggested the five of you split up and race through, you could have said, “oh, no thanks, I’ll wait out here.” Actually, you should have sat this excursion out entirely.
There was a small hedge maze near where you grew up, only a few acres total. You were seven, at a birthday party for someone in your class. All the girls from your year were there, but in hindsight, you would have felt less left out if she neglected to invite you. In between cake and presents, everyone else set off in twos and trios. They left you at the mouth of the maze, trying to kick dirt off your sneakers, until the birthday girl’s mother shooed you into the abyss.
A couple of hours later, they finally found you curled up alone in a small gap between hedge lanes with a pigeon pecking at your clothes for pizza crumbs while you cried. Your parents didn’t take you to many birthday parties after that.
That childhood catastrophe is eerily similar to this one, as you wander the rows of corn by your lonesome. You should have stayed in your dorm, contently watching movies while safe and warm beneath blankets. Instead, you’re here, stranded in Happy Pumpkin Fall Fun Farm’s corn maze. Who names their farm, their entire livelihood, Happy Pumpkin Fall Fun Farm? Between that, and the dozens of two-star reviews on Yelp, this was destined for disaster.
The farm closed two hours ago, according to your watch. Not that you could know for sure, you’re stuck in the middle of this fucking maze. They probably left without you, probably high-fived each other as they finished, probably forgot there was a fifth person in the party, wedged in the center of the backseat on the drive over. Lynzie might notice and try to call when she hopped on the elevator back to your shared hall, alone. Or, she might be too intoxicated from your rounds of hard cider earlier to care. Either way, it’s the end of the month and you’re out of data. There’s only one key difference between this chilly September night and that sunny Saturday back home all those years ago; you haven’t resorted to curling up in a ball yet.
You tilt your head as you examine the choice in front of you. Left or right? You haven’t been to this intersection yet, at least you don’t think so. It’s unlikely. Happy Pumpkin Fall Fun Farm boasts the largest continuous corn maze in the upper midwest, with over sixteen acres of pure hell. To the right, a clear, rapidly dimming sky hovers over empty space, where you’re pretty sure the parking lot is. Cutting through the field isn’t an option. Upon entry, you wanted to see how the stalks felt to the touch as your companion’s voices faded out of perception. Your fingers burned. This didn’t come as a surprise: you react to hay, certain types of grass, and other flora when you come in direct contact.
Just grand, that corn falls into this category.
You should go left, right? Or will that lead you further into the labyrinth’s intestines, prolonging your misery?
Only one way to find out. You turn left, and come to another fork after a few paces. Choices, choices, so many damn choices. You go right this time, then right again. The cornstalks sigh as a breeze ruffles the maze, and you remember a sign you passed about three hours ago. “Go ahead and scream, there are thousands of ears listening.” About three hours ago, you laughed. Who decided these stupid lumps of starch should be called ears, anyway?
The wind continues to whirl, pushing you onward. You wrap your flannel tighter around your body. Lynzie was right, oversized is always the better choice. The jacket doesn’t go with the rest of your outfit. She insisted that the group stop at a Target on the way to the farm, after noticing you donned just a t-shirt and shorts.
“It’s perfect right now, but by sunset, you’ll be regretting it,” she said, tossing sweaters and hoodies your way. The three boys– Jackson, Tall Blond, and University Baseball-Hat– waited in the car. You don’t know them. Lynzie invited you along last minute this morning as you crossed paths in the communal bathroom, and you had nothing better to do. Jackson was Lynzie’s current fling, and you were Lynzie’s current best friend.
“I didn’t think it would get that cold,” you admitted, holding a burgundy quarter-zip hoodie against your chest before setting it in the discard pile.
“You picked Minnesota over somewhere warm for your semester abroad! That was your first mistake,” Lynzie laughed and handed you a dark yellow flannel. You checked the tag, and for a moment paled at the price before remembering the American dollar is worth less than the pound. This would have to do.
Lynzie was right. You would be freezing right now without her help.
Other than the wind, there are no sounds other than your shoes breaking the brittle, browned husks of corn, and your heartbeat. Each crack underfoot increases that steady pulse just a bit more, just enough for you to start checking behind you. Ridiculous. Happy Pumpkin Fall Fun Farm is deserted. For better or for worse, you are the only one out here.
Go left. Left again. You start to speed up now. You’ve stopped putting any thought into the directions you choose, and the twists and turns become a blur of frantic decisions. Somewhere in the distance, an owl’s cry pierces the stillness of dusk. Why are you running? You force yourself to slow.
Breath.
Turn Right.
Thank God.
It’s not the exit, not even close, but a bridge rising over the center of the maze. You rush towards it, knowing that in the fading light the view might not even help, but it’s worth a try, right?
Your foot lands on the first step up, and you realize just how exhausting the last few hours have been. How long have you played at being a lab rat in a maze, scampering around with no reward and no end in sight? You sit at the bottom of the steps with a sigh and pull out the candied apple from your purse. Definitely not a treat you would spend money on, but the older lady running the snack stand next to the petting zoo inquired after your accent, and upon telling her you’d never experienced anything as sublime as Happy Pumpkin Fall Fun Farm before, she insisted on a free sample for you.
You don’t even like caramel. Or apples. You take a bite as best you can, lips curled back to avoid making a mess of your face. Another bite, then another.  If your mum and dad saw the calorie count labeled next to the apple’s price on the menu, they’d have a heart attack. Honestly, a lot of what you’ve done on this experience would, even though you’ve spent most nights in your dorm listening to the madness after a sporting event as people paraded to the bars. A final bite and you reach the artificially preserved core. You toss it next to you and shove the wrapper back in your purse before resuming your ascendance.
The sky above the maze looks burnt, with rusty hues running into each other headlong and fading into twilight shades of blue and purple. You try to memorize the path you need to take which would lead you to the exit in the distance. From up here, the cornfield seems to stretch on further than you thought hours earlier. On the other side of the maze to the west, you can see the parking lot is indeed empty. The lights at the main building are off, save for one tiny porchlight on the main house swinging in the wind. Earlier, the place was full of life. Children pulled their parents this way and that, and you walked through the apple orchard with Lynzie and the rest. Everything was ok, just four hours ago.
You laugh. The noise doesn’t carry as far as you expect.
They really did leave you, those bastards.
It’s only you out here, in the middle of this Goddamn maze with its Goddamn loops instead of dead ends. Even if you do manage to find your way out, how will you get back to town? What, will you just cozy up with the goats and bunnies in the zoo until the opening shift arrives and you scare them senseless? You can almost hear Lynzie’s shrill voice giving a half-assed apology the next time you see her: “ohmyGod! it’s in the past now, we were just drunk. Anyways want to go grab coffee?”
You and Lynzie officially met on the fourth day of classes on the way to the dining hall.
“You’re down the hall from me, yeah?” she asked, poking you in the back between your shoulder blades. You could tell immediately she wasn’t a fresher like the rest of your building– no lanyard around the neck, and as she pulled out her phone to check a notification you could see that she didn’t have a map of campus open. You’d seen her around.
“Think so. Floor thr– sorry, four? J hall?”
“Room 418! I loooove your accent, where are you from?” she gushed, picking up her pace to match your stride.
“Northern Ireland. Just here for the term,” you said. You’d had this conversation about twenty separate times at this point. Orientation for students studying abroad was brutal. It seemed like everyone was from an infinitely more interesting part of the world.
“That is soooo cool. Do you like Minnesota so far?”
“It’s alright.”
Part of you wanted to break away with a “nice talking to you” upon entering the dining hall, but you promised your parents at the airport that you wouldn’t stay shut up in your room the whole time. That you’d try.
Look how that turned out.
You lean back on the rail, which starts to give under your weight. You jump back up with an involuntary shriek. Embarrassing. This whole situation sucks. The sunlight has faded completely. In near-complete darkness, the maze adopts a sinister grey overtone. The fairytale farmland you walked through earlier is a distant memory.
Do you just sit and wait, here? It’s getting cold, up here above the sheltering stalks. The flannel isn’t made of anything special– not fleece or actual flannel, just a thin piece of fabric. It’s still September, damnit! The pollen-polluted air within the maze is suffocating, you realize, and now your breathing comes a bit easier. Breathe in– out. In– out. You bounce on the balls of your feet a few times, feeling the planks of the bridge warp beneath you. You shiver. Time to go down and re-enter this nightmare.
Which way had you climbed up? Where did you come from? Where will you go? In the light, at least you could see where you were going. The vast expanse of pure nothingness scared you shitless when you first arrived in Minnesota, the way the sky didn’t stop at a city or rolling hills or even a forest. The sky and soil raced into the horizon, never-ending. Your host campus is decently populated with trees, by local standards, but if you walked just ten minutes south, the suburbs dropped away. No houses. No streets. Nothing.
In the dark, it’s worse. If not for the distant glow of a half-moon, you wouldn’t be able to see the steps on either side of you. You can barely see that emptiness, but you can feel it, eyes boring directly through your back to make your lungs clench. The confusion of your new peers echoes in your mind: “why would you come here? Why not somewhere fun?” Another owl shrieks, and a different bird you don’t recognize responds, closer.
So which way?
“Fuck it,” you say out loud before deciding to descend left. You don’t think this was the way you’d come from; all the better for it. Actually, Tall Blond mentioned earlier that you can’t finish the maze without crossing the bridge. He told you this while leaning just a little too close for your liking. You can still smell the spice of cider on his breath– he added too much cinnamon. As you walk back down the steps, you contemplate the ancient mystery: is he cute, or just tall?
You realize too late that the final step is missing. It probably rotted away years ago, and no one thought to fix it. You stumble and fling your arms out in front of you to break your fall as you skid into the dust. The rawness of the earth stings your cheek as you collide, your thin glasses frames snapping upon impact. The broken temples press into your skull until you shift your head.
For a few minutes, you think about accepting this as your lot in life. If you lay here? If you just lay here? You could decompose alongside the plants. You could avoid thinking about all the Godawful things that await when you emerge, victorious but at what cost, and ultimately see all four of your deserters in the dining hall by Monday morning at the latest. The last person on earth you want to see is destined to hop in the pancake bar line behind you at breakfast.
This decision is tempting. Keeping your nose this close to the rotting vegetables is not. Your face is flush with the ground, and your glasses continue to dig into your head no matter how you adjust. Your hands itch wildly as you push yourself back to your feet and squint to observe your surroundings. The ground is littered with cornstalks and leaves, and you’ve landed on a pile.
“Shit,” you hiss, wiping your hands off on your shorts and scratching at your palms. You pocket your hopelessly broken glasses. The right frame is cracked, and they are of no use to you now. Your eyes fight to see without any aid, but the grey walls around you refuse to separate into individual plants. Still, you should count your blessings that you can make out the path and can avoid running into the sides.
As your vision acclimates, a twitch of movement catches your eye. There, about ten meters ahead, sits a small blob. You begin walking toward it, trying not to snap any twigs on the path as you investigate. You narrow your eyes further, and the blob takes the form of a…? Rabbit? No. Too small. The blob flutters. A bird, then. What you guess is the right wing trembles as it hops back and forth. You smile for the first time in hours. It’s playing with you. It hops a few more times before bouncing down the path and taking a sharp left.
Oh, what the hell. Following a bird’s poor internal compass is more fun than following your own. You trot after it, a bit more life in your step now. Briefly, you wonder why it won’t just… fly away? Even with what you assume is a broken wing, surely there are better places to be than a corn maze. Why would he come here?
Actually, why wouldn’t he? All the food is here, it’s decently sheltered. If this is your hell, it’s this wee creature’s heaven.
The world stills. The crickets, a song you weren’t aware of, stop. The air shifts. You have one second, just one, to mutter “shit” before the downpour starts and clouds sweep across the moon, blocking the little light you do still have. You can barely see the blob. Is that a croak of disapproval it voices at the sky, scarcely heard over the thunder? How dare the weather inconvenience it!
A swift flash of lightning illuminates your path and for a moment you can see the bird dancing away from you. The ground is on a rapid transformation to muck, and your once-white boots squelch with every step. You try to keep up with the creature as it navigates the maze, but it’s a tall task. The mud suctions you in place, leaving you unsteady, and he isn’t even pausing to consider each choice at an intersection. It must be nice, to be such a silly thing, with a head full of nothing at all. If you had any food besides the candied apple, you would be sure to share it.
Left, left, right. In a bold move, the bird chooses a path that seems to double back, only to lead the two of you to a sign you’re unfamiliar with. You have to stand right next to it and read during cracks of lightning, nose centimeters away and wiping rain from your eyes. “Almost There! You’re Doing A-Maize-Ing!”
“Great job, fella,” you say out loud. Your voice is hoarse. How long have you been here? How far is “Almost There”? The rain isn’t letting up, and you find yourself hoping they don’t bring the patio furniture outside the main building in for the night.
Right, left, right. The path is total sludge, here, and your toes catch on multiple fallen stalks that cover the lane. Is that a good sign, one of more foot traffic? What if you turn the wrong way, just once, and find yourself back at that dumb sign from the beginning, more lost than ever? God, is there an exit? Have you been played? You trip over another cornstalk and shove your left hand into the wall next to you for balance, yanking it away when your arm starts to burn. You stagger to the center of the path, shifting your weight from one leg to the other to combat the sinking mud under your feet. You narrow your eyes and realize the wee fella is nowhere in sight.
Abandoned by an animal too.
Maybe it’s time to curl up in a ball, now.
“Hello?”
For one delusional second, you think it’s the bird.
You stand completely still, straining to listen for something other than the thunder. Then,
“Shit, are you out here?”
Another voice. “Hey! Hello?”
“I’m here!” You try to shout. Your voice cracks and dies, so you try again, a little louder. “I’m here!”
The two voices keep shouting and you try to trace your way to them. Left, right, left– a golden beam blinds you. A light at the end of the tunnel? Are you crying, or is that just the rain? Two figures rush to meet you.
“OhmyGod!” says Lynzie, as you fall into her outstretched arms. “OhmyGod! I am so. Sorry.”
The other figure extends an umbrella over your head. You’re definitely crying. Damn! Embarrassing.
“Are you ok?” the other voice, the first voice, asks. You squint up at him. University Baseball-Hat? Well, he is the one who drove you all here earlier. And Lynzie doesn’t have a car– a curse she laments often.
You say nothing. You wonder how you look to them, soaking wet and covered in muck. The Target flannel is nowhere near yellow, now, and you shudder at the load of laundry that awaits when you get back. University Baseball-Hat drapes a heavy hunting jacket over your shoulders and presses a water bottle into your hands, so cold you almost drop it.
“Let’s get you back,” Lynzie says and wraps an arm around you. Your eyes unfocus. Exhaustion? Blurry with tears or lack of sight? You allow them to lead you the rest of the way out, under the arch that reads “Thank you for visiting Happy Pumpkin Fall Fun Farm’s A-Maize-Ing Corn Maze!”
University Baseball-Hat pulled the car as close to the maze’s exit as he could. You picture the scene Lynzie emphatically tells as you drive back to campus– they went to a party and she had a few more drinks and she was about to head back to her room before heading to the bar when! OhmyGod. She’s the WORST friend. So she calls Jackson first, but he’s just as trashed. So she calls Dan, and he never drinks, so he’s totally down to be your knight in shining armor.
Dimly, you register how thick she lays on the praise, as if he rode in on a dragon instead of a Toyota Carolla. You’re just happy to have the whole backseat to yourself this time, burrowed under Dan’s emergency blanket and hunting jacket.
You consider telling them about the bird. Was it even a bird? You never saw it clearly. It was an exhaustion-, anxiety-, intoxication-induced hallucination. Still, as you drift off despite potholes and the hum of Dan’s static-ridden country music station, you imagine the wee creature hopping among the corn maze, picking at kernels and dancing in the thunderstorm. Grounded and alone, without a care in the world.  .