Friday, November 15, 2013

Halloween: The Haunted Cornfield

It's time for the 26th Secret Subject Swap.  Karen from BakingInATornado brings together a group of bloggers who submit a prompt.  From there each of us is randomly assigned one of these prompts to complete.  Nobody knows who was assigned what and that's half the fun.

My Secret Subject was submitted by 'Confessions of a Part-Time Working Mom.'  

My prompt was 'Invent a story using the following 10 words in whatever order you chose:
Cornfield, audience, representative, temperature, carrier, ocean, guilt, picture, confidence, partner.'

So, without further delay, here is my story:

It was a cool November evening, the temperature outside was perfect for a walk.  My partner-in-crime, Sleepy Bard, and I decided to head out for some fresh air and exercise.  We decided to walk to the local gas station as we did on so many occasions.  As we walked, we laughed and talked about our future.  We would often fantasize about where our freelancing could take us.  A young couple on their nightly stroll, to any passerby it was a picture-perfect scene.

When we arrived at the gas station we were greeted by the cashier, who we had come to know very well.  Without feeling any guilt, we walked to the soda fountain, they offered ginormous drinks for under a dollar.  Sleepy Bard loved the crushed ice they offered and so we loaded up on the stuff.  As we were paying for our soda and chatting to the cashier, he told us about an event we just had to see.  It turned out that a local cornfield was being used as a haunted attraction.  Something haunted?  After Halloween?  We had to check it out.

Of course, I was designated the soda carrier for our journey.  We walked for several blocks before Sleepy Bard started complaining about foot pain.  I silently questioned how she planned to 'survive' a haunted attraction.  I spurred her on by enticing her with the fun we would have once we arrived.  Several cusses and a spilled soda later, we continued on.

When we arrived a large audience had already gathered around.  A short man, acting as a representative for the event, was explaining what was to happen.  He explained that several actors were in place within the cornfield, their job was to 'kill' each of us.  If an actor managed to touch us we would be considered dead and would fail our mission, which was to survive for the next hour.

It sounded like fun and we had come all this way.  So, with confidence, we entered the cornfield with several dozen other participants.  After several minutes had passed screams could be heard echoing through the air.  Not far from where we stood we could hear a man swearing about how he had been killed off so quickly.  We gave each other a smile, checked our corners and continued.

Eventually, we entered a clearing.  What we saw startled us and when Sleepy Bard let out a squeal I thought for sure we would be seen.  One of the other participants was being grabbed by a man in a Michael Myers mask.  Sleepy Bard is terrified of Michael Myers and this is why she had squeaked in terror.  I was ready to laugh at the participant's misfortune at losing the competition, but then the man in the mask plunged his knife into the man's chest and I went white.  An ocean of blood sprayed from the man's wound, Sleepy Bard let out another whimper.  Thankfully, the man in the mask did not notice.

I made a motion to Sleepy Bard to indicate that we had to go.  We had to get out and find some help.  We managed to get out of the cornfield without anyone taking notice.  We ran a couple blocks to the police station.  We quickly told our story to an on-duty officer who gave us a blank stare.  He insisted that there was no such event in town and certainly no cornfield.  After pleading with him, the officer agreed to come with us to see what was going on.  When we arrived both Sleepy Bard and I had gaping mouths.  The cornfield was gone.  We continued trying to convince the cop what we had seen.  All he did was threaten to throw us in jail for being drunk in public.  Neither of us had been drinking and we didn't try to argue our point any further.  We knew the cornfield had been there and we know we witnessed a murder, but what proof did we have?

As we trudged back home we both realized, the cashier at the gas station knew about the cornfield.  We could go to him and surely that would prove our story.  When we got back a different cashier, one we did not recognize, was on duty.  We asked her when the previous cashier would be back on-duty.  We were told that he had been murdered the previous night and we couldn't have possibly seen him.

We couldn't believe it.  Could we both be going crazy?  We went home and made a pact to never speak of what had happened again.  One thing was for certain, we would never visit a cornfield again. 



Secret Subject Swap