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.
