Midwest

Having spent my life in a buzzing metropolis, driving through the Midwest states was a hypnotic and sobering experience. Anyone who hs seen the bread-basket of America will know what I'm talking about Fields. Billions of acres of crops covering the land in waves of undulating elaves; the tames wilderness organized into rows, blocks, and circles, continuing on for hours and hours and days and days.

That's one of the strangest things about driving through the Midwest. The endless ocean of cornfields, birthed by man's labors seem to go on without end, but with no signs of those who created it. A car here, a small house there, a windmill, a rotting barn; it's as if some great civilization built it eons ago and then died out, leaving the living remains of their creatios for you to drive past and wonder at.

That's how I found myself on the evening of the last day in July, driving my red sedan along a veritable tunnel of a road cut across the cornfields. No broad highway for me; rather, I had chosen a graveled detour which I had been promised led back to the interstate. The last few exhausting days had seen me driving non-stop across the country, but today, as the sun peaked in the sky and began its freefall back into the earth, the end of my trip drew near. Rest, relaxation, and (who the fuck knows) maybe even fun lay at my feet; the only thing separating me from my goal was a mile more of gravel road and a few insignificant minutes on the freeway.

Unfortunately, my car was having a little trouble navigating the tiny country road. The assholes at the gas station had promised a worn but perfectly passable route, but a few miles in it became increasingly evident that neither description fit this sorry excuse for a road. Still, the anxiety didn't really sink in until the gravel path degenerated into a dusty path and then into mere ruts on the ground. As the weeds growing between the tire tracks began to hit the underside of my car, I briefly grappled with the idea of turning around and taking the more traditional, albeit longer, paved route. But soon, that bitch, stubbornness, got her way and I plowed on forwards against the rising weeds and deepening dark.

As the sun kissed its lower lip to the crust of the earth I stopped the car. My journey had come to an abrupt halt. The road, barely discernable among the vegetation and barely wide enough for the car, had ended. Stopped . Right in the middle of a field of corn. Apparently, this was the literal road to nowhere.

I cursed the hicks back at the 'Pump and Save' who had given me these shit directions and considered my options. Option, actually. The only action now was to return down the path I had so painfully traveled and then take the long paved road all the way around. Holding my breath, I tried to stifle a headache and several curse words running through my brain. That's when I heard that sweet sound, "PRBPRBPRBPRBPRBPRUBBBBBB," the unmistakable mating cry of a Harley tearing down a highway at full speed. Evidently, the interstate was straight ahead and only a few hundred yards away. I felt some guilt for what I was planning, but stubbornness' sisters, adventure and lethargy, convinced me that mowing down several hundred feet of some farmer's corn harvest was worth  not spending more hours on the road.

I wasn't sure if a Sedan couldhold up to such punishment, but my car handled it like a pro, crushing and pulverizing the green stalks as they bent away and under the bumper. A couple of minutes and bam! I was through, back out into the dim evening light. I laughed and flipped the wipers to clean all the cream shrapnel covering my windshield. i stopped mid-laugh. This was a road, but definitely not the highway. A two land, paved, black road ran in a perfectly striaght line off into the darkness, disappearing into the evening light. I cursed the assholes at the gas station again and prepared to bash my way back to the dirt path. But, turning around, the beautiful hole I punched through the field was gone.

A wall of corn, not row to row, but stalk to stalk stodd in front of me, and I realized with a sinking heart that there was no way I could find the dirt path agin in that solid block of green. Once again I weighed my options. Just two now: left or right. I headed what I figured was due south and hoped this road linked up to the highway I so desperately strove.

Miles and miles I traveled. No change in scenery. Miles and miles of cornfields, pressing in on the car, enveloping me in the gloom of early night. No other cars. No other sounds. No radio reception. I stopped a few times at first listening for the signs of a busy highway, and later just listening for anything at all; anything beyond my own breathing. Nothing. Nothing but the crickets, gently chirping to each other across the ocean of waving stalks. More driving. The crickets faded away and only the occasional shrill whine of a cicada cried out into the night.

More driving. Low on gas. More driving. The moon peers over the tufts of corn and lifts itself into the sky, transforming the land into monochrome; draining away color. More driving. Very fucking low on gas. More driving. Nothing but corn, corn, corn fucking everywhere. More driving.

...a barn....?

A barn. Aglow from the light of the moon it appears like a ship in the sea, a dark but welcome shape rising above the monotonous and oppressive landscape. With a mixture of relief and apprehension I continue down the road. One turn, a short driveway, and I'm there; parking at the bottom of the sloping hill that leads up to its moonlit roof. It's built in an old wooden style, high gabled with heavy oak doors. It looks old. Like,  not just the normal, "Oh, look, it's an old barn, kids," old, but really old, like it hadn't been looked upon, much less opened, in hundreds of years. Still, its presence offers some hope and companionship, shelter and safety. 

Getting out of the car, I walk up the path to the front doors. Interestingly, the grass all around the barn - a meadow extending about fifty yards - is clearly meticulously cut and groomed. Also, the path up to the barn has been warn smooth, like some large machine has routinely pounded up and down, polishing and flattening the path. Striding up to the door, I knock. And knock again. I give it several minutes, but apparently no one is living inside. I open the doors and walk in. I was right...

The tench hit me first. I twas powerful, like a left hook right on the nose. Seedy and cloying and sour, it was like being dunked head-first into a porta-potty. I retch, struggling to force fresh air down into my lungs. But, as my eyes adjust and the stench escapes into the cool night breeze, the horror begins.

The barn is full of corpses. Dead bodies lie on tables, hang from the walls, and sit piled in great heaps into the corners. Green with rot, their open mouths are grinning; their decayed eyes staring emptily about the barn. The world starts to spin around - my knees buckle and my breath escapes once again. Hundreds of bodies. Some are still fresh; crumpled spread-eagle in the corners of the barn, huge red-ringed gashes covering their bodies, wounds that look like splashes of lipstick applied to their pale, naked forms. Older, rotten corpses, lain out flat onto slabs of stone and wooden tables and hung from the walls; cut open and divided in a grotesquely methodical pattern. Their heart was placed carefully near the head, tongue cut out, various organs lying discarded and piled onto the floor below, and their intestines bunched up and knotted like a nightmarish bouquet of flowers. Further into the barn lay the bits a pieces, brown dried hunks of what used to be heads, arms, and torsos. And crates. Giant wooden boxes piled neatly along the back wall of the barn, almost innocuous but horrible; dark stains seep from under the lid and run down.

But nothing compares to what hangs from the ceiling.

A fraying rope stretches down from the rafters. Hanging from the rope, gently swinging in the night are over the bloody tables is bound a horrible absurdity of something that was once alive. It resembles a victim of some terrible holocause, its skin shriveled tight against its chest and belly, the arms unnaturally long an thin, hog-tied behind its back. Its hands and feet are enormous, ending in gnarled fingers a foot long, a jagged, yellow nail at the tip of each one. Its head...a burlap sack has b een tied around its neck, completely covering the corpse's features. A gash runs the length of its neck, the dried remains of some purple ichor running down from the wound and staining the bag over its head.

Swinging there...

Dead in the moonlight.

I rise above the waves of fear and stumble out of the barn, slamming the door shut behind me. Outside, the moon still rises, the wind still blows, and the crickets chirp - the horrors inside the barn had no effect ont he simple sanctity of nature. Leave. Run. Drive. Those were the only thoughts that permeated my numbed mind. I turn away from the wooden monstrosity before me and run to my car, but...the car isn't there.

There is nothing around but cornfields. As I run around the bar, the rows of waving stalks dance before my eyes Trapped. Trapped in an ocean on a ship of the dead. No. I cannot stay here. I break for the fields of corn, the terrors behind chasing me heedlessly into the unknown ahead. As I hit the edge of the corn stalks, my courage fails me. I cannot go ahead and I cannot go back. I stand there, shrouded by the complete silence.

A light breeze tousles my hair as I stand motionless and frozen. Gently, the field of corn sways in place as the wind picks up. Then, the wind really begins to pick up. The corn stalks begin to march back and forth in what is quickly becoming a maelstrom. The wind whips my face and tears across my arms. It reaches down my thrat, pulling my scream out and mising it with the surrounding chaos. Rain! It's suddenly raining, a torrent, a solid sheet of water falling from the heavens, knocking me off my feat, churning the solid ground into liquid. Lightning! Thunder! Arcs of electricity fly before my face, striking and touching the ground at my feet. I run back to the only shelter there is, all my fear forgotten in the struggle to survive this onslaught from above.

I have barricaded myself in the barn. I'm shrouded in perfect darkness except for the pulses of lightning that glint off the outlines of the dead. This is past fear. I'm petrified, crouching against the bolted oak doors, the rain hammering a machine gun fire behind me, trying to bash its way in. Behind me lies certain death, in front of me lay the dead. The pulsing lightning seems to animate them. They dance and shiver and grin and laugh. They have nothing to fear. They laugh at me and my fear, they laugh at my blood, they laugh at my heartbeat. To this cacophony of laughter I sit frozen, watching over those that cannot move, move.

(I tried to grammar edit as good as I could, but right now my hands are cold, which makes me type like an idiot, so I'm going to leave it like this.)