by Jersee Hogue
I knew something was wrong when the corn was in my house.
It was sprouting from the floorboards, from the living room to the kitchen, into the bathroom and the bedrooms. Tall brown stalks crinkled and scratchy as I pushed myself through my house. The furniture sat between the stalks like quiet sentinels watching me pass through the field. I tried to get to the kitchen. In there would be my scissors and my knives. I’d grab my lighter if I could not cut the corn down. I kept pushing and pushing. Where was the kitchen door?
There, beneath the old maple tree in the field. The farmers always said the tree was too old and too strong to ever remove. For years they planted and harvested around that tree, making it a lone god in a circle shrine, privy to the changing of the soil and the crops. The inside was practically as hollow as a god, and bees often made nests in the tree.
An empty circle of ground surrounded the maple. Little helicopter seeds, blood red in the twilight, surrounded my door. The frame almost matched the bark. Both were still under the darkening sky. There was nothing left in the circle, no walls, no rooms, but through that door was my kitchen, my knives.
The handle was warm to the touch. Someone used it recently.
I passed through the frame. The corn seemed taller here, but I pushed through until I got to the woods by the blackberry bushes. The brambles that blocked our path and cut my sister and I’s legs were gone. Nature wanted me to go home and the path led home.
I went through to the front door and entered my house, furniture between corn stalks, walls gone. I navigated by muscle memory to my kitchen door.
The circle opened before me. The bark of the maple looked plumped, as though it has been feeding. Something pulsed inside it. A bee-stung hand hung limp from the knoll. The skin was swollen, red, bumpy. It was the hand that once threw helicopter seeds into the air.
I walked to the hand. The skin spread its cold to my fingertips. Her skin had burned when the bees got her. The helicopter seeds turned red when her head smacked the old maple.
My hand wanted to linger there. My will drew it away.
When I turned back, corn greeted me. The leaves brushed against me, seemed to try and grab me. The corn had swallowed my escape and would now swallow me.
Scraping filled the air. Over my shoulder, I could see the hand clawing at the tree, trying to pull the body out from the hole. The nails shredded to pieces trying to grasp to the brittle bark. It brought the stench of rotting that had settled deep within the corpse of the tree.
I looked back to the corn. The ears were open, layers of husk peeled back like flaking skin. Each kernel glared at me; each one was a single brown eye. They loomed over me, accusing.
You know what you did here.
You know what you did here.
Jersee Hogue is an Ohio-grown optimist that believes the creative arts can hold the secrets to life (or at least make pretty good guesses about it). Currently studying Art Education at Youngstown State University, Jersee hopes to inspire students in her classroom and those who read her written work. When not studying, Jersee can be found gardening, knitting, reading, writing, or practicing art.