1
She ran without thinking, without direction, desperation driving her deep into the fields. The endless rows of corn were an oppressive labyrinth, ripe heads bowing above her, snagging her hair. Blades whipped her palms as she thrashed through the towering stalks, not looking back.
She stumbled on rutted ground, dry soil crumbling beneath her feet. Her sneaker, shucked half off her heel, slipped from her foot. She let it go, the earth spiking through her sock. Blood thrummed in her ears. The night was clotted with clouds, the darkness pressing. She could feel the pollen erupting around her, gritting her eyes. Her mother’s voice singsonged in her mind. Don’t forget your meds, sweetheart! A sob burst between her breaths.
Her lungs were burning. The thrumming in her ears was louder. Something out there. Coming closer. She felt a fresh stab of terror as light smeared the shadows, the knotted canopy shimmering green above her. She threw herself down, curling around the brace roots, eyes squeezed shut. The drone circled overhead, whining like a dentist’s drill. Her eyelids were rinsed with a pallid glow.
Slowly it passed, strobing the fields. Was that a shout she heard beneath its fading hum? Low growl of an engine in the distance? She curled herself tighter into stillness, at one with the roots and the soil. A mouse hiding from a hawk.
As her breaths slowed, the pain—kept at bay by adrenaline—came on. There were points of it across her body: the back of her skull, struck so hard her vision had exploded with light, two fingers of her left hand where she’d fallen, bending back with a nauseating snap, her thigh where the flimsy cotton of her clothes had been ripped open. But worst of all was her neck, where the pain was concentrating in a burning pool.
She went to touch her throat, but flinched when her fingers slid into something slick and pulpy. Her T-shirt was soaked. She had thought it was sweat, the night air so close she could barely breathe. But she could smell the blood now. Warm metal. Iron and rust. Sparks of memory: a tumble from her bike, knees split open on blistering asphalt, her uncle’s slaughterhouse in Fayette, squeals of half-stunned hogs and arcing blades, red beads on her palm welling at the razor’s sting, hot press of another hand to hers.
Her whole body was shaking, teeth chattering. She knew she should get up, but her limbs were leaden. Her breath quickened. The darkness swayed in front of her, a murmur of wind to shiver the corn. There was laughter in her mind. The fields, waist-high with spring crops, rippled before her as she ran. He was behind her, coming up fast. The delicious shock of his arms catching around her waist, her laugh ending in a shriek as she was lifted into the air. His lips on hers; salt-sweat and corn dust. Desire striking a bell inside her.
James.
Her thoughts snagged on him. Shaking confetti from his hair on their wedding day. Straightening his tie in the mirror on his way to work, blowing her a kiss from the front door that she would catch in her hand and pitch back to him. Nights in the beautiful home they had made together, buzz of cicadas through the windows, his brow a knot of concentration, screen glare reflected in his glasses, equations gliding up the lenses. The creak of their bed as he crept in, murmuring an apology as she shifted awake.
“Where have you been?”
“Working.”
“What time is it?”
“Time for sleep.”
Her neck throbbed. The wetness was spreading. She felt a strange fluttering deep inside and realized it was her own heart, fast and faint like tiny wings, beating against her chest.
She saw herself in the kitchen mirror, hours earlier—eyes red, blond hair wayward—as she snatched up the keys and left the house. The drive: AC drying her eyes, the calm-voiced directions of the GPS. Out from manicured neighborhoods along the blaze of the strip mall, Wendy’s and a funeral parlor, Bob’s Lube and the dentist, a woman grinning on the billboard outside, bugs swarming her neon smile. Past the Kum & Go gas station, over the railroad tracks, skirting the oil-black slick of the river, streetlights fading behind. A water tower rising ahead, standing sentinel over the vast dark of the cornfields. She had driven this route before, her mind on him, but fear had always made her turn back before she reached that flag on the edge of the screen, not knowing what she might find. Moths tilting at the windshield. Distant taillights bleeding red streaks through the darkness.
The fluttering in her chest was fainter. Soil puffed up with each gasp of breath to speckle her dry lips. She had never felt so thirsty. James, leaning in close on their wedding day, champagne fizzing in his glass. Oh God. James? Her thoughts were ebbing, memories fading like a freight train rumbling across the prairie night, wind in its wake.
So thirsty. So tired.
Time for sleep.
Copyright © 2022 by Erin Young