No Way Out ... (Halloween Contest) - - KRISTA - -

I had been to a lot of corn mazes in my day, but none as lengthy and fearsome as this one. All of the advertisements for Rusty’s Corn Maze boasted being the toughest in the world and the most frightening of all of them. The maze was free to enter. On the advertisement, the opening time was stated to be at six o’clock sharp. I couldn’t help but notice that the closing time was midnight as I looked over the slick sheet of glossy paper that the advertisement was written on.

Of course, it was the Halloween season and most places that bragged supernatural phenomena didn’t close until late. I figured it was either a misprint or it didn’t close until the very last person left. I didn’t think much of it until I was driving down the desolate country road, wondering exactly how long the maze was. I usually spent only an hour at most before I decided to cheat and cut through the barriers.

I pulled into the modest parking lot, barely noticing that the only other car in the lot was a rusty old amaranth pickup. I parked closely and tightened my shoes, picking up the messenger bag with my cell phone and a bottle of water in it just in case there was an emergency. I wasn’t particularly clumsy, but I was often very cautious.

The only person standing out there was a man who, judging by his appearance, was born and raised in rural Kansas where I was living at the time. His face was wrinkled and lean, like the fat had been sucked from his face with a vacuum. I approached him, wondering if he was the “Rusty” of corn maze advertisement fame.

“Hi,” I greeted with a friendly but nondescript wave. “Are you Rusty?”

The man gave a short nod, looking off into the empty space behind my shoulder. “That’s me,” he grumbled. He pulled back some of the corn stalks behind him. “You can go right on in through here if you like. You can’t take that bag in the maze, though.” I gave him a curious look. “It could be a hazard if something falls out of it.”

Not quite understanding but still unwilling to question the man’s authority, I took it off and placed it in the bin he was pointing to. I didn’t think I would be needing any of its contents.

I thanked Rusty quietly and wandered into the maze through the unorthodox entrance. It was quiet except for a few distant footsteps. I wrung my hands and walked on through the maze, nervousness gnawing at my insides mercilessly.

Immediately I noticed something odd about the maze. There weren’t any twists or unexpected turns in the middle of the corn stalks. All I could see was a long dirt path surrounded by stalks of corn and a sudden left turn at the end of the path. I hurried down to it and turned. I was disappointed by seeing the same thing: a long path finished by a left turn.

I sighed and wondered what the point of the maze was if it was just going to be a huge square. I considered cutting through and leaving, but as I turned to do so, I realized that behind the stalks of corn I was next to, there was only more. The field seemed to stretch on forever.

So I continued on, blindly walking forward and turning left repeatedly. Finally I saw another figure slowly walking through the “maze.” I jogged to catch up with her. She was in her mid-forties and she looked starved and worn out.

“Ma’am?” I called. “Ma’am, are you alright?”

When I finally caught up with her slow amble, I began to reach out to grab her shoulder but my hand literally froze when I heard her mumbling something under her breath. She was being so quiet that I had to lean forward slightly to hear what she was saying. “No way out, no way out, no way out…”

My hand dropped back down to my side and I listened to what she was saying. There was a pattern to her slurred chant, an unnatural rhythm to the way she was chanting the same three words over and over again.

“No way out, no way out, no way out, no way out, no way out.”

The way she spoke both worried and intrigued me. Perhaps she was just some asylum escapee who had wandered into the corn maze. Perhaps she was one of the actors that were not uncommon in mazes like these. Or perhaps she really was trapped.

Slowly it began to dawn on me that perhaps I was trapped and I had made a terrible mistake in coming to the corn maze. Panic surging through me and the adrenaline of fear coursing through my veins, I broke into a mad run, looking for any place that the corn wasn’t so thick.

“I don’t want to be trapped in here!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, my voice piercing my throat and causing soreness. “This isn’t even a maze! You lied to me, Rusty! You lied!” The screeching tone of my voice and the distraction of anger over me, my toe bumped into a mound of dirt and I was sent face-first into the ground, my ankle twisting painfully. A sticky substance touched my upper lip and I brought my fingertips to it, pulling them back and finding red on them. I had busted my nose after tripping.

The woman from before caught up with me and walked right over me, still mumbling beneath her breath.

Feeling panic and terror coursing through me, I attempted to run into the corn. I made it only two feet in—if that—and felt my injured ankle give out once more, causing me to crumple to the ground like a Cirque du Soleil actor.

A sudden calmness came over me as I lie there, in pain and feeling scared. My nose and my ankle both went numb like someone had injected Novocain into them. A feeling of total serenity came over me and conscious thought strayed from me. I stood up, heavily injured ankle and all, and began limping along the dirt path. I was unable to control my body. I didn’t have the power or the drive to resist whatever was happening to me, so I stopped resisting and just let my body do the work.

I ambled along behind the woman, slowly losing control of my sense of self. I was becoming a puppet, a zombie controlled by the so-called maze. I wouldn’t be there long, though... No one ever stayed past midnight.

“No way out, no way out, no way out…”

((This is my first Halloween contest submission... I wrote it on a whim. Enjoy, my favorite people.>

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