This Man, His Corn

God damn it.

He muttered to himself defiantly, eyes fixed squarely on the horror before him. It was a vast field of dull green that went on for miles and miles, growing like hair from the flesh of the earth. He had seen it a hundred times before, but the sight was never any less shocking or painful to witness.

He recalled fuzzy images of a time when the green was not so abundant. The images were cut up and mangled, devoid of order and assembled in such a way that he could not construct a meaningful narrative. He remembered once the sky was on fire? Was it fantasy or reality? It was his mind trying to make order out of something that had no order, he reasoned. There was no order left for him. Whatever the nature of this event, so profound was it that it pushed all order out. It changed everything so drastically that he could not even remember what things were like before it.

The world was wearing a grotesque mask now, and he could not remember what was beneath it. He tried to remember its face, but it didn't have a shape or structure that made any sense to him. The details were too blurry. They had been driven out by the all-consuming green that surrounded his small little dwelling and isolated it from the world.

The green danced in the night. As the calm winds carried over the lost and distant hills, they brushed the landscape and sent the green swaying in cascading waves. He could see this happening by the light of the second sun. The gentle whispers this horrid dance made disturbed him, and he hated the sound so very much. He could hardly sleep and it made him tired and angry in the day.

He could swear it was talking about him. He wanted so badly to know what it was saying about him, but at the same time, he feared the prospect of knowing. In ignorance he had some comfort, some cause to construct a lie that did not wish him harm. The truth might, and that he could not take. The green was an object of torture. What harm it did not do to him his own mind would do in its place.

God damn you, what are you?

The green had a million arms all sticking up like claws from the ground. He felt at any moment the arms might grab hold and pull him beneath the surface or that they would do something to him that he could not explain or defend against. What if they could do something mystical and terrible, like turn him into one of them?

Occasionally, he would tempt fate and walk between the rows. In these moments the green was a mirror, and he stared at it intently. It had so many of his properties, yet was so alien and strange. When he wandered in-between its rows he sometimes caught glimpses of himself in the husky stalks and leaves and wondered if he was home, or if it was just trying to confuse him.

A strange man once emerged from the green and talked to him, a man unlike any he had ever encountered. There was something foreign about this stranger, his face was hard to describe or make sense of and his clothes were simple and practical in a way that he had never seen before. His voice, too, had a perplexing quality to it.

Mighty fine corn ya got here, the stranger said.

Some mighty fine corn indeed. The stranger tipped his hat and everything ceased to be for a moment.

That was all he remembered of the visit. He woke up in the field, staring straight into the star bright sky, with giant stalks reaching upward like hands trying to grab hold of the vast void above, or push it away.

So it had a name. It had a name and others knew it. Others even liked it?

God damn it he muttered, rising to his feet and rushing to escape the giant green nightmare that was everywhere he wished it not to be.

It was trying to communicate, he reasoned. It took a form it thought he would understand. It was in his dreams now, it was inside him. He did not trust the world, now he could not trust himself.

He remembered sometimes that there was once a world around him. Now all he could see was the great green blanket of corn. What had happened to all the people he once knew? Where had they gone? Were they out there, lost and wandering amongst the corn looking for him? He never ventured too far from his simple dwelling, preferring to stay close, lest he himself get lost in the maze.