ISSUE SEVEN: April, 2021

THIS OCEAN IS OF GRASS

by SAMIR SIRK MORATÓ

The edibles set in while you stand in line to order at Runza. They deal psychic sledgehammer blows to your skull. You rake your hands down your face.  The restaurant's yellow-painted guardrails are golden pipes. The lights gleam in grainy, bright orbs. Oily moonlight slicks the tile floor. All the tables reek of disinfectant. Grease vats bubble in the back. You drown under a pounding waterfall of stimuli. Oh God! you think. I’m going to die!

Behind you, your friend Jasper snickers. It’s a self-assured, mocking laugh for a trim, self-assured white body. That sound unleashes a scream inside you. Your skeleton tears free from its skin prison, hurls itself through the restaurant window in a spray of daydream glass, and lands in the parking lot. Even as you stand there, whole, your astral skeleton leaves town. Jasper keeps snickering.

This is a nice Runza. No mental meltdowns now. You inhale. It’s cool. You play it cool. The old man in front of you shuffles away. An acne-faced cashier—another classmate, Hayden Ashbury—looks at you in expectation. To shake off your unsteadiness, you stretch your back out with an outlaw swagger, slip one thumb into an overall pocket, saunter up to the counter, then plant a boot on the counter wall six inches above the floor. You lean in.

Jasper is in hysterics. He crams half a fist in his mouth. The middle-aged woman behind him recoils. Five billion items clatter together in her huge leopard print purse.

“How can I help you?” Hayden says.

For a second, the plastic panel menu behind him transforms into hieroglyphics. Hayden morphs into a blob of flesh stuffed into a green uniform. 

“You can’t,” you say.

Jasper cough-shrieks into his fist. You don’t look back at him. You freefall in an alphabet soup of words.

“Excuse me?” Hayden says.

The world, a stretched elastic, snaps back into shape.

“Just kidding.” You wink. “I’ll take a number two meal.”

Hayden snorts. Is someone pumping electricity across this Runza floor? Tingly waves ripple through your feet. As Hayden surrenders your receipt, he assesses you.

“I didn’t know that you liked farm overalls, Brandy,” Hayden says.

You force out a laugh. “I’m not Brandy.”

Hayden blinks. “Oh. Sorry, Addison.”

I look nothing like Brandy, you think. She’s got beaded braids, an underbite, and a flat ass and she always has her linebacker boyfriend chewing on her breast like he’s the Christ child and she’s long-suffering Mary.

“It’s alright, baby,” you say. “I get that a lot.”

Jasper sniggers. Hayden’s face reddens. He gives you a free strawberry shake.

“For style,” he says.

“Thanks,” you reply.

After receiving your food, you head outside. Crisp air bites your face. A harvest moon hangs above in the dark sky: a bloody, celestial yolk. Trees nearby glimmer with red and orange leaves. The Runza sign nearby imitates a second, less pretty moon.

Sixteen feet away, your friend Bell leans on her old Dodge Neon. A greasy paper bag sits on its hood. A crinkle fry hangs out of Bell's mouth. She’s husky, round-faced, and pale. A chunk of moon wrapped in flannel. Before Jasper emerges from the restaurant, you flee to Bell’s vehicle, sandwich clutched to your breast, milkshake searing your palm with cold. You scramble into the front seat.

“Alright, let’s go!” Bell says.

“Jasper is still inside,” you say, secretly grateful she has floated this idea.

“I’m sick of him mooching off my driver’s license," Bell says. “Stepbrothers suck. Let’s make him walk home.”

Before you can reply, Jasper bursts from the Runza doors in a tidal wave of laughter and napkins. He bolts across the asphalt abyss. Jasper piles into the car as Bell sucks down her french fry. Her frown morphs into a grin. She clambers into the driver’s seat. You cringe.

“The old grouch behind me wasn’t paying attention,” Jasper says, "so guess who got a free lipstick?” He waves the tube at us. “Also, Bell, you won’t believe what Addison just did.”

“Shut up!” you say.

“Tell me about it,” Bell says. She selects another fry as she shifts into reverse. Everything pulses. You grip the sides of your seat. The car spins out of the inky parking lot.

“Jasper, if you say a word,” you say, “I won’t help you with homework this week.”

“You can’t help me anyway,’” Jasper says.

You hurl a ketchup packet at him. Paper crinkles. Bell digs into her bag of food. Q Street twists around you in a black ribbon. Motels, churches, restaurants, and trucks line this road. It’s a blocky land of metal walls, cold shoulders, dry lawns, and beige buildings. A place for whiteness. Bell takes a left turn onto 14th Street. Houses decked in paper witches and autumn wreaths slide by. Their ubiquitous differences tie them together. Bundles of multicolored corn cobs hang from every other door.

As the houses grow further apart, fields overflowing with prairie grass and corn stalks fill the gaps. Bell looks away when you pass her mom's produce stand. Several pale families cluster around it. Shrieking children in sweaters scramble around the stand, manhandling the last pumpkins. Hand-painted signs reading “PUMPKINS & GOURDS! COME PICK EM! FALL FUN!” and “SMALL—$5, MEDIUM—$10, LARGE—$15” lean on the stand. Shame clutters your head.

You worked at the pumpkin stand until August, when Bell’s mom Kennedy miscounted the bills in the cash box. Kennedy is the bespectacled bitch who called Brandy Nelson ‘a teen mom waiting to happen’ last year, even though countless other girls in her abstinence class have reckless boyfriends, even though Brandy and her linebacker beau play a tighter defense in the back of his Chevy than he does on the field. They’re upfront about it too.

I want to dump five pounds of purity rings into Kennedy’s oversized Substitute of the Year crew socks, you think, and beat some love of thy neighbor into her. I’d whip abstinence from judgemental bullshit into her. You tear the lid off your milkshake and chug it, strawberry sludge dripping off your lips, shake pouring down your throat. An ice cream headache furrows into your brain. Ice picks pierce your eye sockets. All your thoughts shatter.

Bell revs the engine. In seconds, the familial laughter and the pumpkin stand wink out of your sight. Whatever. Your frozen brain pounds against your skull until it explodes. Its pink bubbly chunks spell out a sentence: you’ll get a job elsewhere. Like Dad always says, “Everything is in God's plan.”

“Hey. Addison.” Bell looks ashamed without knowing why. “My mom didn’t mean what she said.”

“Forget it,” you say.

“You mean our mom, Bell,” Jasper says.

“No, I mean my mom,” Bell says. “She’s just your stepmom.”

The car heater rattles louder than death. Jasper stomps a bag flat on the floor. Styrofoam crunches again and again. Bell shrinks. Mortified glee prevents you from sinking eyeball-deep into the car seat and cringing apart in a tomb of hard foam and dust. Thank God, this kerfuffle isn’t about you.

“Let’s have some music,” you say.

“What type of music?” Bell palms the steering wheel. She focuses on the road again.

Jasper, unbuckled, hauls himself into the gap between you and Bell. The belly button piercing he received at his cousin’s house, a pearl on his visible slab of stomach, shines. His pupils swim in a red sea.

“I dunno,” he says. “Something.”

Bell turns on the radio, then grimaces. “God, please, not the Monster Mash again.”

You turn the radio knob. “Okay. I want—”

“Hey, it's Fleetwood Mac!” Jasper slaps your hand off the radio. “Holy shit. This is, like, the only good music Kennedy and my dad listen to.”

Bell’s mouth pinches in disagreement.

“Just admit that you like Fleetweed Mac, loser,” you say, hand burning, pride seething.

Jasper explodes in a torrent of laughter. “Fleetweed Mac?”

“Shut up!” You lick your lips. Hunker down. “It was a mistake.”

“Jesus, maybe I should get Brandy to tutor me instead of you,” Jasper says. “I can’t trust you to speak English.”

“That’s unfair. Bell,” you croak. “Say something!”

Bell sits rigid with indecision. The last time you looked this stiff, you want to tell her, you and Jasper were crying into your sweater sleeves, passing a bong under the bleachers, and pretending your parents weren’t getting married. What gives? Bell cranks the volume down. 

“You’re both too loud,” she says.

“Jasper was the one yelling,” you say.

“Snitch.” Jasper sticks out his tongue. 

“That’s not how snitching works, Jasper!”

“Stuff it, Addison,” Bell says.

Jasper flops back. You grind your teeth. Bell turns the music volume up again. A warm patch of pressure settles behind your eyes. You melt into the Dodge Neon’s terrible upholstery. As ‘Go Your Own Way’ rolls through the car, it builds. Every note sounds grainy. Distorted. Your body runs to the floor in rivulets. Your body floats. 

Bell blows out of Aurora’s city limits. The world becomes a sea of shadowy corn. Watching stalk after stalk fly by dazes you, so you close your eyes. With the radio blasting and the car rumbling beneath you it’s easy to be alone. The Runza bag warms your lap. Breathing flows through your ears. You crush your sandwich between your hands. That heat resembles company. Acknowledgment.

“This reminds me of when I was high at McDonald’s and rang a man up for two hundred nugget boxes instead of two,” Bell says.

Her voice jabs into your stomach. Your laugh emerges a startled cry. Jasper laughs, too, blunting the edge of your outburst. Now that your eyes are open, you keep them open. You don’t want another surprise. The harvest moon pours its shine onto the corn fields. A breeze turns them into a rustling ocean of white: seafoam that goes on forever. 

I could wade knee-deep in that. I could float away and drown, you think.

That thought rejuvenates you. You sit up. You’re fifteen years old. You have $5.25 in your pocket, spit on your soul, and a bag of food in your lap. What more can you ask for? Mama is visiting friends; Dad is on a business trip. This weekend is free. Jasper and Bell are trapped with you. You can force adventures to happen.

The high scorches your throat with an idea.

“Let’s go to a haunted corn maze,” you say.

“Oh my god,” Jasper says. “I don’t have the money for that. Good idea, though.”

“Let’s go in the corn,” Bell suggests. Like it’s that easy. Like it’s all you three have to do. Go into the corn. No one out here can stop you.

“Hell yeah,” Jasper says. “Let’s go.”

“Are we really going to do this?” Discomfort creeps over you, fast and heavy. You imagine being lost in a Sisyphean plane of corn.

“Why not?” Bell says.

“I know this field.” Jasper points. “Pull over! My cousin works here. There’s a big open spot in the middle that’s really cool. No one is ever out here past nine. We won’t get caught.”

“We better not,” you say. “Guys, I don’t like this.”

Jasper bears his teeth. “Come on, Addison! Live a little!”

Bell parks the car. She fumbles with her keys. An irrigator’s silver ribs shimmer in the distance. It’s a giant comb, you think. A corn comb! Ha! You hop out of the vehicle. Bell and Jasper struggle out of their seats. As you walk on the roadside, autumn chills the little rectangles of exposed skin above your boots. Bell twirls beneath the moonlight.

“You look ready to barf,” Jasper says.

You tug on your overall straps. Everything becomes unreal. The corn, all silver and silk, sees everything. Internally, you drop to your knees, beat the floor, and scream I want to go home! until your larynx becomes pulp. Your meat flies off your bones; your tendons slap the grass; your guts splatter the road like acidic water balloons. You disintegrate. 

Externally, you shake your head. “I’m fine,” you say. “Just super baked.”

“You’re a scaredy-cat.” Jasper grins.

“I am not!”

“Then prove it.” Jasper throws his hands heavenwards. His belly button piercing glitters. “Come on, Bell!” He grabs her hand. “Let’s show Addison how to deal with a cornfield. Siblings go first.”

“Hey!” Bell shouts, incredulous, as Jasper tugs on her. A smile twists her mouth. The surprise in her expression turns to sympathy. She takes off with Jasper on his second stride. The two slide between rows of corn. A threadbare apology melts out of Bell’s vanishing face.

"Wait," you cry. "Wait!"

They disappear. Jasper's shout echoes from the shallow depths of the cornfield: "See ya later, Addison!"

Bell's giggle follows it.

At once, your skin boils. Nausea churns your innards. If you don’t run you will die. A set of ATV tire tracks creeps between corn nearby. You start running down them. Long grass whips your legs with dew. The plane of corn tilts at you. Wind rushes into your face. Movement strips all sick doubts away. You don’t think of directions. You just go. Cold tears sting your cheek. It's all okay, you think. It's all okay. It's just the weed. Infinite rows of towering corn entangle you. Their stalks loom above your head. Tilled dirt squishes under your boots. 

Fuzziness edges all these endless rows of corn. If you squint, everything blends together into massive, swaying blocks. Leaves rustle, brushing your legs. Moonlight paints bright brushstrokes onto the stalks. The back of your neck prickles as you limp deeper into the field. You hum ‘Landslide’ to yourself, but the sound of thousands of corn stalks swaying together, whispering, speaking, cannot be muffled. You stuff your hands into your overall pockets. 

I bet Jasper and Bell are whispering right now too, you think. What if it’s about you? 

Rage coerces your hands into fists. Your rendition of ‘Landslide’ derails. You struggle to salvage it. A loose cornstalk snags your overalls; you hunch your shoulders and slap it away. A huff slips out of your mouth. Stupidity shucks. Your rubbery, naked body quivers in front of the universe. 

Stop it, Addison, you tell yourself. What would your friends even say about you? Jasper and Bell don’t hate you. Your family knows their families. Still, vicious fear of 'what if?' drives you further into the field. That question grasps your mind again and again, a persistent fly seeking a corpse. You feebly flick it away each time. Hot anger flows through you. You smack aside another corn stalk. Why does that question keep returning?

Leaves rustle. You jump. When you look back, you cannot see the road anymore. You cannot see the ATV tracks. Corn surrounds you. Panic clogs your lungs. You exhale it slowly. 

Jasper said this wasn’t a big field, you think. If I keep going, I’ll find the clearing. 

Stalk shadows plaster themselves over you in leafy curls. The moonlight that leaks through makes the corn white, but it makes you blue. It dyes your knuckles whenever you push a cornstalk aside. You’re tense as you listen for the dimmest of noises—the foot of a mouse on grain, the snoring of weevils—yet you hear nothing except yourself. Like always. You miss your parents so much you feel ill.

Left foot forward. Right foot forward. Left foot forward. Right foot forward. Bell’s happy shout echoes from somewhere. You flinch. For a split second, the corn rejoices. Ears are everywhere yet you feel watched. Rich darkness revels in its potential. It reminds you of the deep August night after work when you and hungry-handed Jasper loitered by the cash box.

Abruptly, you realize that something walks alongside you.

Whatever it is walks slowly. It takes measured strides. Tilled soil soaks up its footsteps. It does not threaten you. Not yet. It is too small to be threatening. It walks four rows away. You hesitate, unable to stop but slowing, peering into the dark. The thing and the corn stalks around it are abstract splotches of color. They sway together in the breeze. Shifting flora cloaks fauna. You strain to perceive the thing, to attach meaning to it. 

Pebbles clunk against your shoes. Your eyes water with focus. Pain pinches your temple. For a heartbeat, in the moonlight’s negative space, you see a person-shaped void. The thing looks like a third-grader. Revelations cascade out of your mind. They patter onto the loam in a shower of mental baby teeth: young concepts making way for something maturer. Sharper.

Maybe it’s a farmer’s child, you think.

Sweat drips down your face. Pins and needles prick your hands. Goosebumps speckle your skin. You cannot stop walking. You don’t push aside cornstalks anymore. You slip between them, breathless, praying that you move in silence. Your company four rows over keeps pace with you.

No chill bothers the corn walker. Its stride is humble. You fumble past a pothole. Slates of moonlight illuminate your clothes and face. Your companion is obsidian under the moon’s blue gaze. Is it using walking sticks? Dark and thin branches swing by its sides.

It is three rows over.

You can’t swear. Swearing is too loud. Your clenched jaws ache. A gasp dies inside you when you glimpse your companion’s upper body. Its spine fails it. Your companion’s bowling ball of a head lolls on a gaunt, delicate neck. The head rolls against your companion’s breast whenever the poor not-baby steps.

It is two rows over.

Your companion never breaks a corn leaf. It never manhandles stalks. It ambles forward, its head nudging the corn aside. Mathew 5:5 flashes through your mind. Unwilling sympathy floods you. Who made this poor baby-child walk the fields alone? you think. Who put it here like this? We all deserve to be seen by someone.

Jasper and Bell’s voices sing far ahead.

A broken stalk of corn brushes your head. You tremble on the cusp of comprehension. Corn silk tangles with your straightened hair. The long, thin sticks swinging at your companion’s sides are not sticks. They are arms. Its hands drag behind it, gently knuckling the ground. Your teeth scrape skin from the back of your lip. Your companion angles towards you.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, “for bothering your corn.”

Your companion looks at you with scarlet coals for eyes.

It is a row away.

For a handful of seconds, you and your companion walk together: two strangers traveling the cornfield. Today, you are sought out. That knowledge overwhelms you. Your unblinking eyes burn. Unlike Brandy Nelson, this fellow shadow desires you. Your companion’s spindly arm raises. It is careful. Deliberate. Bell’s voice floats in the wind. The clearing lays nearby. They beat me there, you think, pulse accelerating. Your companion reaches through the row. It slips its hand into yours. Its small fingers are all cornsilk and childbone. In an instant, you know it walks alone too.

Then you run, red saucer eyes watching as you go, your limbs outstretched. Your breathing seesaws. Your hand burns. Corn row after corn row flies by. The thing does not follow. You leave the sole company that ever came for you.

You burst into the clearing. Moonbeams drown your face. Jasper shouts in recognition. Your friends claim the middle of the clearing. They smile. The two of them, far-off dolls, cavort on a slope. Bell waves. Nothing new shows in their faces. They know you through fistfuls of school notes and shallow lies by omission. They are not enough.

I have to get the hell out of here, you think.

You sprint towards your classmates over the silver grass. They greet you with open arms, laughing. Twenty feet separates you from them. It seems like miles. They look far away and impersonal, even while they call your name.

SAMIR SIRK MORATÓ is a scientist and an artist. Some of Samir’s work can be found in The Hellebore Issue #5, Vox et Liber's Graveyard Visits Anthology, and The Sandy River Review 2020 Annual. They are on Twitter @bolivibird and on Instagram @spicycloaca.