It started, as most bad decisions do, with confidence.
“It’s a corn maze,” I said. “How hard can it be?”
Those words should have immediately summoned a park employee to confiscate my admission bracelet and escort me back to the parking lot. Instead, I marched into the maze with three friends, absolutely convinced that generations of human navigation had prepared me for this moment. People crossed oceans using stars. Explorers navigated entire continents with hand-drawn maps. I had Google Maps, excellent instincts, and half a pumpkin spice latte. We were going to be fine.
Seven minutes later, we passed the same scarecrow for the third time.
Nobody said anything at first. We just looked at him. He looked at us. His stupid burlap face seemed smugger every time.
“Wasn’t he facing the other direction before?” Lisa asked.
“No,” I said.
He absolutely was.
We continued walking. The maze had little numbered checkpoints scattered throughout it, and apparently the goal was to find all of them before reaching the exit. We found checkpoint number six. Then number three. Then six again. Then somehow six a third time.
Checkpoint six had become our summer home.
At this point, Kevin decided he was our navigator because he had once gone hiking. “Everyone stop,” he announced. “I need to get my bearings.”
He stood silently between two identical walls of corn.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“The sun.”
“It’s cloudy.”
“I KNOW.”
Things deteriorated quickly. Twenty minutes in, we were still laughing. Thirty minutes in, the laughter had developed an edge. Forty-five minutes in, alliances were forming.
Lisa and I believed we should keep turning left. Kevin believed we should follow his “internal compass.” Amanda had abandoned navigation entirely and was eating the emergency granola bar she’d specifically told us we couldn’t touch unless things became serious.
Apparently things were serious.
Then we heard voices.
Children.
“PEOPLE!” I shouted.
We ran toward the sound like shipwreck survivors spotting land. Around the corner came a family with two children who couldn’t have been older than eight.
“Do you know where the exit is?” I asked.
The little girl pointed behind herself. “Yeah. It’s that way.”
“How do you know?”
She stared at me.
“Because there are signs.”
There were signs.
Tiny arrows were attached to wooden posts.
We had apparently been ignoring them for nearly an hour.
We thanked the children and followed their directions. Ten minutes later, we found checkpoint six.
Again.
At this point, I no longer believed checkpoint six was a physical location. It was a supernatural entity. We had offended it somehow.
“We’re going to die here,” Amanda announced.
“We are not going to die in a corn maze.”
“People die in stupid ways all the time.”
“Not four adults simultaneously defeated by corn.”
“Put that on my tombstone.”
Then my phone battery dropped to 9%.
This caused an immediate psychological shift. Suddenly, we weren’t participating in a cheerful autumn attraction. We were in The Blair Witch Project: Agricultural Edition.
Every rustle became suspicious. Every distant laugh sounded sinister. And the scarecrow?
That bastard was definitely moving.
Then Kevin disappeared.
One second he was behind us. The next, gone.
“KEVIN?”
Nothing.
“KEVIN!”
Silence.
Lisa looked horrified. “Oh my God.”
We stood frozen.
Then, from somewhere behind the corn, came a voice.
“I FOUND THE EXIT!”
We screamed.
“WHERE ARE YOU?”
“I DON’T KNOW!”
“HOW CAN YOU HAVE FOUND THE EXIT IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?”
“I CAN SEE THE PARKING LOT!”
“THROUGH THE CORN?”
“YES!”
“THAT DOESN’T COUNT!”
Apparently Kevin had discovered that if you shoved your face between the stalks, you could see civilization approximately thirty feet away. Unfortunately, there were several hundred feet of maze between us and those thirty feet.
Then came the darkest moment of the entire ordeal.
We smelled food.
French fries.
Somewhere beyond the corn, free people were eating french fries.
Lisa grabbed my arm. “I can smell them.”
“I know.”
“I want to go home.”
“I know.”
“I have a family.”
“Your family knows you’re here.”
“They probably think I’m dead.”
“You’ve been gone an hour.”
“AN HOUR IN CORN TIME IS DIFFERENT.”
She had a point.
Eventually, we encountered an employee. Not at the exit. Inside the maze. He was approximately seventeen and carrying a walkie-talkie. He looked at us. We looked at him.
“Everything okay?”
There are moments in life when dignity presents you with one final opportunity to save yourself.
This was one of them.
“Yes,” I said.
Behind me, Amanda shouted, “WE’RE LOST.”
The teenager smiled.
“How long have you guys been in here?”
Nobody answered.
“How long?”
“About an hour.”
His eyebrows went up.
That hurt.
“Oh.”
OH?!
He pulled out his radio. “I can walk you out.”
“No,” Kevin said immediately.
We all turned toward him.
“What?”
“We’ve come this far.”
I have never been closer to committing a felony in an agricultural setting.
“You want to KEEP GOING?”
“We can’t let the corn win.”
“The corn has already won, Kevin. The corn owns us. We’re tenants now.”
But somehow, against every instinct screaming inside me, we declined the rescue. The teenager shrugged and disappeared around a corner.
Approximately ninety seconds later, we regretted this.
We found checkpoint six.
Again.
Amanda sat down.
Right there in the dirt.
“No.”
“Amanda.”
“No. Tell my family I loved them.”
“Get up.”
“Leave me.”
“You’re sitting six feet from a scarecrow.”
She stood immediately.
Finally, after one hour and twenty-three minutes, we turned a corner and saw it.
The exit.
Beautiful. Glorious. Freedom.
We ran toward it. Actual running. Four grown adults burst from the corn like we’d escaped captivity. Families stared. A toddler dropped his apple. An employee clapped.
And there, beside the exit, was the seventeen-year-old who had offered to rescue us.
He checked his watch.
“Nice.”
I hated him.
We stumbled toward the food stand, emotionally changed people. I ordered french fries. Lisa ordered fries. Amanda ordered fries and something called a Harvest Poutine because apparently trauma requires gravy.
Kevin stood there smiling.
“That was fun.”
Three heads slowly turned toward him.
“No,” I said.
“It kind of was.”
“You nearly got us killed.”
“In a commercially operated corn maze?”
“Don’t minimize our experience.”
Then a woman walked past us with two little kids.
“Did you guys like the maze?”
One of them shrugged.
“Yeah. It took us like twenty minutes.”
We stared at the child.
The child stared back.
Somewhere in the distance, the wind rustled through the corn.
And I swear to God…
I could hear checkpoint six laughing.
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