The vampire in the cornfield

The night we lost Janey

“Are you done yet?”

“Mind you, red, We’ve waited ten minutes before you finally came out of the house!” Jane Laughed at Milo’s comment, pushing his head to the side when he teasingly blew a kiss her way. She placed herself on the backseat of Dave’s car. Beauas was in the car, too.

“Fuck off, Miles.”

“Ready?” David grunted from the driver’s seat, looking in his rearview mirror to catch Jane and Beauas nodding, packing up a bottle of vodka and some red-bull cans for tonight.

It was the first day of fall and that meant a game of drunk hide and go seek in the cornfield close to their homes. They’ve been doing it for five years now, ever since they’d stumbled upon the field on their way home from a party. A tradition was born, September twenty-first, five years ago.

“Are we not picking up Zo-ann and Euan?” Jane uttered as she watched the house rush by in a blur.

“No, they’re meeting us there.” It came as a surprise when Dave was the one who answered. Usually, when he drove, he was too occupied keeping his eyes on the road and singing along to whatever music he had playing. The band he’d chosen for this fifteen minute drive was the Arctic Monkeys. When the shuffle mode chose to play ‘One for the road’ All four of them quit the small talk and sang along as loud as they possibly could.

“Zo!” Jane Jumped out of the car and marched herself over to Zo-ann even before Dave had turned off the engine of his car. It’s been weeks since she last saw her best friend. Zo-ann stood tangled in the arms of her boyfriend Euan, but managed to escape just in time to get locked up in Jane’s arms instead. When Jane finally let go, she moved over to Euan to give him a proper embrace, too.

“back to red?” Euan stated when Jane let go of him. He only had eyes for her fire like hair. He always seemed extremely fascinated with it. probably because she changed the color of it so often.

“it was time for a change.”

“Again?” Milo called from a distance. Jane flipped him off without turning her head to look at him. Euan laughed, and nodded with approval.

“Suits you best, I think.” He said, after having gazed at her hair for quite a while. Jane’s face lid up when he said that and she thanked him. Red was her favorite hair color. It was good to hear it suited her.

“When you lot have finished complimenting each other, can we go?” Milo was impatient. He was probably the one who was most excited. He took it seriously, too. He won nearly every time. it’s not that the rules are hard… try and stay unseen by the others as long as you can. Those who’ve been spotted by others need to be tapped, and once they were out of the cornfield they had to let the rest know. This kept clear who was still in the game and who’d lost. Milo had been the last man standing for four years. Last year, though, Zo-ann won, so you could almost feel the determination that Milo felt. He just had to win.

They locked their cars and began making their way along a small path. It was still light. The game didn’t start until dusk, but they always arrived over an hour early so they could start then night with having a few drinks.

The cornfield was located somewhere in the forest. It’s a smart place to grow your corn. Not many young people know about the field, so there’s little change kids trash half of it. The only people passing it by are often on horseback or walking the dog. The field stood in a rectangle clearance somewhere in the middle of the small forest. Between where the trees ended  the cornfield started was about four meters of grass and pathway, so people could still take a shortcut. There was a small path that walked straight through the field, from before people started growing corn there. It used to be just grass, and it was a beautiful path to cross when it had snowed. To avoid people from using it now and destroying the corn, the farmer had placed large branches where the path entered the cornfield… but there wasn’t anything else surrounding the field, so there were still many ways to enter anyway.