This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BlairDaniels on 2024-10-31 17:03:17+00:00.
It was the first Saturday of October, and my boyfriend and I found ourselves at the entrance to Twilight Creek Farm’s A-MAZE-ING CORN MAZE!
It was around 4 pm, and the sun had begun to dip towards the horizon. The air had that crisp autumn chill, hinting at a cold night. A cardboard cut-out stood at the entrance of a cartoony ear of corn, grinning widely.
Yes, it was clear that the intended demographic for this maze was about two decades younger than us.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Tyler asked.
“Come on, it’ll be fun!” I replied, grabbing a map from the anthropomorphized corn. Then I linked my arm with his, and the two of us walked into the maze.
The corn rose up all around us, about seven feet tall—maybe taller. Our feet sunk slightly into the muddy ground. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a great idea to go corn maze-ing after such a heavy rain. But whatever. We were here now.
The corn quickly swallowed us up. Within a minute, I could no longer see the entrance. Just corn stretching in every direction, a dense forest, choking out all else.
As we rounded the bend, the path ended in a T. There was a metal sign, eroded at the edges, planted firmly in the muddy soil, featuring the cartoon corn again:
Remember these tips to ensure a fun time at our A-MAZE-ING CORN MAZE!
First—Ssshhh, don’t tell secrets in the maze! The corn has ears! ;)
Second—Don’t stay in the maze after dark!
Third—If you’re under 13 years old, stay with your parent or caregiver at all times, please.
And finally: remember, there are no mirrors in the corn maze!
At the bottom of the sign, there were two arrows, and it read:
<-- EASY KIDS’ MAZE (EST. 20 MINS) … CHALLENGING MAZE (EST. 1 HOUR) -->
“Can we just do the kids’ maze?” Tyler asked. “It’s kind of cold.”
“Yeah, but it’s so lame,” I replied, looking over the map. “It’s like, literally a straight line.”
He sighed. “Fine.”
So we turned right, following the path into the corn. Our footsteps squelched softly in the mud. “So no mirrors in the corn maze?” I asked, trying to start conversation. “What do you think that’s supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “Maybe they want to make it clear it’s not like, one of those haunted funhouse things? Like if you see a path, it’s real, and not a reflection?”
“I guess.”
As we walked down the path, an awkward silence fell over us.
Okay—I’ll admit it. I had an ulterior motive for this trip.
Tyler and I had been fighting on and off all week. Just little things, here and there, sniping at each other. It was like something in the air had changed between us. Little things were annoying him, and me, constantly. Maybe it was the shorter days, the lack of sunlight getting to us. Maybe, at almost a year of dating, we were finally coming out of the honeymoon phase. Whatever it was, I felt like a change of scenery would do us some good.
Of course, I was starting to regret that now, with the chill creeping into the air, and the mud sticking to my sneakers. We probably should’ve just postponed to next weekend, when it wasn’t after a heavy rain.
But I felt like I couldn’t take one more minute in that apartment.
“Which way now?”
Tyler’s voice jerked me out of my thoughts.
I looked up.
Ahead of us, the path split into three—each path considerably narrower than the one we were on.
I looked down at the map.
But I didn’t see any places where the path split in three.
“Uh… I don’t know.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “We’re lost already?”
“Uh…” I looked down at the map again, scanning the schematic. The cartoony ear of corn smiled up at me from the paper, and I wanted to punch it in the face. “I don’t see any places where it splits in three,” I said, handing him the map.
“Huh,” he said, looking over it. “Maybe that’s part of the challenge. The map is wrong.”
“That’d be kind of interesting.”
“Don’t they say, if you want to get out of a maze, stick to one side? Like keep your hand touching one wall?” He stretched his arm out and touched the corn on the right.
“Yeah.”
I followed him down the rightmost path. It suddenly seemed darker—probably because the path was only about half the width of the previous one, and we were deep in the shadows of the corn. Dry leaves brushed against my arms, feeling more like rough claws, raking against my skin. I felt the cold of the mud permeating through my shoes with each step.
We passed an intersection, and for a split second—out of the corner of my eye—I thought I saw someone walking in the other direction. But when I turned my head, nothing was there.
“I thought I…” I started to Tyler. Then I shook my head. “Nevermind.”
Probably just my hair, falling into my line of vision.
Still—I was starting to really not like this.
We made another right, and another, following the wall. But we didn’t find an exit. More layers of mud caked onto my shoes. I was so tired.
“Maybe we should just turn around and go home,” I called out behind him.
He turned around, his eyes lighting up. “Really?”
“Yeah. Should be easy enough to backtrack. We can follow our footprints.”
“Sounds good to me,” he replied.
We turned around and began to follow our footprints back.
But fifteen or twenty minutes later, we still hadn’t found the entrance. We haven’t been here that long. We should be out by now. “Are you sure we came this way?” I called out, as I followed Tyler down a sharp right turn I didn’t remember taking.
“Has to be,” he replied, gesturing to our footprints.
But when we turned the corner, we found not one set of our prints, but two.
We were going in circles.
“This is ridiculous,” Tyler huffed.
“Maybe we should call someone.” I pulled out my phone—and my heart dropped. It was 5:23 PM. Over an hour since we’d entered the maze.
“What?” Tyler asked, seeing my face drop.
I held up my phone. “We haven’t been here this long… have we?”
He paused for a second, then shook his head. “We have to follow our footprints out. We’ll get out eventually. And if we’re really lost, we can call 911, or something.”
“Okay, so which way?” I asked.
One set of footprints went down each path.
“Left. We were making all rights before, so it should be lefts to get out.”
We veered left. The corn seemed to squeeze in on us, the path growing narrower with each step. Like the field of corn was some kind of monster, ready to engulf us at any second. I shook my head and continued forward. There’s nothing wrong here. We’re just lost in a challenging maze—that’s all.
But when the path widened, I realized how wrong I was.
We were standing in a clearing, about the size of my kitchen. There was a sign, the same battered thin metal as before, in the middle. I froze as I began to read:
There are two ways out of this maze!
You can either find the way out on your own,
Or you can choose to leave behind one person in your party, and the exit will make itself known to you.
Either way… make sure you’re out of the maze by nightfall! Because then, nobody makes it out. :)
The cartoon corn-man was painted on the bottom of the sign, grinning up at us. This time, there was a bit of… rust or red paint… around his mouth. I couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not. My heart began to pound, I felt like I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs, like a panic attack was about to start—
Tyler burst into laughter behind me.
“What?”
“They’re trying so hard to make this, like, a scary ARG or something,” he said, laughing. “So lame.”
I whipped around, arms crossed.
“… You don’t actually believe it, do you?”
“All I know is we’ve been walking around this maze for an hour, but it’s only felt like twenty minutes, and the map doesn’t match the maze, and I don’t remember parts of the maze that we’ve clearly been to because our footprints are there!” I said, all in one breath. I stared at him, panting, my heart pounding in my chest.
“Kate… I’m sorry… you’re really scared, huh?”
“And so are you! I saw how scared you looked when you realized we were going in circles. But now you’re just going to pass it off and pretend it’s all a game?!”
“Kate…”
“I want to get out of here!” I shouted. “Whatever this is, game or not, I hate it and I want to go home!”
Tyler put up his hands defensively. “Woah, okay, I’m sorry. Let’s just keep going left. We’ll get out. I promise.”
Huffing, I cut in front of him and veered down the left path, leading the way. My shoes squelched loudly. The path narrowed again, corn clawing at my shoulders and hips. We curved left and right—and then, to my relief, the path opened up wider in front of us.
We’re out. We’re—
The hope leaked out of me like a deflating balloon.
The path did open up into a much larger area. A clearing, like the last one. But I hadn’t remembered seeing the clearing—despite footprints trailing all over it.
Our footprints. Crisscrossing, frantic, some clearly made by us running. The depressions in the mud deep and smudged. I turned around—
No.
Tyler wasn’t behind me.
My legs went weak underneath me. “Tyler!” I shouted.
The path curved behind me, disappearing into the darkness. No sign of Tyler. I scanned the corn surrounding the clearing—but it was dark and shadowy and infinite, stretching in every direction.
“Tyler!”
The corn rustled, somewhere to my left. I glanced over—but I couldn’t see anything. The corn was too dense. The shadows too dark. The sky was darkening now, threatening dusk. It was nearly pitch black in the shadows of the cornfie...
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