Disappointment

We'd been searching through the piles of corn for a while, the older lady and I. The children who'd gathered in the warehouse with us were complaining of hunger. The corn, of course, had begun to rot long ago, but we held out hope for a few good cobs to make some kind of meal for the little ones. Their cries were nearly unbearable. They were drowned out only by the whistling missiles that flew overhead. Our eyes were drawn upward to the windows with every bright explosion.

To keep the children busy, we tasked them with husking the cobs. They worked diligently, but I shooed them away when the older lady began to smack them for eating the rotted pieces. I know she was only trying to keep them healthy, but she was so damned cruel about it. She didn't have to call them names. They were just hungry. They didn't know any better.

I turned back to her just in time to see the tiny black spiders explode from just beneath her corn's husk. She crumpled her face and dropped it back into the pile. I reached for it, thinking I could seal it up somehow to prevent the spiders from biting us. Who knew of they were poisonous or not? When my fingers touched the silky strands just under the yellowed husks, the entire cob disintegrated. Thousands of tiny black spiders jumped toward me, opening their hungry mouths before landing on my face and my chest.

I jumped backward, into wakefulness and began to wipe the frightening things away. A few seconds went by before I understood that it had only been a dream, but that didn't keep me from turning toward my lover to smack the spiders away from him.

A few moments went by before I realized that he had only been a dream too.

Two Seconds

"This doesn't seem safe," I murmured to the girl with the blue streak in her hair. She shrugged one shoulder and ignored me and the Laws of Gravity with one giant leap into the abyss.

I cringed and closed my eyes, expecting to hear the crunch/splat of flesh and bone as it collided with bottom of the pit. No such sound resonated there. Only the faraway giggle of that rebellious child echoed back to me.

"Crap on a cracker," I muttered when I spotted her blue streak shining in the darkness like a firefly. She flitted from here to there and back again.

The dragons paid her no attention. They swarmed upward and then forward, intent on my destruction. I turned and ran from the hoard.The flapping wings and fiery breath drowned all other noises. I couldn't hear my sobbing.

Into the field of corn seemed to be the best bet for my safety.

But, as it turns out, corn burns.