by Patrick Barb
(1000 words)
1. Corn-Silk Sally and the Pumpkin Patch Massacre
Anguished cries of the dying echo across the picked-over fields of smashed pumpkins. Under a late October moon, blood stains corpse-pale innards from neglected gourds judged unworthy of Halloween porch displays.
Beams of light, like agitated fireflies, move with the flicked wrists of every police officer who’s come too late to save Corn-Silk Sally’s victims.
From the corner of his tired eyes, Sheriff Jones spots her in a tattered, dusty dress, watching between the rows of corn.
“Stop!”
But she’s gone. Her skirt sewn from corn silk brushes against the yellowed husks.
2. Corn-Silk Sally Teaches the Worst Girls in School about Revenge
Breanna and Cayden watch from under the loose hay. The damp strands now reek with the tangy odor of bloodletting.
Believing the violence over, they recall Corn-Silk Sally placing a finger capped by a damaged nail, resembling a lit black-flamed candle, against chapped lips. The darkness danced in the girl’s eyes, ready to spread.
They climb off the creaking trailer, avoiding the hollowed-out chest cavity of Annie Previtt, the pumpkin patch’s owner. Her eyes forever opened wide, asking, What did I do?
The girls know. The girls always know.
3. Corn-Silk Sally and the All Hallow’s Grieving
Gam-Gam’s tears dry on fallen leaves. Her body trembles, sobs like small earthquakes tearing her apart. When she stands, bare feet crunch eggshells into the grass. Toilet paper soaked red with blood dangles from the front porch eaves.
She stops short, peering up at sweet Sally’s room. No lights appear there, no candle burning on the windowsill. Her not-so-friendly neighbors watch, judging her and her family from a safe distance.
Many don’t understand what the women in her family are capable of and those who know aren’t in a position to share.
4. Corn-Silk Sally: Trick or Die!
The costume-wearing children stand beneath the willows, spilling candy on the grass. From surrounding houses, screen doors slam, and heavy feet stomp onto porches.
Names drift down shaded streets. “Benji!” “Sarah!” “Antoine!” “Leah!” “Carl!” On and on.
No children turn from their vigil.
Perhaps if those parents, drenched in panicked sweat, wondering why their children’s beds sat empty, called for “Ghost!” “Witch!” “Cowboy!” “Cat!” “Devil!” then they would be answered.
Finally, someone’s father, wearing flannel pajamas and fuzzy slippers, grabs a child and asks, “What’re you doing here?”
“Corn-Silk Sally’s gonna die,” they answer.
5. Corn-Silk Sally and the Harvest Dance with the Devil
“Come dance under the full moon, Sally,” the Devil says.
Sally wipes blood off her face, picking dirt from long, black hair. Something rubbery-wet comes loose as she brushes out debris.
Principal Martinez’s eyeball. Sally smirks, recalling the sound her hand-scythe made wedging, freeing the orb from its socket.
The Devil clears his throat, offering a hand. Never introduced himself as the Devil. But Sally knows without needing a name.
Stray dogs howl behind them.
The music swells, approaching the grand finale. The Devil whispers, “Here’s to a new beginning.”
6. Corn-Silk Sallies
Deputies keep away from Sheriff Jones, leaving him to moan over the body of his only son. Jordan Jones, varsity football captain, lays across the ground, like a tattered costume.
But there’s no one to slip on his skin and ring doorbells, singing, “Trick or treat.”
Instead, they search for Corn-Silk Sally aka Sally Perkins aka the Sophomore Witch. Radios chirp. Dispatch puts through anyone who’s seen a pale girl with black hair, a dress made of corn-silk, carrying a bloody hand-scythe.
No way all reports are true. No way she’s in so many places at once.
7. Corn-Silk Sally: Trick or Die II: The Trickening
Heavy downpour washes fresh blood down storm drains, into the overgrown grass of ditches bordering small-town front lawns. Winds, thunder, and rapid lightning crashing, drown grief-stricken howls and the final moans of dying children.
Tiny, broken bodies bleed while dark clouds pass over the harvest moon. The siren on Sheriff Jones’s cruiser drones on, waiting for someone to break in, reach over the Sheriff’s ruined, shotgun-blasted face, and switch it off.
Until then, they listen to its electronic screams as red and blue lights pass over the living and dead alike.
8. Corn-Silk Sally’s Hayride to Hell
They tear her handmade corn-silk dress. Rough and smooth hands alike, dirt under their nails or manicured to idealized perfection, her classmates leave her bare beneath the harvest moon. Bleeding within and without, her eyes closed, dreaming. She opens them, hot with fire.
Except this already happened.
Back on the hayride, she steals a glance at Mr. QB himself, Jordan Jones. She picks out the school gossips whispering further back on the trailer. Sally wonders what they’ll say when the night ends.
Everyone’s already dead though. Why do these things keep happening to me?
9. Corn-Silk Sally: Another Origin Story about Revenge
Gam-Gam never talked to Sally about the girl’s Daddy. Never told her what Sheriff Jones, then nothing more than quick-to-anger, ambitious Deputy Jones, did to the misunderstood man, Gam-Gam’s baby-boy.
She didn’t talk about rinsing the girl’s corn-silks in enchanted oils before they were fed into the sewing machine, stitched with needles hexed to prick the skin, and the corn-silk drank her blood.
She loves the girl, her sweet grandbaby. But she loves her boy more. She’ll have vengeance, even if it means destroying her line, the Sheriff’s, and everyone else’s besides.
10. Corn-Silk Sally in Space
Sally, not the same Sally as before but close enough, wishes on a dead Earth. The field-trip rocket’s left. Classmates locked her in the corn silo during boarding.
But she’s high enough to touch the dome around her lunar colony home. Ears of space-grown corn shuck themselves, revealing golden silk amid kernels off-white like rotten teeth.
A shooting star, she falls. Her dark hair covers the explosions of pain behind her eyes. A blade waits by her injured hand. Sickle-shaped, a crescent moon. Shadows fall, forming a mask. Appropriate attire for the next Halloween party.
END
Patrick Barb is a freelance writer and editor from the southern United States, currently living (and trying not to freeze to death) in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His short fiction appears in ANTIFA SPLATTERPUNK (forthcoming), Humans are the Problem (forthcoming), Diabolica Americana, and Boneyard Soup Magazine, among other publications. For more, visit patrickbarb.com or follow him at twitter.com/pbarb.