One Night in a Cornfield

James stared in sullen rage at the car. After a few more minutes of furious glaring, his anger began to abate slightly, partially because he felt it was stupid to stand here and glare at the worthless piece of crap when other things needed doing, but mostly because pain a very effective way of restoring perspective in times of crisis. And the pain in his foot that had resulted in a furious attack on the fender was enough to bank down his temper.

He turned from the car, walked some distance off, and sat down among the stubby growth at the edge of the corn field to consider. Back among the broken and shattered stalks, the Yugo sat, a sizable variety of engine fluids streaming down from its broken innards to pool amidst the dying corn. If he hadn't been running on fumes looking for a gas station when the accident occurred he would have been worried about an explosion. But as it was the car was a lump of dead metal which would cost more then he had just to pull out of the field.

As he sat there contemplating what to do, he stared up the steep embankment which bordered the field. The bright light of a full moon in a cloudless sky revealed the deep grooves and rips his car had made in the grassy slope when it had skidded down, completely out of control. He supposed he'd been lucky not to have flipped over, but he didn't feel like thanking God for any little miracles right now. The only person he felt like thanking was the Yugoslavian, (or whatever country that was now), who had put the seatbelt assembly together. Everything else in that crappy little car, from the glove compartment to the radio, had rattled apart like a collapsing house of cards, but the seatbelt had held firm

He sat there considering his options for a few more minutes. It was either go up to the highway and try to hitch a ride or spend the night down here until morning and get a ride then. It was two o'clock in the morning now, according to his watch, and the traffic as light up there, (he hadn't seen a car pass by yet).

Also, he realized that he didn't exactly look like the type of hitch-hiker anyone would like to pick up in the dead of night, or the light of day for that matter. The ear and nose rings he could take off, of course. The black trench coat he could fold over his arm,(though the night was cold and a hasty little breeze was shifting along over the cornfield. But his shirt had a large chrome skull on it, surrounded by ring of writhing snakes, and with the logo "Rock till you DIE!" emblazoned in bloody dripping letters across the bottom. His black pants were torn in several places, deliberately though, not because of the crash, and several bright pieces of metal gleamed and glittered from where they had been carefully sewn on. Such apparel was perfectly appropriate at the concert he had attended earlier tonight in Houston, but it didn't serve to well to allay the suspicions of the casual passer-by.

He'd probably have to walk to the nearest town. He could go dig a map out of the Yugo to make sure, but he was fairly certain the nearest one was about fifteen miles. It would still probably be easier to walk the distance tonight instead of in the morning, cooler as well, but a more pressing rationale was intruding into his thoughts. He was exhausted. He had been up since six in the morning, and he had spent most of that day either working or on the road for a frenzied three hour drive to Houston to make the concert on time. He had been driving back to Austin for about two hours when the damned cat had decided to dart across the road. He had slammed on the brakes and would have been fine except for the fact that the front left tire had blown, sending him straight to the side of the road and down here. The adrenalin of the event had long since faded and he was yawing continually.

"To Hell with it", he thought and moved back to the car. There was an old blanket in the back and the passenger seat would recline far enough for him to lie down a little. He was lucky; the seat had snapped a bolt somewhere and laid straight back into the rear of the car. It was more comfortable than he had expected and kept him out of the gusting breeze which blew through the cracked and missing windows. After a few moments of listening to the wind blow through the stalks of corn which surrounded the car, he fell into a deep sleep.

An hour or so later, his sleep was far to deep to hear the slight rustling of something moving through the grasses along the slope. Too far gone to hear the rustling come near the car and then stop five feet away, as if something were pondering the situation. And when the cat leaped up onto the hood of the car and crept quietly to the broken windshield to peer in at him, James didn't even twitch, so deep was he in quiet dreams.

The cat watched him carefully for several minutes, its eyes wide and glittering, shiny marbles gleaming in the moonlight. After a while, it apparently made some sort of decision. It turned from the windshield and walked daintily down to the front of the car, standing slightly to the left of the broken and dangling hood ornament, and it twitched its tail. Just so.

And with that subtle twitch of tail, the night came alive with dozens of pairs of gleaming eyes. And what seemed like a hundred cats began to drift through the foliage and move in towards the car, their movement sleek and quiet as silk on grass. The cat on the hood preened itself as they approached, proud and boastful of its catch.