There are few places you know where you shouldn’t bleed, I’m sure. Shark-infested waters, anywhere in bear country, and in polite company. Sure, but you’re forgetting the Midwest.
It’s pretty much bred into us, even though we don’t see it directly when growing up. You come back inside for dinner when the bell rings or mom screams bloody murder over whatever game you’re playing in the woods or the corn. If your parents are generous, you can go out after dark to catch fireflies, “but make sure you wear your shoes!” “Don’t go to close to the woods or a branch might poke your eye out!”, all that sort of talk.
What they don’t tell you, or even usually know in earnest, is that you shouldn’t bleed after dark. It’s not the predators, mind you, the worst we have here are coyotes and they are usually more afraid of you than you are of them. Usually. There’s a few examples of kids being ripped apart by them, but those rarely reach the news because something else is actually to blame. A “Satanic” ritual where the kids ripped the child in question apart, while their own tears streamed in fat rivulets while their friend screamed for mercy and their parents listened, horrified but understandingly from a balcony not a quarter mile away. The parents never blamed the children for what they had to do to survive in this place. Something made them know that it had to be done.
You see, this land once belonged to the natives. They walked this land and new its habits and its hungers. They knew how to appease it, how to placate it long enough so that it’s hungers wouldn’t consume them whole. The white man came barreling in here, thinking it knew how to appease it, and ironically, we accidentally did.
Pig farms, you see, generate a lot of blood. Blood that must be drained, and this blood might as well be processed into fertilizer. This blood placates the soil here, which hungers for a blood of any type. “It’s a good source of Nitrogen” some farmers say, but the old farmers, more gristle than muscle remember what it really is; a sacrifice to the land.
So let me tell you a story from my childhood as to why you should never bleed after dark in the Midwest.
I was thirteen, my cousin Zach was 14, and my friend was also my same age. My mom let us go collect fireflies after dark, which is harmless enough. The Land is usually quite respectful of property, and my mother, like her mother’s mother, buried those witch bottles filled with the piss after childbirth, with nails and broken glass around the edges of her property to demarcate her family’s domain. It was hallowed ground, though our ignorant child’s minds did not register her declarations that we were only safe on family property.
My cousin Zach was the one to dare us into the field behind the farm. I knew better, or at least should have, but after a triple-dog-dare I went first into the cutting, dry corn husks of late September. I felt them scratch me as I ran into the forest of uniform corn stalks. Despite the miniscule pain, I giggled, knowing that I was breaking one of my mother’s biggest rules—Do not enter the corn fields after dark or you’ll get lost. I was a smart kid, and I knew this because everyone told me so, so I figured I could find my way back. The moon was high, and if I just head away from it, then I’d be fine.
I heard my friends come charging in behind me, laughing and scrambling through the razor-sharp corn behind me, but not quite behind me. I looked down at my arms, and I saw tiny, slightly bloody scratches along my arms and could only imagine that I had them on my shins and face as well. The worst cut was on my left, outside wrist, and I caught the sight of the first rivulet of blood falling, almost in slow motion as it fell to the dry and thirsty soil below me. Even in the moonlight, I could see that where the blood hit the soil it cratered into it. The soil around it darkened dramatically, as if I poured a bottle of water into it, and the soil… the best I can describe it is that it drank me in. It knew me now. My blood ran cold and I shouted out to my friend and to Zach that I thought we should leave.
As the purple vines began spilling up from my tiny drop of blood, it became an existential fear in me, so I bolted back to where I came. I know I was only a dozen rows or so inside the field, but as I ran and ran, it quickly became apparent that either I was running in the wrong direction, or that suddenly direction was meaningless. The soil had tasted my blood, and it would have me.
I’ll spare you the details, but give you the highlights and let you fill in the rest. I’m sure that whatever you imagine is half as awful as what I saw that night.
First, I came across Zach. He was bleeding all over from faint scratches that bled more than they had right to do so, and I knew then that the land would never let him leave. He had stripped off his bloody, long-sleeved shirt to inspect where exactly he was bleeding from. He was more perplexed than anything, and obliviously told me that I lost the game of hide and go seek since he was the seeker. I put on his blood-soaked shirt and sprinted through the corn. The sound of him screaming to come back here in anger, followed by the shrieking pain he must’ve felt as the husks ripped skin from him with every step… it’ll haunt me forever. Despite himself, he couldn’t help but follow the blood on his shirt until every piece of him was skinned away by the blades we ran through.
Next, my best friend. I keep his name secret so as to keep him safe but… I found him digging a hole to escape the sharp edges around him. I told him to stop digging, because the very soil below him wanted him. That’s what my mom used to say anyways… He curled up crying in a ball, afraid to move an inch lest one of the stalks come closer to him. I told him I’d get help, and to stay as still as he could.
Lastly, I saw a glowing flame. I ran toward it, my cousin’s long-sleeved shirt protecting me some from the lashing leaves and jagged soil when I tripped. Blood still dripped from painless, razor cuts all across me, but not as badly as Zach. When I arrived, my mom was already gone. She sat there on her knees, holding something I can only hope was not a baby, smoldering amidst a circle of burning corn stalks that seemed to never run out of fuel. My throat was choked with the scent of my mother’s burning hair, and my eyes streaming from both the smoke and my abysmal feelings of loss and loneliness.
I ran. I ran, and I ran, and I awoke my father when I broke through the forest of corn screaming bloody murder. My mother was dead, my cousin was bleeding, and my best friend was hiding in a hole.
At the end of it, my mother was proclaimed missing, though everyone in town showed it in their eyes that they both pitied me and respected my mother’s sacrifice. My best friend was committed to an institute for a while, and we fell apart, but he lived. My cousin, on the other hand, was, according to the news, ripped apart by coyotes.
So thus the whole county went hunting for coyotes. Shooting them dead, burning them, leaving them to rot. Do you see what I mean? Zach and my mother were only pawns in the end. The land got the blood of a thousand coyotes out of this little adventure, but one problem remains.
Despite my mom’s knowledge of the old ways, the land remembers my taste. I was driving back home to see my dad after years away from this awful place. I hit a pothole the size of Kansas that took my right front tire clean off. My phone calls and texts won’t go through. My phone has been at 23% battery for entirely too long. It has easily been days, but nothing has changed. The sky is still black, the moon is the same as I had left it so many years ago. The clock hasn’t moved a minute, but I know only how long it has been because of sleep, hunger and thirst. I’ve a middling understanding of tech, and have wrote a script to post this message once my laptop gets signal again.
The corn grows so close to these roads, and only seems to grow closer the further down the road I look. It will know my taste again. I’m coming Zach. If you get this message, friend, know that this country knows your taste and you are more than welcome to come here to feed it. Run away to the desert. It’s not safe to bleed here.