Corn Hold

Sarah Roberts stood on her front porch, shaking her head. Every year she went through the trouble of putting up Halloween decorations, and every year asshole kids from the neighborhood would trash things. The hay bales she’d stacked out front were knocked over, the fake witch she’d had hanging from the tree was nowhere to be seen, and her jack-o-lanterns were smashed to pieces.

Toilet paper trailed down from the branches of the big oak tree in her front yard. Some of the little ceramic skulls she’d carefully put tea candles inside were missing, some were broken.

Sarah surveyed the damage, then suddenly felt a stab of panic.

She ran over to the jumble of hay bales, and saw that her scarecrow--the very expensive antique scarecrow that she’d purchased from that odd old woman--was still there, and still intact. It was lying on its back, hidden behind a bale of hay. The scarecrow’s body was intact, but had been tampered with.

Some junior high joker had apparently thought it would be funny to take one of the decorative pieces of corn she’d arranged on the bales, and to stick it out from between the scarecrow’s legs, like a jutting penis. Sarah shook her head again, breaking a slight smile as she tsked to herself. Kids!

She bent over and tried to pick up the corncob, but when she pulled on it, the entire waist of the scarecrow came up with it, hips rising off the ground. She let go, then...