Chad is not an ordinary citizen of Iowa. He is not extraordinary however, he’s just different. Chad can’t help but hate corn. Yellow is his least favorite color because of corn. He hates food with lots of butter on it because of buttered corn. He hates anything that has to do with corn. Chad’s friends are completely oblivious to this fact.


“Chad, did you hear about the new invention to help harvest our corn, it increases speed by 9.8%, it’s called a harvester,” Chad’s friend Hunter says.


“Chad, we have found a new recipe for creamed corn,” Another of Chad’s friends Aaron says.


“Uh, ya that’s pretty cool,” Chad says distantly as he plots how to kill himself swiftly without too much notice in the small coffee/corn shop.


“Our harvests are up 3.-,” Hunter begins to say.


“Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up,” Chad yells loudly so everyone in the store turns and stares.


With that outburst, Chad storms out of the shop and heads home. On the way he sees huge stacks of corn on wheeled carts. An idea begins to formulate in his mind.


“I’ll show those corn-loving sons of kettles,” Chad thinks to himself as he begins to wheel away carts to his house. The fields of corn and the shop are located way out of town, and today is the corn festival, so no one is home. Chad wheels all the corn and dumps it in a concentrated vat behind his house. He goes inside and places orders at two different websites, I-love-rice-and-not-corn.com and Poisons-for-sale-cheaply-that-make-people-do-weird-stuff.org.


The corn festival is a three day process in which people parade around the city and have fun and play games. The second day of the festival, Chad’s shipment of sixty-five thousand pounds of rice arrives in the morning, and at lunch his special surprise arrives. Chad uses the remainder of the night to infect the corn with his special surprise. Then Chad moves all his necessities, his guns, his tv, his fridge, and all his rice into his giant bedroom. He proceeds to barricade the door and window with steel plating that he ripped off from his roof.


Chad opens the door and runs downstairs; he reloads the carts and brings them back to the houses of the towns as sunset dawns on the final day of the corn festival. Chad dashes back to his house and drags furniture covering the front and back doors then he quickly scrambles upstairs and locks the door shut. He slides his bed and dresser to cover the door and begins to watch TV. Chad loads his guns and as Spongebob turns on, the screaming starts.


Chad reaches over to the can of poison to tell just how long the people who eat the corn will be crazy. “Subjects that have poison induced will be overcome with fear and will go insane, they will berserk possibly causing damage to their surroundings and fellow human beings, can last up to 72 hours,” the label says.


Chad’s stomach rumbles as he realizes he hasn’t eaten all day. Just then he realizes, the stove is downstairs and all the rice is raw. Chad’s heart starts racing. He grabs his machine gun and tiptoes down the stairs. He sees broken glass littering the floor, and the windows are all shattered, their curtains shifting slightly in the breeze. Chad takes the few corn he had in his pocket that he hadn’t poisoned, and he chucks them out the window. A scrabbling sound startles him and then Hunter comes careening down the hall and out the window. Chad takes advantage of the momentary distraction and bodily picks up the portable stove. He makes a flying leap and lands on his bed. Chad turns and fires straight into the face of Hunter, who collapses. Chad rolls the body down the stairs and barricades the door again. Sliding off his gun, and throwing to the side, he turns to grab rice and is attacked by a mass of body.


Aaron takes a fist and hits Chad as hard as he can in his gut repeatedly, until Chad sags onto the floor. “How could you!” Aaron screams and then Chad realizes that Aaron wasn’t poisoned, and also that Chad had just fired a round of bullets into one of his best friends face. Chad begins to sob.


Aaron roars and berserks, almost as if he were under the effects of the poison, throwing the tv into the wall, smashing it into a million pieces, ripping open bags of rice and throwing them around the room. Then Aaron slides down the wall and sits next to Chad.


“I used to hate corn to you know,” Aaron says in an understanding tone.


“Really? What did you do?” Chad asks longingly.


“I bought a million crows and unleashed them onto the town’s crop”. Aaron says with a laugh.


Suddenly the door shakes on its hinges as it suffers a running charge from a group of insane poisoned-corn infested citizens. Chad and Aaron jump up and grab the guns they take a few steps toward the door, and the barrier between Chad and the bloodthirsty citizens collapses. Chad and Aaron recoil and bring up their guns sharply and point them at the doorway. Not a sound comes and no movements occur.


“Cooooorn” a creepy voice whispers from somewhere in the distance.


Chad heads downstairs to the kitchen with Aaron watching his back, wielding the firepower that is their lives.


“Cooooooorn” the voice repeats.


Chad rolls into the kitchen as suddenly, Aaron knocks over a chair, into a glass cabinet which shatters into a million sparkling pieces, and one of the pieces hits the foot that supports the expensive china cabinet and those fall and implode to.


A harsh chorus of cries fills the air and causes Aaron and Chad to cover their ears in pain. An army of zombie-citizens, still under the toxic effects of the poisoned corn, break down the door and the windows, shredding the sheet metal like paper. Aaron and Chad begin to fire, emptying clips and defeating wave after wave. They have the front door secured, but as all heroines always forget to do, they leave the back door unprotected.


A swarm of citizens suddenly claw out in through the rear door and begin to attack Chad and Aaron from behind, in immense shock they are overcome, and Chad watches as Aaron’s body is ripped to shreds by the evil citizens. Chad feels them enclosing around him. Three jump on his back and start gnawing into his body with a sickening slurp. Groups grab arms and legs and tear them off, Chad screams in pain and the world goes red and black.


Chad woke up sweating in his bed, his shirt sopping with his warm bodily fluids. The time is 8:39 A.M. and all the citizens were a dream. Chad stumbles over to the curtains and rips them open. Sunlight seeps into Chad’s eyes and he is temporarily blinded. Then as his vision begins to clear, Chad sees and army of citizens charging up the hill, making the sharp sound he had heard in his dream and Chad makes out the words and realizes they’re yelling his name and corn.

“Oh ****“.