Outstanding In Their Field

The sun was setting, light filtering through the trees that loomed over the winding road as Jennifer cursed her poor GPS connection. After hours of driving, all she wanted was to get out, stretch her legs and aching back, and drink the bottle of wine stowed in the cooler on the passenger side floor. What had possessed her to book this damned cabin this far out into the wilderness she struggled to remember, but the chance at a couple weeks of quiet and no people had been appealing after the last month. Finding out her boyfriend considered himself "more of a friend with benefits," than an actual partner, despite sharing an apartment, had been the final straw. The mandated return to her gray and beige cubicle to do a job that was increasingly unsatisfying by the day, the not-a-boyfriend who took advantage of said return to begin nailing the single mom across the hall, and the leering gazes of the new guy across the aisle as rumors of her dating status began to filter through the department created a great motivation to cash in some unused time off and get the hell out of Dodge for a bit.

She ran a hand through her thick auburn hair as she flicked her eyes between the GPS's idly spinning rerouting icon and the road ahead. Not there there was traffic to worry about, she'd hadn't passed a car since the gas station/general store she'd stopped at to buy the wine (likely overly sweet and bound to give her a pounding headache by the time she was done with it) and what meager food choices they had to offer. A more careful planner would have picked up a larger cooler and planned a menu. Instead, after making the decision to get out of town, she'd gone from searching for a place to stay to hitting the road with a hastily-packed suitcase in less than a weekend, pausing only to tell that asshole Andy to be moved into single mom's place or wherever-the-fuck he needed to before she got back. Now, regretting her impulsive charge into the unknown as her GPS insisted she make a left into the murky water running alongside the road, Jennifer tried to formulate a backup plan for food, more wine (obviously) and what to do with herself until it was time to head home.

Well, aside from the obvious,

she thought, remembering that she'd dumped her stash of vibrators and toys from her nightstand into the bottom of the suitcase she'd packed. If nothing else, a haze of booze and post-orgasm endorphins would get her through the worst of it. There was allegedly a farmer's market in the village just past the cabin, on the other side of the lake, so that was food sorted. If there was a village, there was probably another place to replenish her drink needs, and to fill in whatever other needs she hadn't anticipated. All she had to do now was find the fucking turnoff for the cabin. It was on this side of the water, she recalled, and not far from the shore, so there should be a bridge over the river that fed it any minute now. Instead, she had crows and turkey vultures and doves, oh my, all perched in the branches that occasionally scraped along her roof, and the cornfields populated only by utterly ineffective scarecrows to her right.

Slowing as she reached a bend in the road, Jennifer noticed the scarecrow disconcertingly close to the road far later than was good for her heart. She gave a short, sharp, scream as it caught her eye, its orange pumpkin head contrasting with the red flannel that defined its torso. She could have sworn it waved its arms as she made the turn and she slammed the brakes, feeling the seat belt clench against her chest. She screeched to a halt on the shoulder, whipping her head around to keep an eye on the straw-filled effigy. After a moment, it sank in that the same breeze swaying the branches overhead was just strong enough to shift the scarecrow's limbs when it was at the right angle. She watched it seemingly gesture for a few moments, then sank back in her seat and grabbed her phone to try to determine where she was. In the time she spent being freaked out by the scarecrow, her GPS had finally ascertained her location. She was nearly there, and as her pulse slowed back to normal, she closed the distance with her destination.

It wasn't much to look at, she thought as her headlights lit upon the cabin, nestled between the fields on either side. A little porch on the front, with one pale yellow light by the door, and a single interior light turned on for her by the rental agency. The trees in front of it were bedraggled with hanging moss and the yard looked like it hadn't seen a caretaker in a few weeks. Not tall enough to be a problem, but definitely someone's lowest priority.

Wonder if their yard guy knows my ex?,

she thought bitterly. But landscaping aside, the cabin was pretty much as advertised. Two story rustic cabin, with deck and hot tub, which she could see casting a shadow into the yard from the back porch light. Hell, the agency had even thought ahead and fired it up for her, judging by the cloud of steam drifting across the grass. The pair of dark windows over the porch stared out at her like lifeless eyes, unblinking as she approached with her suitcase in one hand and the little cooler slung over her shoulder. The keys would be in the lockbox, and they'd sent her the code for the lockbox as she drove. Pulling her phone from her back pocket awkwardly, she double-checked the code. She stared at her phone longer than needed, still not quite believing they'd set the code as 6-6-6.

If there was ever a horror movie setup this obvious, I'd ask for my money back,

she thought,, but punched in the numbers anyway and retrieved a thick, primitive looking wrought iron key from the box hanging from the light fixture. As she shuffled her things around to get the door open, Jennifer heard a patter of light footsteps and scraping noises from shadows just off the porch. Writing it off as the local fauna, she shouldered the door open and hurried inside, eager now to cast off the day's driving and get started on both the wine and the hot tub.

What the hell,

she mused,

I may work in a quick O or two before I crash, I've earned it.

Inside, Jennifer took stock of her accommodations. Kitchen, living room, and bathroom on the first floor. An electric fireplace on one wall, with a handwritten, laminated sign tacked to the wall with directions. The air wasn't quite cold enough to merit a fire, so she moved on to the second floor. Up the stairs to the bedroom, with a surprisingly spacious master bathroom. There was a full length mirror in the corner, and she paused to give herself a once-over. Auburn hair, pale skin, with wide hips and a chest that provoked envy from her friends and uncomfortable stares from frat guys at the bar when she went out. Currently, her thick, curly hair was sticking out in frizzy wisps and her curvy hips were aching from sitting in the car all afternoon, so she quickly stripped down to her mismatched underthings (no sense coordinating when no one will see it, she reasoned), and made her way back to the back porch by way of the kitchen for the wine. As she crossed through the living room, something caught her eye.

The little red light blinking on the far wall indicated the fireplace was warming up. This was unexpected, and she looked around in confusion for a timer or other mechanism to explain the change. Failing to find it, she grabbed the remote and turned it back off, and made a mental note to check it when she came in. Taking the bottle of wine, she headed for the hot tub which had been waiting for her all along.

Outside, Jennifer opened her wine and drank it straight from the bottle. As predicted, it was sickeningly sweet, and she knew she was going to drink way too much of it. After about a third of it was gone, she started getting silly. She pulled up some music on her phone, and was humming along, which turned into singing impromptu lyrics about being drunk in the woods, the hot tub, and how the raccoons were going to see her titties. Singing turned into shimmying and soon she was giving the wildlife her best drunken burlesque dance. A particularly vigorous shake of her hips sent her off her feet and she splashed back into the water. Running a hand over her ass to feel for bruises evolved into a more sensual touching of herself, and her other hand began to knead and pinch at her nipples. She ran her hand along the inside of her thigh, teasing herself. Leaning back into the jets of the hot tub, she eased a finger into her pussy, then another. Rocking her hips, she fucked herself slowly, breathing shallow and beads of sweat tricking down her neck to her tits. As the first of several climaxes hit her, she moaned loudly into the night. By the third, she was lifting out of the water with each buck of her hips, spraying water onto the deck as she dropped back into the tub. Soon ,she collapsed back under the water, reaching with a trembling hand for the last few swallows of her wine, panting and hazy with endorphins.

Standing up, her pale, wet skin glistening in the lights, Jennifer reached for the towels hanging by the door, wrapped herself, and went in. She paused to secure the lock on the door, and made her way to the front of the cabin to do the same there. As she crossed through the living room, she paused, cursing under her breath. The fireplace was running again, and she was certain she'd turned it off. She emphatically stabbed the power button with her finger again, tossed the control to the couch and moved to lock the front door for the night. Two things got her attention as she reached for the door.

One, the door was not quite closed, though she knew it had been shut earlier, she'd hip-checked it closed on her way through with her bags to the bedroom and had heard its window-rattling bang as it shut. Now, however, it was slightly ajar. Not enough to let in a draft, but not closed and latched. The second thing was noticing how close one of those creepy-ass scarecrows really was to her front porch. The fields on either side didn't seem so close when she was coming in, but now she looked out the window and found herself nearly face-to-face with the damned thing. It was just on the other side of the fence to her left, and facing the cabin's porch. Throwing modesty to the winds, Jennifer walked out the front door onto the porch. She looked around in the pale yellow light, not seeing any sign of anyone nearby, and stared off toward the road in the distance for taillights, but saw nothing. Unsettled, but convinced she was still alone, she turned back to the door, and froze as the arms of the scarecrow swayed again in the light breeze. She glared at it, then with a devilish grin, she dropped the towel, and with her hands behind her head, shook her hips lasciviously at it.

"Is that what you wanted, you perverted sack of hay? A little T&A for your efforts in protecting the fucking corn?" She threw her middle fingers up at it, grabbed the towel, and stomped inside, making sure the door was locked. Then she realized she hadn't checked upstairs.

I may have just locked my stupid ass in here with whatever hilljack pervert was messing with the door to begin with. FUCK!

She stormed up the stairs to the bedroom, flinging open the bathroom door on her way past, and flipped the lights on to reveal an empty room. Her suitcase sat where she had left it on the bed, clothes pulled out but not put into the dresser, her stash of toys sitting on the pillow. She gave everything a once-over, decided everything looked as it was when she left it, and threw on a nightgown. She quickly put her clothes away, and stuffed the various vibes, dildos, and other toys into the nightstand drawer. She paused briefly to look for an outlet, and plugged in her phone charger and her longtime favorite accessory, the wand, before going back downstairs to turn off lights and get one more glass of wine.

Properly provisioned, she settled into the bed, opening her phone to her preferred erotica site.

I'm going to go blind like the old wives' tales if all I do is drink and play with my cunt all week,

she thought with a cynical grin.

Beats the hell out of doing it in my apartment, though.

She scrolled through, checking her options before settling on a story about a girl getting gangbanged on vacation. It had always been her fantasy to have more than one guy at a time, but that turned out to be a hard sell on the dating apps, so it remained fodder for her alone time. This one was just getting good when she heard that scraping and shuffling noise again. Starting to get both angry and scared, Jennifer dropped her phone on the pillow, put the wine on the nightstand, and stood up to figure out where it was coming from. It sounded like it was right over her head, on the roof. It continued for a few minutes, during which she was craning her neck up, trying to sort out how to chase whatever critter it was down from there when she heard a soft thump from below the window. She looked out into the darkness, and saw the beast, something silvery-gray and the size of a small dog bounding off into the field. Doing her best to recall the local wildlife, she guessed it was a raccoon, maybe possum, and it was no longer up there, so fuck it, back to the business at hand. She left the wine where it was, picked up the phone in one hand and the aptly-named magic wand in the other, and began the task of timing her climax to the girl's in the story. When the sorority girl on the European train car was riding the third or fourth German soccer team cock, Jennifer started to cum. She rode it out, letting wave after wave crash through her until she was out of breath and sweaty, a puddle forming under her on the bed. In a haze, she dropped both phone and toy next to her, turned the light off, and collapsed. As she drifted off, she thought to herself,

I wonder if Mr. Stuffed Shirt out there could hear that...

Jennifer awoke to a familiar low hum, buzzing into her throbbing head. The wine had done its job, but had left behind a dry mouth and a pounding headache. She rubbed her temples and winced as she sat up, grimacing and trying to sort out which problem to solve first. She rolled over in the bed, reaching for the source of the noise. Finding the vibrator, which she could have sworn she had turned off, wrapped in the blankets and almost too hot to touch, she quickly silenced it and tossed it to the floor to cool down.

Damn,

she thought,

wouldn't it be embarrassing to burn down the cabin with an overheated vibe?

Again, she replayed her final moments from the previous night in her head, confident that she had shut it off before going to sleep. As she sat there, groggily struggling through the pain in her head and bleary memories, she took stock of her condition.

Hangover headache, check.

Cottonmouth from falling asleep drunk and snoring all night, check.

Hair an utter tangled mess, check.

Pussy sore and aching from overstimulation, ch-

Hold on, I may have overdone it a bit last night, but it shouldn't be THAT bad.

She stuck a hand under the blankets and gave herself a quick check. Her sex felt raw, oversensitive and tender, like she'd left the toy on high between her legs all night. As she withdrew her hand, she felt something strange cling to her hand. She shook her hand free of the blanket and watched with dawning fear as bits of straw and grass fell from her fingers.

Throwing the blankets back, Jennifer found several handfuls of the stuff on the mattress, sticking to her thighs, and under her butt. Kicking the covers to the floor, she swept the debris to the other side of the bed and to the ground. She staggered to her feet, fighting both the hangover and the surge of terror that now coursed through her body. Seeing more straw on the floor, she followed it to the back door, noticing dirty footprints leading the opposite direction, back to the bedroom. Pausing, she was disturbed to find the prints matched her own feet.

Did I sleepwalk, or blackout drunk wander outside? What the fuck happened to me last night?

Finding no sign of intruders, and seeing the back door unlocked but closed, she started to open it. It wasn't until she stuck a foot out that she realized she had skipped a step and was heading out the door naked. She hurriedly shut the door, wincing in pain at the loud bang, and turned back. She needed to deal with the headache first, and the rest of this disaster would have to wait. She shuffled to the kitchen, finding the coffee she'd picked up on the way in, and started a pot. While she waited, she took a cup from the cabinet and filled it from the tap, gulping down the vaguely metallic tasting water and refilling the glass to do it again. She grabbed her purse from the table, digging through it until she found the little bottle of ibuprofen she habitually kept there, and threw three into her mouth while refilling the glass again. As the coffee brewed, she went back to the bedroom to dress. She pulled on the jeans she'd had on the night before and a tee shirt, not bothering with underthings until she had a chance to shower. She came back down, eyeing the coffee with impatience, and flung open the back door.

In the morning light, she could see the field spread out behind the cabin, the small pond to the left, and the woods to the right. She could also see three of the creepy scarecrows that had given her such a fright on her way in. Identically dressed in red flannel shirts and ragged jeans, they were hanging on their crossbeams, facing her. She stared at them not sure if the featureless burlap sacks that made their heads made them more or less creepy. The fact that the one dead ahead had one arm extended in her direction, as though it was pointing to her was definitely a point to the more creepy side of the equation. Following the direction of its arm, she saw the path that had been broken through the corn, leading out to it. She saw a trail of tramped down grass leading from her porch to the field, reinforcing her theory that she had been sleepwalking, though she'd had no history of it. Following it a few yards into the field, she quickly grew uncomfortable, both from the sun accentuating the hangover, and the fact that these were almost certainly her footprints. Finding no easy solutions, and eager to get out of the too-bright sun and back to her coffee, Jessica turned around to head back inside, and stopped short.

Staring down into the grass, she realized it wasn't just her prints there. There were larger tracks coming out from between the rows of corn, and pushing through the grass and undergrowth. And strewn throughout were bits of straw and cornsilk, much like she'd found in her bed. A jolt of panic ran through her as she hurried back to the house, hangover forgotten, and made her way to the bedroom for her phone.

Police. Police can come and search the field, or check the door for print, or whatever they do in cases like this.

"FUUUUCK!" Her scream rattled her temples and she immediately regretted it, but her fury was only directed at herself as she picked up her dead phone. After a minute of cursing herself and sputtering vulgarities, she grabbed her keys and headed for the door. Taking a second to lock up the doors, she made for her car and got it started. She plugged her phone in and made her way down the gravel driveway back to the road, hoping to get back to some kind of civilization and a cop before too long. She gunned the engine, whipping along the back roads recklessly, figuring even if she got pulled over for speeding she could work it to her advantage and get the officer to follow her back and see... what, exactly?

She'd been drinking, sexually frustrated, and exhausted from stress and driving. The large, now empty wine bottle next to the bed, along with the frankly impressive array of toys she'd packed laying in a pile on the unoccupied half of the bed would be an eyeful, but what did some weird footprints in the grass prove? Only that she had wandered out there, drunk and overtired, and had, blackout drunk, stomped around in the cornfield, yelling at a scarecrow. Not a crime, she thought resignedly. And I can't prove anyone was there beyond the panic dreams of a hungover city girl all alone in the big, scary wilderness. She thought this last bit in the condescending tone of a cop who's had his time wasted, and was talking herself into turning around and going back to the cabin and forgetting all of it when she passed the farmers' market that she'd seen advertised on the cabin's website. Realizing that she hadn't actually ever drunk the coffee, and could use some food made her slow down and pull off the road, finding a spot to park and wandering over to the various stalls and stands.