by Kayla Krantz
“No,” Shawn uttered, pushing Jack off of him.
Jack grunted with the scuffle, trying desperately to hold his friend in place, but Shawn couldn’t be persuaded. He elbowed Jack in the ribs and hurried forward, kicking the cherubs out of the way. He hit the drude on Milo’s chest with such force that its blood eroded away the rest of the metal left on his arm. It went flying to the floor, and Jack finished it off. Seeing the demise of one of their own seemed to do something to the other creatures or maybe it was the state of Milo. They screamed in unison, an earsplitting shriek, and all at once they split up and departed down the halls.
Shawn, staring down at Milo, hardly noticed that they were alone. With shaking fingers, he grabbed Milo’s shoulder. “Milo!” he cried, shaking him harder and harder as the moment passed and Milo didn’t stir. “You have to wake up!”
When Jack turned away from the remains of the drude he had killed, which had melted to a toxic green puddle, there was something animalistic in his eyes. He pushed Shawn out of the way and lunged toward Milo, one hand grabbing him by the collar as the other hand reached out, coming back to Milo with a smack that radiated around the room. Red blossomed across his ever-so-pale cheek, but he didn’t stir. Jack did it again and again until Milo’s cheeks started to swell from the blows, but he didn’t wake.
At last, Shawn grabbed Jack by the wrists, holding him before he could smack Milo again. “That’s enough,” he told him.
Swallowing, Jack reached up to run his fingers through his hair, eyes on the marks he had left on his friend. “They got him, Shawn. Eternal sleep. What are we going to do?”
Shawn frowned at Milo. It seemed so unfair that he looked so peaceful while they were scrambling in panic to fix the situation he had drifted away from. “What can we do? That’s the real question.”
“There is nothing you can do, but move on,” Rhys’ voice interrupted. “The battle against the nightmare the drude has infected on Milo is one that he must fight alone.”
“What happens if he loses?” Shawn asked, prepared for the answer he would receive.
“Then he will slumber forever.”
11.
MILO GROANED, TURNING his head as he tried to get himself comfortable. There was a pain in his neck from the angle, the sensation shooting down his abdomen. All he wanted to do was sleep and sleep until eons had passed, but something jabbed him in the ribs, pulling him from the blissful nothingness he had been part of only seconds before. He shifted, but the aggravating sensation was still there. Slowly, his eyes began to open. They were heavy, and he wanted to slam them shut again, but the peek he caught of his surroundings gave him strength.
Eyes stretched wide, he hopped to his feet. He knew this place, and so did Jack and Shawn. It was the high school, the lobby just beyond the doors leading to the parking lot. This was a point he never passed by himself, yet his friends weren’t with him. He blinked, wiping his eyes before he did another survey of his surroundings. It looked like that morning had, this day that had started normal and then gone to completely insane depths.
Milo lifted his hands, pressing the heels into his eyes with such ferocity that he saw stars. He surveyed his surroundings again. The trek to the woods, the game with Rhys, the demons? Had all of it been a dream?
There was a second where a surge of hope passed into his chest. If it had all been a dream, then he had nothing to worry about. A boring day at school? He was just fine with that. Adjusting his backpack, he started to walk down the stark white hall, feeling better and better with each step. He wasn’t a hero, and to think there was a universe where he potentially was made him laugh. Unlike the other teens his age, he liked the monotony of his every day, the certainty. He hated surprises. This boring little place in this boring little town was nirvana to him.
Laughter poured from his lips, and he let it out. The sound bounced around the halls, and then it stopped. This was school, he had no doubts there, but why was it so empty? Had he somehow been late and only just now realized it? It would certainly explain the absence of his friends.
Clearing his mind of everything related to Rhys and the game in the woods, he went on a search for his class or his friends...whichever came first would be just fine to him. Milo turned a corner, and that was when he spotted the outlines of two familiar shapes in the distance—one skinny as a bean pole and the other tall and muscular. Shawn and Jack. Their heads were bent close together as they engaged one another in a conversation so intense that something in Milo crackled for being left out.
Milo waved, hoping to get their attention. “Hey! Guys, wait up!”
Milo wasn’t loud by nature, doing what he could to blend in, but since there weren’t anyone else in the hall, he didn’t mind making his voice heard. The sooner he could get his friends’ attention, the sooner things could go back to normal.
Jack and Shawn didn’t turn to acknowledge his presence.
Milo frowned, trying to keep himself from resorting to immediate panic. Maybe they didn’t hear me.
He moved closer, and they turned, walking away. “Guys!” Milo called again.
He started to run after them, the sound of his footsteps echoing around the space, but they didn’t stop, didn’t even look back, and Milo stopped. There was a pain in his chest, not from his run, but from the sudden rejection. Being cut out of Shawn and Jack’s group hurt worse than the banshee’s screams in the clearing. Then he paused with that thought at the front of his brain. Banshee? Why did that feel important?
With as much detail as he could, he pored over the last week, trying to understand what he had done to be so brutally snubbed. Nothing stood out, and he blinked away his tears then. Crying wouldn’t help him fix the friendships he had apparently lost. If he wanted to do that, he would have to seek them out, to ask what was wrong. The hallway before him stretched once, and he turned another corner, always just barely catching a glimpse of the pair ahead before they turned a bend and vanished again. The walls around him subtly extended into a maze, one that eventually barred him away from the windows and any chance of escape he might’ve had.
Heart thudding, Milo started to run. A bell overhead rang then, and the doors opened, students pouring out to fill the previously empty space. Jack and Shawn were lost among the sea of classmates. Shouldering others out of the way, he kept going, ignoring the angered shouts following him. Usually, he would’ve apologized, but right now? He didn’t have the time. Something was wrong, and he had to find out what.
He had to find out how to escape Rhys’ game. The thought was like a sucker punch to the gut that winded him and brought everything back to the front of Milo’s brain. The room with the television, the giant couch, the circle of hellish cherubs. Then the flash of the creature charging at him. Suddenly, it all made sense.
He was asleep. This was a dream.
He was trapped in a nightmare.
The realization normally would’ve paralyzed him with fear, but it fueled him onward instead. It might not be in this Realm, but somewhere Jack and Shawn were waiting for him. They hadn’t turned their backs. He wasn’t abandoned. For the time being, he might be alone, but he could figure this out. He had done a fine job on everything else so far.
Milo tried to remember the things that Rhys had told them about the drudes, but that hadn’t been much. He had said something about a coma filled with nightmares. He thought of how this dream had started and had the feeling that he would have to be prepared to face everything he was afraid of. After all, losing his friends was one of his biggest worries, and he had survived that. Milo tried not to think too much about his other fears, wondering if Rhys already knew them or if he was waiting for Milo to expose himself so he could use those against him later on.
“I have to get out of this place,” Milo determined, looking around.
Running wouldn’t be an option. The halls were still distorted, and the walls such a vague indistinguishable color that he would never be able to trace them back to the point where he had st
arted. For a second, he had the fear that there would be no way out, that he would be trapped here until he eventually starved to death. Panicked, he started to run the halls again like a rat in a maze. Fully out of breath, he came to the conclusion that his earlier observation was right. Until he beat whatever he needed to face, he wouldn’t be able to leave.
He stumbled into a nearby room, hunched over with his hands on his upper thighs as he heaved for breath. By the time his surroundings stopped spinning, he studied the room he had ended up in. Thankfully, he was the only one inside. There were no windows on the wall where there should’ve been, and the back wall was lined with cabinets, each door hanging open at the exact same angle to reveal empty shelves inside. Between the cabinets and Milo were rows and rows of desks, the type found in any normal high school room.
There was something about this room though, something that Milo couldn’t put his finger on. I’m not just saying that because I’m trapped in a demon’s D&D game, he thought to himself.
That’s when he noticed it, the dagger on the desk. The light glinted off of the curved blade, and he could hardly draw his eyes away. The handle was black but studded with a large sapphire at one end and rubies wrapped around the base of the blade. It was a beautiful knife, and based on the shine of the silver blade, he could assume it was well-maintained. Even from where he stood, he could tell that the blade was sharp, and why not?
The next part of his mission would be easier if it was after all.
Milo spent a long time staring at the blade, longer than he probably should’ve. His biggest fear was cliched, but popular—he was afraid to die. He didn’t have any real religious beliefs so the thought of not existing after the entire process of being alive was a terrifying concept. One he never wanted to experience so the thought that one day it would happen to him made the fear worse.
Surely that’s not what this means, he told himself as he stared at the knife.
Denial made it easier to approach this situation, to think up a solution. If he didn’t, he would be faced with the truth of this one. The blade offered him no answers either, but he found himself inching toward it. Maybe there was a note taped to it or somewhere nearby in one of the desk drawers. Milo drummed his thumbs against the sleek polished surface of the desk before he reached one shaking hand out to lift the knife, the weight real and solid. Now that he was touching the knife, there didn’t need to be a note. The feeling in his gut told him everything he needed to know.
Licking his lips, he reached out, tapping the tip of his finger to the sharp point. A pinpoint of blood welled from the point of impact, running down his pale finger. Milo didn’t think of his condition much, but with the contrast of his blood to his pale skin, he reminded himself of a corpse. That was almost enough to get his breath caught in his throat, to get him to toss the blade down and run. But what would happen then?
If he turned his back on this, what else would there be for him? Endlessly chasing Jack and Shawn through a maze?
Milo twitched his nose. He wasn’t a fool. Part of him knew that the only true escape in the end would be death anyway, but he hated it. Milo had made a habit of being optimistic by nature, but sometimes, it just wasn’t possible to explain the glass as anything other than half-empty, especially when you know you’ve been siphoning water from it for some time.
Slowly, Milo turned the tip of the sharp blade toward himself, watching the way it glinted in the light. Hypothetically, the next minute would be easy. One slash, and he would be done, hopefully instantly, but if not, then he would bleed out for sure. In reality though, it was anything but easy. Milo’s breathing started to quicken, the world around him swishing into different colors as he fought back a panic attack.
He forced out the air in his lungs with one slow exaggerated breath through his mouth. The tiny cut on his finger was still bleeding, the trickle of blood what he forced himself to focus on. If he wanted out, it would take literal blood, sweat, and tears, and he had already done the latter of the two. Before he could doubt himself again, he thrust the blade forward, into his stomach. His echoing scream radiated around the building, and he struggled to open his eyes, the tears keeping them sealed shut. Part of him expected the yowls to draw the attention of any of the people he could hear moving in the hall, but they disappeared, and he was alone with his gore.
Without taking his hands off the knife, he looked down, watching as the red began to seep into his shirt. He wanted to scream again, to drop the blade, and not do this.
“Can’t back out now,” Rhys’ taunting voice came from overhead.
A string of curses floated through Milo’s head, but part of him was relieved to hear Rhys’ voice. If the demon was coming to him now, it had to be a good sign, or at least a clue that the end was near one way or another. Milo said none of this out loud as he readjusted his grip on the knife, his own blood making the task difficult. Without letting go, he dragged the blood through his skin, cutting away the organs, muscles, and tissue in the way. Milo had no idea where the strength came from, but once he started, he didn’t stop. As his screams echoed up around the room, he thought his voice box would explode, and he had the feeling that it wasn’t his hands guiding the knife but Rhys’. Every time he was ready to pull the blade away, it wouldn’t leave his stomach, the silver cutting deeper and deeper.
By the time he was able to pull the blade out of his skin, his entrails were threatening to escape. Through the frayed edges of his shirt, he couldn’t see them, but he could feel them, and that was much worse. The smell of blood made him want to wretch, the movement igniting a brand-new spark of pain in him with every ripple that moved the wound. The dagger slipped from his fingers, landing in the pool of blood at his feet a second before he collapsed, his world turning to black.
12.
“WE ARE SO screwed,” Jack said, raking his fingers through his hair over and over again as he paced before Milo’s sleeping form on the couch.
He didn’t know how much time had passed, but Milo continued to slumber away, his face peaceful even with the awkward position of his head on the back of the couch. Shawn stood near the armrest, frowning at Milo then Jack and back again. He didn’t know which situation concerned him more—Milo’s nightmare coma or the fact that Jack seemed ready to fall to pieces any moment.
“He’s going to beat this,” Shawn said, tilting his head to try to catch a glimpse of his friend’s face.
Jack shook his head, and halted, coming to rest before his friend. “We don’t know that though, do we? Rhys said coma. That’s not something you can come out of easily. I mean, some people never come out of their comas. He might not wake up, and while we stay here waiting, Rhys might be cooking up plans to kill both of us. I keep thinking he didn’t design this for us to be able to walk away from, and you expect me to digest a thought like that calmly?”
Shawn blinked but didn’t engage. He’d had similar thoughts of course, but it wouldn’t benefit them to fuel the fire that was Jack’s rage. Right now, they needed to stay calm and collected, to come up with a plan. Yes, it was possible that Milo might not wake up and walking away from his friend would be the hardest thing he’d have to do, but they also needed to have a plan in the small chance that he would wake up. Most likely, if he woke, he wouldn’t be in good shape from whatever he encountered on the other side, and it would be Jack and Shawn’s responsibility to keep him safe for the duration of the rest of Belphegor’s dungeon.
Shawn peered at Milo’s sleeping face again with a frown. Rhys had already threatened his life twice, and Shawn knew the reason. Out of the three of them, Milo was the most capable. He had proved that with Mammon’s dungeon, and in the oasis after. Shawn had the uneasy feeling that Rhys lived by the baseball philosophy of three strikes and a person’s out. That meant Milo had one more chance if he woke up. That thought somehow managed to make Shawn feel worse.
A horrible gurgling sound came up Milo’s throat followed by a frantic gasp for air. There was a blossom of red
across his abdomen as if he had been shot. Shawn and Jack pitched forward at the same time, Shawn ready to grab his friend when he stopped. Milo’s eyes slowly opened; the pits glazed over as if he had seen something truly terrifying. He wrapped his arms around his body as if he were trying to hold himself together, and the blossom of red that Shawn thought he had seen disappeared.
“Milo!” Shawn said, taking another step forward to put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Milo, it’s okay. It’s just us. It’s just Shawn and Jack. You’re safe.”
The horrible sound of watery breath disappeared from Milo’s chest, replaced with a pattern that sounded more natural and less like Milo was about to die any moment. Milo blinked, the haze clearing away as his huge eyes moved from Jack to Shawn as if he were trying to verify that Shawn’s words were the truth before at last his pupils began to shrink to their normal size.
“Dude, what happened?” Jack asked, tilting his head to study him over for injuries.
Milo stood on shaky legs, looking back at the couch with venom that wasn’t missed by Shawn. “That sucked,” Milo said, reaching up to swipe his hand over his mouth. He looked down at himself, patting his stomach before he lifted his shirt to stare at the pale skin.
“What happened to you in there?” Shawn asked, convinced now that the blood he had seen on Milo’s shirt hadn’t been a figment of his imagination.
Milo looked up at Shawn, his eyes haunted endless pits as he said, “Don’t ever let one of those touch you.”
Shawn stared back, transfixed and unsure of what he could say.