by Lizzy Ford
At the back of my mind, I wonder why I haven’t thought of walking on top of the walls. It’s too fleeting for me to make a note of when faced with vampires.
“I’m done with bad boys,” I say firmly. Though my knees feel weak when vampire-Kiefer looks at me.
“I can’t take all of them,” Badbartigan says in a hushed tone.
Zillow whirls and motions for me to run.
We race around two corners, only for another vampire on a motorcycle to drop in front of us.
“Come on!” Badbartigan shouts. “We’ll lose them at the bridge!”
Badbartigan races through the labyrinth. Twice more we’re cut off and forced to backtrack to the last intersection and choose a different direction. Even so, Badbartigan navigates the maze like a champ, as if he and Zillow have had none of the problems Jared and I have.
We turn a corner. A flimsy wood and rope bridge dangles over a deep ravine. The last time I saw this bridge, Thuggies were chasing Indiana Jones across it. It appears far less sturdy in real life. The roars of motorcycles drive us to the edge. Zillow and Badbartigan take their first steps onto the rickety bridge.
I mentally gauge the distance between us and the other side of the ravine, which is when I notice the glowing neon sign.
Exit.
“What’s on the other side?” I ask.
“The exit to the labyrinth,” Badbartigan says over his shoulder. “Hurry! They’re getting closer.”
I pause at the edge of the bridge, gaze on the exit. My ring shows this path as blue. When I wave it over my head towards the maze, it turns black.
“Son of a bitch,” I mutter. “I can’t leave now! I have to reach the center of the labyrinth.”
“But you might die!” Zillow cries, stricken.
I glance over my shoulder. A pacball is glowing in midair behind me.
I want to leave. God, how I want to leave! The safe and easy path is in front of me.
“Come on!” Badbartigan says and holds out his hand.
My gaze lingers on this form of Jared. He plays other characters well. It’s odd.
“As much as I want to, I can’t go with you,” I say grudgingly. “I’m sorry.”
Zillow shifts Elora Doo to one arm and reaches into his pocket. “I’m a conjurer,” he says. “In case you need help.” He hands me a pouch.
“Wow. Thanks,” I say, surprised by the offer. Is this the labyrinth helping me? Or another trick?
I accept it. Something is in it, but it’s not solid. It feels like a piece of paper. Maybe he’s written down a spell for me.
“Stay safe,” I call as they move away from me.
“You, too!” Zillow replies.
This sucks. I want to go with them and exit this madness.
With a sigh, I face the opposite direction and claim my pacball, the reward for choosing to stay in this damn labyrinth and be tortured. The Lost Boys are getting closer. I assess which direction I think they’re coming from and then bolt the opposite way.
My bangles clink as I move, and I try to grab them and run so I don’t tip off my pursuers.
Smurfs appear in front of me, along with the banquet line of the cafeteria.
Is this a sign I’m no longer being chased? I don’t hear anyone. I stop and wait, in case I’m ambushed.
It’s silent, aside from the smurfs, who talk quietly among themselves. Picking up my tray, I accept my food. I don’t even stop at the dessert smurf, who glares at me when I walk by. Why do they bother bringing dessert, if I can’t have it?
I eat my fill.
Rather than stand immediately after eating, I hug my knees to my chest and rest my head back against the uneven stone at my back.
I need a break. A real one.
With my stomach full of food, and exhaustion weighing me down, my eyes drift closed.
And then immediately snap open. I escaped Beetledude and am not about to risk a run in with Freddy again.
Forcing myself to my feet, I begin walking once more.
I saunter around a corner.
A door awaits me. Just one. It hovers in the middle of my path.
I approach it cautiously. It’s the color of the doors from Jared’s space cruiser. If I remember correctly, he said it led to the dungeons.
“Not this time,” I say to the labyrinth.
I try to walk around it, but it moves directly into my path. With a growl of irritation, I try again. It shifts with me.
I do a quick fake out and dart to the other side.
There’s no outsmarting a magic door. It widens until it fills the entire space between the labyrinth’s walls.
Spinning, I find the door behind me as well
“Fine. You win. Back to the dungeon,” I say with a groan.
I open the door and step into the darkness beyond.
I’m on the spaceship, but not in the dungeon. I recognize Jared’s personal quarters after having hung from the ceiling like a bat.
Uncertain what I’m doing here, I walk through it, until I hear someone stir.
Startled, I peek into the bedroom.
Jared is sitting up, panting, staring at the wall opposite his bed. His brow furrows, and he looks around, as if he doesn’t quite know where he is.
He’s shirtless, too, which immediately distracts my curiosity about why he’s confused to wake up in his room. He’s toned and muscular with flat abs and narrow hips.
Perfect. Always perfect. Knotted scars cover the skin over his heart and down his abdomen, but even those manly marks enhance his appeal.
He’s still a villain determined to take over the galaxy, I remind myself.
He glances my way, and I jerk, too interested in the expanse of honey skin molded over his muscles to pay attention to what he’s doing.
But he peers past me, as if I’m not there. Sure enough, he stands and strides to the door. I backpedal, but it doesn’t matter. He walks through me.
Am I a ghost? A little panicked – but not entirely surprised – by the idea I died in the labyrinth, I pat down my body. I’m solid.
For whatever reason, I’m not meant to be seen. Maybe that’s a good thing, because he already knows I’m attracted to him.
Jared stands in the middle of his quarters.
After evaluating everything, he crosses to a wardrobe and pulls out a red shirt. He feels the material and stretches it. Stripping out of his space pajamas, he stands gloriously naked in front of me.
His back is to me but wow.
Just.
Wow.
Muscles ripple beneath bronzed skin. His shoulders, lats and back are wide, his hips slender and that ass? Round and firm. I want to dig my nails into it. Every muscle of his body is roped and defined.
It’s his thighs that truly get me. I’m a thigh girl through and through. His are thick and toned, the thighs of a soccer player.
I’m hot and agitated just watching him change clothing. I could spend a lifetime admiring his naked body without the fire in my belly burning out!
He dresses and pulls on boots that match his uniform. When he breezes past me, I follow, relieved he’s clothed and I can stop drooling and pay attention to my surroundings once more.
He goes to the door and steps out of his quarters into the hallway, where he pauses to look both directions. I’m not sure what makes him choose left.
Something is weird about this. I follow him down a quiet corridor then through a throng of men in black and others in silver. At first, Jared appears concerned about the men. His step slows and then quickens again.
Another corridor and another open space filled with minions. This time, he pays them no heed. His stride is growing more confident, and he walks down several more corridors without hesitating at intersections.
By the time he reaches the bridge, he’s … changed. From not knowing where he is to commanding his space. He ignores the men who salute upon his entrance and begins checking monitors and settings on the thousands of buttons at the workstations. He nods h
is approval to the lackey at his elbow and turns his attention to the window facing space.
We’re in front of the red planet.
I struggle to understand what I’m experiencing. It doesn’t seem possible that he woke up here, in the middle of his own life, hours before I arrived.
The scene around me fades and a second one forms.
Jared appears frozen, the world around him as well. He blinks, and his surroundings become alive. He looks around with the same confusion as before, not recognizing where he is. He stands in the middle of a market from a fantasy world, surrounded by fantastical creatures and people who are shopping for various items.
A young woman approaches him, disapproval on her features. She’s wearing a sword at her waist and carrying three more strapped to her back.
“Did you get lost?” she asks in irritation.
This is another one of my stories.
“What of it?” he snaps in return.
She rolls her eyes, and they walk away from me, deeper into the market.
The scene fades once more, replaced by a new place, this time ostensibly in my world and time. This looks like Miami. Jared is bare-chested and sweating, wearing shorts and sneakers. He’s bent over, breathing hard, as if he’s just finished a long run.
He straightens, and the world comes to life around him. I smell sea air and hear traffic a block or two over. Seagulls cry out above us.
Jared, confused once more, does a complete circle before facing the way he originally did, hands on hips.
“Hey, boss,” says a swarthy man, holding a cell phone.
This is one of my books, too.
The scene morphs again. This three-dimensional slide show picks up speed, showing a quick succession of scenes, all of which I recognize from my books.
It ends as suddenly as it began.
I stand in the middle of the labyrinth, mouth agape and heart pounding hard. During his many lifetimes in my books, Jared has been a space warrior, a deity - twice, a diplomatic older brother trying to keep his brothers out of trouble, a father with troublesome twin sons, the devil.
He appeared different in each one, but there’s no mistaking it’s him.
The original Jared I met in the coffee shop hadn’t been talking about any character appearing over and over in my books. He was talking about himself.
“No wonder he needed therapy,” I whisper.
I’m not sure what to feel. Bad, because I yanked him into and out of so many worlds, some of which he found love or lost people he cared about. Or …
How did I not notice I was doing this? Is he the only character who’s become self-aware?
I think hard back to our discussion in my world. His original question had been about my first story. He wanted to know what it was about and was disappointed when I told him what I thought my first story was. He lived that story – it’s where I found him when this insanity started.
He wanted to know where he came from. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.
What if I don’t know that answer? I recall this story but not what – if – anything came before it. Isn’t it possible I just created him along with this adventure?
He didn’t think so.
Chewing my lip, I wrack my brain for the answer I can’t recall either.
The final vision starts, and it’s my world that comes screeching to a halt.
The Red Knight of White Tree Sound.
His castle appears. He stands outside of it, gazing up at it with none of the confusion he displayed elsewhere. If anything, he’s relieved. It’s winter, and snow falls gently from the sky.
Maybe it’s why we keep seeing the snow world. The key is there, like he tried to tell me in what I thought was a hallucination after we chose to walk through one of the three doors. What if he saw White Tree Sound, and I pulled him away?
If that’s the case, why didn’t I see it, too?
“He found me,” I whisper, stunned.
I’ve been baffled since starting this journey, but I can’t remember feeling like this – as if, for a split second, my whole world rights itself in every way. I understand every moment of my life with clarity, and I know the answers to all the questions I don’t know I need to ask. I’m close, so close to the only answer that matters, the one about -
“You look like you could use a drink,” says the beverage gremlin that appears in front of me.
And then, just like that, the clarity is gone, leaving me confused and struggling to understand how one character among hundreds decided to find me. I almost had … something. What?
This gremlin has a mustache and several bottles of alcohol on his cart. He’s alone. I guess the coffee gremlin and soda gremlin knew I needed something stronger.
“I do,” I reply and start towards him.
Then stop.
“This is a dream,” I say suspiciously.
“It is.”
“Was anything about what I saw real?”
“Everything is real.” He smiles.
I knock back a shot of whiskey, grimace, and hold out my tumbler for another shot. The gremlin pours two shots in. I chase those down, too, and hand the glass back.
“You better run now,” the gremlin says.
A shadow falls over me from behind. Hunching my shoulders, I turn slowly, already knowing what’s there.
Freddy smiles.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up!” I whisper to myself and backpedal.
I whirl and sprint away, into the big, white house that magically appears in front of me. Sliding to a halt in the foyer, I look around wildly before deciding to go upstairs. I bolt and reach the top, pausing to listen.
He growls as he enters the house.
I shrink back from the railing and tiptoe down the carpeted hallway towards one of the bedrooms.
“Wake up!” I hiss at myself.
The stairs creak beneath his feet as he pursues me.
Holding my breath, I press myself against the wall beside the door.
I can’t hear him move down the hallway and listen hard.
The door to the room next to mine whines as it opens. Easing my door open, I listen for the sound of him entering. Freddy’s claws rake along the door.
I peek out. The brim of his hat disappears through the doorway adjacent to mine. I suck in a deep breath and then bolt for the stairs. His claws graze my arm as I pass the room where he is. Sheer terror drives me away from him. I all but fall down the stairs and vault out the front door.
He’s there, on the porch, blocking my path. I halt fast enough to fall and fortunately, avoid the claws that sail overhead.
Someone grabs me from behind.
I scream.
The space knight darted away from the massive beasts towards a thatch of forest. The horrible, two-legged dinosaur managed to drag down one of the larger dinosaurs and was devouring it.
He shrank away from the scene. He was safe for now.
A growl sounded behind him.
Tensing, he turned deliberately to find a second two-legged beast behind him. He looked up and up and up until he could see the beast’s fangs and face.
The dinosaur roared loudly enough to rattle him to the core. He bolted away without caring in which direction he went. He smelled the rot of meat on the beast’s hot breath and zigzagged through the forest and around wide trees, using his agility and size to keep the beast from eating him. A blur in his peripheral warned him that the creature was about to bite him in half. He threw himself to the ground. Teeth longer than his legs snapped inches above his head. The beast, too large to maneuver like he could, took another few steps before it could stop and swivel.
By that time, space knight had sprinted in the opposite direction. His heart thumped too loudly for him to hear the beast chasing him, but he felt the trembling of the ground.
A door appeared in front of him, the one Elf had recognized and claimed led to a world ruled by an evil queen.
Any other time, he would’ve avoide
d it. This day, he had too many reasons to escape the danger at his back.
He slammed into the door and vaulted through it, landing in a snowdrift on the other side. A roar sounded. He struggled to his feet, horrified by the idea the beast was following him.
The door swung shut, sealing him away from the beast.
The space knight panted and dropped to his knees. He sucked in deep breaths of frigid air. He was grateful to feel the cold instead of the beast’s hot breath.
He sat, eyes closed, in the silence of the snow world, his face upturned towards the snowflakes.
When he had caught his breath, he climbed to his feet and looked around.
He’d been here before, with Elf. As before, two pairs of footprints were at his feet, leading towards a hill.
The space knight stood in place, struggling to understand what he should do. The first time, this place had been a hallucination. Was it still? If so, could he snap himself out of it whenever he wanted to?
Drops of blood beside the boot tracks arrested his attention. Something stirred deep inside of him. Not a feeling, not an instinct warning him. If he didn’t know better, he would’ve thought he recognized the tiny splotches of blood.
It wasn’t possible for drops of blood to be familiar!
Frustrated, he decided to follow the tracks.
He was too hot and wired from his encounter with the beast to feel the snow world’s chill and made his way through the waist deep drifts more easily this time. Reaching the top of the first hill, the space knight paused for a few deep breaths before plunging down into the snow again.
The children appeared to have walked through several inches of snow while he sank three feet into the snow.
The space knight continued up the next hill, which taxed him more than the first and slowed his progress. He pushed on. If this was a hallucination, then he wasn’t going to waste time waiting for it to end. He’d seen this world several times, the first time in a dream before entering the labyrinth. While this experience could have been a hallucination, this world held some sort of significance for him.
He stopped to rest at the top of the next hill only to see the children he followed no more than a hundred feet ahead of him. One wore a purple coat, the other a black one. The space knight darted down the hill with urgency he didn’t understand.