Labyrinthine

Labyrinth

I woke up slowly, not realizing at first that my alarm hadn’t gone off. I was going to be late to school! I realized with a start, yanking the soft covers off of me when a cold blast of air nearly knocked my breath away. I woke up in my own bed, yes, but I wasn’t in my room. I was standing on smooth, icy flooring. Yet even stranger than that were the walls. Surrounding me where four soaring walls made of large, rustic stones covered in ivy.

Just as I was about to have an anxiety attack - I’m claustrophobic - I noticed a small opening. Thank God, I sighed. I headed towards the exit, not wanting to stay in this tiny room a second longer, but suddenly I noticed a small, yellow post it note on one of the walls. I walked towards it, wondering what it could possibly say. It couldn’t make this day any weirder.

I gasped as I read the note, “You have 1 hour. Don’t touch the walls.”

I don’t know how long I stared at that note until my whole body seemed to jerk into action. This had to be some sort of test, or trap, or maze. Or all of the above… I couldn’t waste my precious time now determining why this was going on. The only thing I could do now was get out of here immediately.

I sprinted out through the tiny exit and almost ran headfirst into one of the now-foreboding walls. I skidded to a stop and glanced to my left and right. I realized that I was correct on at least one account. This was a maze. To my left and right there were paths that ended only in more paths. How in the world would I be able to get out of here in under an hour?

I yanked myself out of my despair and chose the path to my right. I sprinted until I arrived at an intersection with four options (if you included backtracking as one of the options). My head spinning, I hastily assessed my options. The straight path was identical to the one I was on, the right one was narrow and dark, and the one to my left was slightly brighter and wider.

Naturally I chose the seemingly safer, left path. I ran for about thirty yards when I something tugged at my legs and I landed face down in the dirt. Simultaneously I realized two things: one, the flooring had disappeared, turning into dirt and I hadn’t even noticed, and two, a vine was wrapped tightly around my ankle and pulling me towards the wall, the wall I wasn’t supposed to touch. I panicked and started pulling my leg back with as much power as I had in me. When pulling with my leg wasn’t working and I was a mere six inches from the dreaded wall I started scratching at the vine with my nails. With one inch to go, the vine abruptly released me.

I had no time to marvel at the miracle that just happened, I was making no progress on releasing myself, the vine just decided to release me. I started running again, and the next time I arrived at an intersection with a bright path and a dark path, I took the dark path. Maybe the people who invented this maze assumed that I would take the safer-looking path.

The problem with this section of the maze was the fact that I couldn’t see my feet or even what was in front of me. Additionally, the flooring changed yet again, but this time is was lumpy with random bulges sticking up that I was unable to identify. Needless to say, I kept tripping and catching myself. Also, this part of the maze was so narrow that I occasionally felt my arms brushing up against the ivy walls. The first time my arm brushed against the wall I jerked away, assuming that my skin was about to start burning off or something. However, my attempt to get away from the one wall made me bang against the other wall. I could feel a plethora of scratches across my back, but worse than that, my arms had gotten tangled in the vines. I started screaming and finally tore my way out of the vines.

I sprinted as fast as humanly possible away from that horrid hallway. The next junction that I came up to had five possible paths. At this point I crumpled to the ground and started crying. I felt hopeless. There was no plausible way that I could ever get out here in an hour. I didn’t know how much time I had spent in here already.

In the midst of all these futile thoughts I heard a fuzzy voice come from inconspicuous speakers. “You have 30 minutes.” The speaker appeared to consider something for a moment before adding, “Get up. There is certainly a way to get out of here.”

I looked up towards the walls trying to locate the speakers, but it was impossible. With more effort than it probably should have taken, I forced myself to my feet. I leaned down and brushed the dirt from my scratched knees. Note to self: not a good idea to fall to your knees in an area with never ending changing flooring. It was such a ridiculous thought that I laughed at myself. My laugh echoed through the halls of the maze reminding me of where I was. I contemplated for a moment the possibility that I was going crazy. Could someone go crazy in less than 30 minutes? 30 minutes! I only had 30 minutes, probably less now, to get out of this place. And the person on the speaker did say there was a way out. It has to be possible. I took the path straight in front of me, ignoring all my other options. From now on I was just going to attempt to get through this maze without over thinking every single choice.

I ran straight for an undeterminable amount of time. I kept going straight at every single intersection, hoping that if I continued straight, maybe I would reach the end of this maze. Suddenly, I heard footsteps behind me. I whirled around, but it was to no avail. I saw nothing. Thinking that it could just be my mind playing tricks on me, I continued running. Moments later, I heard the same footsteps. This time, I didn’t stop entirely thought, I just slowed down. I strained my ears to identify between my footstep and the mysterious person’s footsteps. There was definitely a different set of footsteps. It was not echoing and it was not my imagination.

At the next corner I decided to turn right and wait for the person to follow me. As planned, I made a right at the next intersection and turned around to see my follower. I gasped when I saw a small girl that could be no older than ten years old.

She yelped once she saw that I noticed her and dashed away from me.

“Wait!” I yelled after her. Somehow I knew that she had no intention to harm me. She had turned right, which would mean that I would be continuing straight yet again. Maybe this little girl knew something that I didn’t.

Just as I turned the corner to follow her, I saw her in the distance. I yelled again, “Wait! I’m not here to hurt you I swear!” The words came out in bursts because I was panting to catch my breath while chasing the girl. Suddenly she stopped and turned around.

I caught up to her and leaned over, hands on knees, attempting to catch my breath.

“Who are you?” Her voice came out small and terrified.

“My name’s Hannah. I-” I stopped myself realizing how crazy my story sounded.

“Did you wake up here?” The mysterious girl’s voice was gaining strength, appearing to come around to the idea that we may be in the same boat.

“...Yeah.” I said, surprise coating my voice. “How…?” I trailed off.

“I did too.” She said simply. “My name’s Rose, by the way.” The girl, Rose, added.

“Oh.” This was all I could manage to say.

“So should we keep going, or do you want to die here?” An edge of impatience crept into her voice for the first time in our conversation.

“Yeah, let’s go, I’ll go first.” I felt for some unknown reason that I needed to protect her. Rose said nothing, she just nodded, so I ran past her and continued straight.

After a while of running, with no end in sight, I finally proclaimed, “I think we’re running out of time.”

I had stopped and turned around to face her, but she just moved past me. “Come on, we have to keep going.” Rose said, determination in her voice.

“There’s no way we’re going to make it out of here alive!”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Rose replied, though her voice was so low, she could have been talking to herself.

“What even is the point of this?” I wondered aloud. “How are we supposed to get out of here in one hour and why?” I looked around at the walls with the stones covered in vines, as if they were going to give me the answer.  “There has to be something we’re not thinking of.” I said, exasperated.

I struggled to catch up with Rose. She wasn’t running, but she was walking at a brisk pace. She also hadn’t replied to any of my questions. “Rose?”

“What?” She asked me, as if she had failed to hear anything else I said.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah. I don’t know, Hannah, I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”

It was blatant that we were both reaching our limits.

The voice crackled over the speakers again, “Ten minutes remaining.”

Had it truly only been 20 minutes? Neither of us had stopped walking, even with the voice from the speakers had startled us. I guess neither of us really wanted to address that we only had ten minutes left to get out of this maze. Especially when we had no new ideas.

We came to another intersection, but for the first time it only had a left and a right path. Straight ahead of us was the same wall that’s been enshrouding us. The lack of an extra option did not appear to phase Rose, however, she just turned left. Perhaps because she was on my left side and just didn’t want to waste any more time.

“Wait Rose…” I said to her. There was something I knew we had to figure out about this wall.

She turned around, an annoyed look on her face. “Why are you stalling?”

I placed my hand on the wall, disobeying the one and only rule that the ominous post it note had given us.

“What? Hannah! Stop!”

“Rose... “ I trailed off, not believing myself. “Nothing is happening.”

“What do you mean?”

I took my hand off of the wall and inspected it. “We can touch the walls.” I replied.

An idea occurred to me and I reached out for one of the vines clinging to the wall in front of us. I yanked on it, testing to see how strong it was. By some stroke of luck, the vine held steady. That meant there was a possibility that it would hold my weight.

“Rose do you know what I’m thinking?”

I glanced over at her, and I saw a terrified expression on her face. She was staring with horror straight up to the top of the wall. We couldn’t even see the top of the wall; that’s how tall they were.

“There’s no way we’re going to climb all the way up there. What if it never ends?” Rose, ever the optimist, was full of doubt.

“We can do it. What choice do we have?”

So the two of us latched onto vines that appeared to be strong, found footholds for our feet in between the stones, and started climbing. When I was about a few feet up, my foot slipped out of its foothold and I yelped.

“Hannah!”Rose screamed, terrified.

I found another foothold and replied, “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine!”

Rose was slightly below me - she didn’t want to start going up first - and to the right. I was assuming that she didn’t want to take her eyes off of the stones though to glance up at me.

“We gotta keep climbing!” I yelled, and then reached to grab a stone slightly higher than the one I was holding onto now. We continued climbing up the formidable wall in silence. I knew without a doubt that we were running out of time.

With a couple of more close calls, we had finally made it to the top of the wall. The top was several feet wide; I could have laid down and stretched out from one end to another. I suddenly looked up and out at the horizon to see what the world outside of the maze looked like. At first, I only saw an expansive flat and grassy landscape, but on the very horizon I could see buildings. Some of the buildings appeared to be even tall enough to be considered skyscrapers. There was hope; we just had to get to civilization.

The intercom voice suddenly announced, “Two minutes left.” Oh my God there’s no way we’re going to get all the way down there in under two minutes. We were busting it just to get up here in only 8 minutes.

Rose immediately started getting in place to go down the wall. I guess now that we could see the end, her fear was gone. “Come on let’s do this.” She said to me, not even looking back at me.

“Alright.” I said, and with that one word I dismissed my fear of heights entirely. “We have to find a really strong vine, secure our feet on the walls, and walk down.” I told her, reciting a list as my rock-climbing teacher had told me repeatedly. I guess that information does come in handy.

Rose said nothing, she just nodded, so we picked out the two strongest vines and prepared to go down the wall. We both situated ourselves on the wall and began our descent. About halfway down, I heard a shriek to my right and I jerked my head to see what had happened.

“Rose!” I yelled. She was dangling off of the cliff, holding onto only the vine. Her frantic feet kicked, attempting to get back on the wall; the vine was swinging wildly because of her kicks. I realized instantly that panic was not going to helpful at all and warned her, “Rose! Calm down! Make your legs go limp!”

She looked at me with an expression that said I was insane, but after a few moments she stopped and did as I had instructed. Slowly, her vine stopped swinging wildly, and once Rose was mostly steady and facing the wall I said, “Okay now - be calm - and place your feet back on the wall.”

After a moment’s hesitation she complied, carefully lifting her feet and placing them back on the wall. “Good.” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. We continued downward.

Suddenly, the abhorrent, mechanical voice came back on and started counting down from 30, “30… 29… 28…”

My eyes flashed downwards, assessing how far we were from the ground. I had no idea what was going to happen when the voice reached zero, but I wasn’t going to wait here and find out. “Rose, start pushing off - it’s kind of like jumping downwards - we have to get out of here!” I screamed and didn’t wait to see if she was going to follow my directives.

Rose must have had the same sense of urgency as I did because she immediately did as I told her too. We reached the ground as the voice reached ten, I didn’t feel safe; I wanted to make it to the city. Realistically I knew I wouldn’t make it that far, but I was going to get as far away as possible.

“Run!” I screamed to Rose as my feet sprinted towards the city-lined horizon.

Just after the voice proclaimed, “One…” I felt a blast of heat across my back and hear a deafening explosion come from behind me. I grabbed Rose and dove towards the ground, covering her, and attempted to protect her from any falling debris. I knew what had exploded.

Once the air appeared to settle, I risked a glance back and realized that my prediction was correct. The maze that had encaptured us had exploded entirely.

For as much as I wanted to believe that we were safe, I knew that we wouldn’t be until we reached civilization. “Come on. We just have to reach that city.” I said lightly to Rose. Neither of us had enough energy to run, but we attempted to keep up a relatively quick pace.

We didn’t stop until we reach safety, the city.