Conversations with a Monster

Jade isn't certain how she managed to wind up in the mythical labyrinth that houses the minotaur, but she does know that this is probably the worst vacation ever. If only she could find a signal.

Conversations with a Monster

I don't know what to do.

I've been running around here for hours, trapped in some stupid f*****g maze with a monster-man roughly the size of Hagrid breathing down my neck like he's preparing to take a bite.

“I don't see well in the dark,” he complains as he trudges along behind me, like he hasn't had thousands of years to let his eyes adjust to the dark. He reaches for my hand, but I smack it back down.

“I can't focus when you're so close,” I state, a warning in my tone.

The minotaur should be an angry, fearsome beast, but whatever passion and hunger was once in him, it's gone now, and I should be relieved. I would say that it's the anxiety that's making me mean, but I tend to be a bit of a b***h most of the time, and he is beyond irritating. If only he didn't whine so much...

I try to make out his appearance. My eyes can barely trace his bulky form in the dark. When I first stumbled down into the maze by accident he was drawn to me by the light in my phone, but not enough to get close. He trailed behind me quietly until the light went out.

I guess that people don't generally respond well to being approached by ancient monsters.

Now the battery in my phone is dying, I still have no signal, and this great hairy beast of a man is standing on my heels, panting like an excited dog at the prospect of escape. I can vaguely remember my ninth grade English teaching stating that the minotaur ate people, but asking just seems like a bad idea. What if I put a bad thought in his big head? The only worse thing than being stuck down here for forever is the thought of being stuck down here in something's stomach.

I stumble down the hall, trying to listen for the voices of my parents or the other women on the retreat, but it's eerily quiet.

“So, are there any other...” I trip over my next word. Is it insensitive to call him a monster? Mythological beast will probably start him asking his own tiresome questions. “...living things down here?”

“A few,” he growls, and I have the idea that he's shrugging in the darkness. “Nothing as friendly as you though.”

I'm not friendly, so this is definitely not a good sign.

“Why haven't you found your way out yet?” I ask.

“I can't. It's too dark and the maze shifts if anyone gets too close to the exit.”

“That's impossible,” I snap back, reminding myself that running into a f*****g minotaur in a f*****g mythological maze is also impossible.

“I've been running in circles since they put me down here.”

“Did you even try to escape?”

“I tried taking the walls down,” he admits after a moment of clomping along behind me quietly.

I grumble, but continue on, pulling my phone out to search for a signal.

He backs away from me, and for a moment I understand him; the light is almost blinding after spending so much time engulfed in darkness.

I turn to look at his face, and am shocked by what I see. He isn't a beast, but a man. His hair is so long it falls to his feet, and his eyes are large and dark in his pale face. Though he has the hooves of a creature, he doesn't look the part of frightening monster. Despite his hulking figure, he looks somewhat sickly, frail.

“It's been a while, huh?” I ask, waving my phone around and watching his eyes follow it. He screeches and stumbles back when it begins to ring.

“Jade?” my mother's voice is loud in the quiet tunnel. “Where did you go honey? I know you're an adult, but you shouldn't just take off-”

“Mom!” I interrupt her lecture. “I'm stuck underground. I need you to get help!”

She begins twittering and crying and lecturing again just as my phone began to beep long and slow to signal the death of the battery. I rush to end our call and try my father's phone again. This time I am successful. I repeat my message frantically before the battery goes dead and the phone shuts off, leaving us in darkness again.

From there, I sit and wait.

Eventually, the minotaur returns to sit across from me.

“Do you have a name?” I ask after a while.

“Not anymore.”

“I'll call you Harry.”

And he needs a name, if only because he might be the last person I ever get to talk to, and the silence is too heavy here.

“I don't know what to do.” I admit after a few silent moments.

“I've been there..”