The Maze The Lost Labyrinth - By Jason Brannon Page 0,14
twice, I stumbled and scrambled to my feet in hopes of eluding the bull-creature that was hot on my heels. Yet no matter how far or how fast I ran, the beast kept up with me and never seemed to tire.
I ran, despite a stitch in my side and a cramp in my leg. I stumbled along in darkness, desperate to get away. My mouth was dry, and my lungs burned. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck.
And still the beast drew near---
At one point, I felt the monster’s rancid breath on my neck, and I woke up screaming and gasping for air.
What I saw only reinforced the need for oxygen.
The dining room setting was just as it had been when I had entered the room. Nothing was broken. Nothing was torn. Even the place settings were the same. It was as if my psychotic breakdown had never happened.
“This can’t be. This is insane.”
Like before, the fortune cookie sat in the center of the table, an edible oracle. With trembling hands, I picked it up, wondering if I was doomed to spend all of eternity repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
Once again I broke the cookie open, fully expecting to find the same message as before and was surprised to read something different.
“Think of this as a place where you can discover who you truly are. Angels and demons abound in the depths of the labyrinth if you know where to look. Some will be out to kill you and delight in the damnation of your soul. Others will try to help you and bask in the light of your spirit. The choices, however, are yours to make. You will own the triumphs---and the mistakes. A man shapes the course of his life by the decisions he makes, and you will write your destiny inside the walls of this maze. Underneath the lid of each tray you will find something to prod your conscience, to defibrillate those unfeeling parts of you that have become numb. Delight in the pain that follows. It’s part of your healing. Guilt, as you well know, is a bitter pill, but it is one you must swallow. Keep one with you at all times, if only to serve as a reminder.”
I raised the lid on the first tray and was surprised to see a tiny golden pill that looked like it had been made from solidified amber.
“Guilt?” I scarcely believed what this little pill was purported to do.
I half-expected to lift one of the lids and see a sign that said “Eat me” or to be greeted out of nowhere by the disembodied smile of a Cheshire cat. But this wasn’t Wonderland.
Like the first, the other trays each held a pill, and I pocketed all of them except one. I popped it into my mouth and dry-swallowed, not really believing that there would be any consequences from the action.
I suddenly remembered something that I hadn’t thought about in years. It was a summer day. I was five. The clerk at the grocery store was too busy pricing spaghetti sauce to notice me slip a pack of gum into my pocket. Nobody had ever known about that. I had never gotten caught, but the act was catalogued in the database of my memory, and I had just inadvertently opened the file.
After that, things only got worse.
My head felt like it was going to self-destruct, and I fell to the floor in a twitching, jittery heap of half-remembered sins. I was a swimmer about to be consumed by a tidal wave of transgressions, and I suddenly forgot how to tread water. All at once, I recalled everything I had ever done wrong, from the time I had broken a window at City Hall to the time I cheated on an exam in college to that time not more than a few hours ago when I had gone to Karen Jantzen’s house with thoughts of infidelity on my mind. It was like mainlining pain, and I wanted nothing more than to make the horror stop.
“Oh God!”
I wept. Although my eyes were still closed, I heard the smooth swoosh of a door sliding back in its tracks.
When I looked up, an entrance had opened at the far end of the room.
Chapter 10
The room I entered next wasn’t so much a room but a nexus. Passageways branched off in six different directions like the spokes of a wheel radiating out from a central hub. It was up