The Maze The Lost Labyrinth - By Jason Brannon Page 0,20

The composition meant little, however, because soon the beast was going to gain access to this room, and that would be the end for me.

Over and over again, I watched the jars slide off the shelves and listened to the cacophony of shattering glass. How many people had it taken to fill this room? How long had it taken to harvest so much transgression?

I watched as sin rained down all around me, and something happened as I watched. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something irregular. The minotaur still did its best to break down the door, but strangely enough, my attention wasn’t on that anymore. Maybe I had just accepted my fate and wanted to spend my last few minutes of life focused on something other than my impending death. In any case, I saw a jar filled with a strange, blue substance sitting far back on one of the shelves. There were no discernible body parts inside that I could see; there was only the dark blue goo. I couldn’t think of anything in the human anatomy that was such a color, and I got to my feet, intent on seeing what was inside.

The moment I put my hand on the jar and caught a whiff of the heavenly scent of blueberries, I realized what it was. Good ol’ fashioned, homemade jelly. The kind you put on biscuits on Sundays before church (and trust me, I knew about church- Mama had me there every Sunday without fail). In an ordinary setting I would have immediately guessed what was in the jar, but this was far from normal.

The jar of jelly seemed out of place here, but I was thankful I’d found it. I drew a certain comfort from the jar, not because of what was in it, but because of the memories it resurrected. This was jelly just like my mother used to make, and there was safety in the thought of her. My mother was a wonderful woman, the kind of woman who could face down a hopeless situation such as this and find some thread of hope woven into the fabric of despair. I wondered what she would have done upon finding herself in a mess like this one.

I heard another chunk of the door fall to the floor behind me, but I didn’t bother looking. Instead, I twisted open the lid on the jar and took a huge sniff of what was inside. The scent of sweetened berries made everything just a little easier to bear. Mama started making jellies when the cancer came. It was one of the things she had focused on as a way of getting through it all.

The thought gave me pause.

This wasn’t one of Mama’s jars of jelly. It couldn’t be. Then again, stranger things had happened. Maybe this was where my attentions were supposed to be focused. Maybe this was my clue.

I dipped my finger into the gooey mess and tasted it. It was just like Mama made it.

Mama had been faced with her own hopeless situation and persevered. She beat cancer when the doctors said there was no way. She went from a Stage 4, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that was aggressive and rapidly eating her from the inside out to cancer-free in less than six months, but never took credit for the healing. She always said prayer was the best medicine, and she took her medicine faithfully, praying morning, noon, and night.

I wasn’t sure about my own faith at the moment, but I knew that my mother had believed in the power of God with every fiber of her being. Not once during her sickness did I ever see her get down or discouraged. Instead, she had always been positive that she was going to be healed. I regretted not being more like her. Hoping to avoid thinking about the beast just outside the door, I focused on her instead of the problem at hand. I remembered the calm assurance she’d had during her chemotherapy. I remembered her testimony about the healing nature of God. I remembered the absolute lack of fear.

What I needed more than anything else was that same unwavering belief that God could still work miracles. If my mother had been here with me, her faith was so strong she could have prayed a door into existence. I needed a miracle right now.

I focused on that kind of intense belief and tried to imagine what it must feel like to know that all