The Maze The Lost Labyrinth - By Jason Brannon Page 0,63

I swung the hammer as hard as I could this time. The chains binding the prisoner’s hands rattled as he slumped against the slaughterhouse wall. This time the ensuing pain felt like a rope was wrapped around my neck. I clawed and gasped for air, but I didn‘t fall. Instead, I stared at that dead part of me and smiled, grateful that I’d made one more improvement in my life. Suddenly, I could breathe again.

By now the other flaws in my heart saw what was going to happen to them, and they weren’t at all happy about it. They taunted, jeered, cursed, and flung insults at me. I tried not to listen, focusing instead on thoughts of my family and how I was doing this for them.

“You’re getting pretty good at this,” Connie said as I murdered greed in cold blood and tried hard to ignore the gut-wrenching torment that followed.

“This is hard work!” I gasped for breath, exhausted from all the swinging. “I didn’t realize there would be so many of them. It’s no wonder this maze is so big. It had to be to hold all of my vices and shortcomings.”

Connie laughed and urged me on to the last standing figure.

“It’s okay to admit that you don’t love Amy anymore,” he said to me. “Karen’s a beautiful woman, and she’s been thinking about you ever since she laid eyes on you again in that restaurant. Although you may not want to admit it, you‘re still in love with her. Your heart won‘t lead you astray.”

I silenced that lie and fell against the wall, panting and struggling for breath. Although I was tired, I felt invigorated too, like a hot air balloon with no sandbags, floating higher and higher into the sky. My soul felt free to fly.

The spilled blood from my recently executed victims pooled on the killing floor, slowly trickling toward an iron grate. I saw my own reflection cast in that slick of maroon, but I also saw visions of home. Judith and Carl Beckett and Amy were being held hostage in my living room. Darrell Gene seemed agitated and angry. He also seemed different somehow. He was maniacal- possessed.

Inexplicably, I heard a strange, subtle music that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. Someone was playing a set of pipes in my living room. With each crescendo of the music, Darrell Gene lashed out wildly with the knife while talking to someone I couldn’t see. He was discussing my family with an unseen enemy, and he didn‘t seem at all happy about it. I remembered that leathery-winged demon on my roof I had seen earlier, and I knew that’s who it was.

Time was running out. For the moment, however, everyone was still alive.

I just hoped I could escape the maze in time to make sure they stayed that way.

Chapter 30

“I’m praying for you,” Carl said. The words were like a blasting cap rigged to dynamite and Darrell Gene exploded as a result.

Before Carl could react, Darrell Gene threw Amy to the ground and moved toward him, needling him in the back with the tip of the knife. He pushed hard enough to pierce the skin. Carl whimpered but refused to cry out. Darrell Gene pushed a little harder, driving the blade in about a half-inch. Carl gritted his teeth and groaned, crying out to God to help him.

“Don’t ever tell me something like that again,” Darrell Gene hissed. “The last thing I need is prayer. That‘s what people kept telling my daddy and me after mama left. ‘We‘re praying for you,’ they‘d say. But I know they never did. They were nothing but a bunch of liars. And even if there were some of them who remembered us at night, it didn’t do any good. My life still turned out miserably.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Judith reminded her captor. “You could let us go and we’d forget the whole thing.”

“I know I don’t have to. But it’s kind of fun watching you squirm.”

“God loves you,” Carl bled onto the carpet. “Nothing you can do will change that.”

“Shut up!” Darrell Gene placed his hands over his ears. “Don’t say another word to me, or I promise I’ll cut you again!”

Carl wisely kept his mouth shut, but Amy wasn’t about to be bullied into silence. Although it wasn’t clear what she was saying, it was obvious that she was praying too.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?” He grabbed Amy