The Maze The Lost Labyrinth - By Jason Brannon Page 0,9

been many, many years since I had read fairy tales, and I hoped that a detailed working knowledge of The Brothers’ Grimm wasn’t a prerequisite to survival here.

I crossed my fingers that things would become clearer if I read more of the notes and picked up another bottle. I pulled the cork and fished out the scrap of paper. The words were written on a very old sheet of yellowed parchment.

“Use this note as a guide and keep it with you at all times. The doorway to this labyrinth is opened with sinful intent, and you walked in brazenly. You will find the exit at one turn or another---or not at all. The walls will show you the way if you‘re smart enough to figure them out. A word of caution: beware the minotaur. He feasts on transgression.”

The note was signed ‘The Architect.’

I read the short message a couple of times, pondering its meaning. Like the note about Hansel and Gretel, it seemed to be a riddle of some sort. I had never been any good at riddles. Although I considered myself to be fairly well educated in a variety of subjects, I couldn‘t decipher any meaning in the messages.

My mind screamed at me in denial, but everything around me was real. I wasn‘t going to wake up and realize that it was all just a game created in my mind. I broke one of the bottles and pricked my finger with a sliver of glass to prove that point. The cut bled, and the pain was as real as any I’d ever felt.

A host of scenarios played in my head, and none of them had happy endings. I imagined that I had been kidnapped by terrorists and thrown into this prison. I thought about movies I had seen in the past and wondered if this was all part of a psychopath’s sick game.

I didn’t have any enemies that I knew about. There were a few people I’d rubbed the wrong way over the years, but not to this extreme. Besides, this seemed a little elaborate for something as mundane as a grudge.

Having eliminated all of the possibilities I could conceive of, I trembled with fear of the unknown.

“Get hold of yourself!” I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. “There has to be a simple explanation for all of this.”

I blinked my eyes in rapid succession and wasn’t surprised to see that nothing changed. The walls were still scintillating, and I was still standing there, bathed in a blue glow.

“Beam me up, Scotty.” I tried to lighten my own mood with levity. If anyone or anything heard me, they didn’t respond.

I unrolled the small scrap of parchment again and read it a second time, thinking that it must have some answers.

“The doorway to this labyrinth is opened with sinful intent.”

The last thing I remember before arriving here was bleeding out only a few feet from Karen’s door. Was this maze a punishment for the sin I had planned to commit? Or was this a schism in my psyche, a break from reality that could only be repaired through intense psychotherapy and psychotropic medications? The wall beneath my hand certainly felt real enough. Of course every successful lunatic has managed to convince himself that his delusions are real. That’s why they’re delusions.

The thought didn’t make me feel any better. Neither did recalling the reason why I had gone to Karen’s apartment in the first place. Although I didn’t want to admit it, I hadn‘t tried very hard to resist the trappings of the flesh. I had gone to Karen’s hoping to rekindle an old flame. Amy had accused me of cheating, and despite all my protestations, I had decided to prove her right. That decision led me here, but where was here? And what sorts of things did I face because of that one indiscretion?

“The walls will show you the way.”

Each word seemed to echo and ricochet as I read them. I could almost imagine the sounds flying past my head like ill-fired bullets, but the acoustics weren’t the most fascinating feature. The codes hidden in the walls were more intriguing. According to the note, deciphering their meanings would be the key to getting out of this---whatever this was.

The symbols, I deduced, had the ability to shift and recreate the structure of this place. Walls could be moved and doors could be opened with a simple touch. The only trick would be figuring out which symbols controlled what and then