Labrys

First posted April 2023.

There is a monster in the maze. I don’t know much else. I know I haven’t seen sunlight in days, I know I’m not wearing shoes, and I know there’s a monster in the maze.

It’s probably been weeks. I might even have been here for months. I never had an especially good sense of time, even when the sun still rose and set. Some people have an innate sense of time that runs like proverbial clockwork. Before I was here, I had a friend who could always tell you the time within five minutes of the actual time without looking at a clock. They could never explain how they did it; if asked, they’d shrug and say, “I just know.” I envied their unexamined knowledge, their effortless confidence. They would know how long they’d been in here. I don’t. To me, an hour is a day is a week is a month, and a decade is ten minutes and half an hour is a century. The years fly past me while the months drag endlessly on. Somehow, it is always Monday.

The dirt beneath my feet is dusty and firm. When I scrunch my toes in it, there’s hardly any give. The top layer moves around a bit and, for my trouble, leaves sharp, angled pebbles between my toes. Beneath that is solid rock. It makes me think of the towns in old Western movies: sepia-toned oases in the bone-dry desert. The town I am in is exactly big enough for the two of us.

Before I address the monster, however, I should note that there’s one other thing I know, which is that this is a maze. Some have called it a labyrinth, but a labyrinth is different. In a labyrinth, there is only one path. It winds and bends but leads you, unavoidably, to the end. In a maze, a monster can hide. Branching paths and dead ends spin you around and dizzy your senses. In a labyrinth, you never sink to the ground, exhausted and weeping, lost and angry, with weariness filling your bones where the marrow should be. In a labyrinth, you will find the monster.

But we are in a maze.

I have not seen the monster. You may wonder, then, how I know it exists. Time is an artificial invention; by nature, the world is not divided into seconds or minutes. It is merely a system for us to make sense of things we don’t need to make sense of. I know the monster exists the same way you know there is air in your lungs, or cells in your bloodstream. I know the monster exists the way you swim in the sea and know there are fish gliding beneath you. Acknowledging the monster does not take confidence or cleverness. Only acceptance.

I have not seen the monster, but I feel it. I walk down dark paths and hear the slither of scales, the heaving of breath, the cracking of bones. When we are close, the air between us warms — ever so slightly, but I am attuned to it now. Sticky pools of congealing blood mark the paths down which I am not the first to traverse. The monster is patient. We will find each other eventually.

Mildew and metal flavour the air I am trying not to taste as I sit with my back against a wall. The absence of sound has weight in the air on my shoulders, and the conspicuous nothingness pricks at my ears. It’s dark enough that there is no difference between my eyes being open or closed, but I close them all the same as I dream of tightly-wrapped rosebuds refusing to bloom.

On the other side of the wall, I hear the slide of a human foot in the dirt.

My eyelids fly open and I scramble to my feet, pressing my ear to the wall. I hear the whispered howl of rushing wind blowing through the stone, like the ocean does in seashells. Beneath it, I hear the sound of shallow breath.

“Hello?” I ask, and hear it echoed on the other side.

“Who are you?” we both say.

I tell them my name, but hear no reply. I ask again.

“This way,” they say. Bare feet thud on the ground as they run up the path, and I follow. As we run in the dark, I cannot feel the walls around me. The lightness of the air is terrifying. I wish for the comfort of weight.

My outstretched hands hit solid stone and the footsteps on the other side of the wall stop. I wait for a word or a movement — any instruction or hint.

“Hello?” My words bounce off the walls, answering myself with my own question.

I swallow and move my fingers along the wall, following the bend down the path. I lose track of how many times I turn and in which direction. I call out for the person on the other side of the wall and hear nothing but my own voice thrown back at me by the maze.

The air changes, and with a shiver I realise I have not been careful. Faced with the hope of a friend, I forgot who else was in the maze with me. Sweat and salt lace the air. I feel every grain of dirt stuck to my face, my arms, my feet.

Flickering light shines from around the corner. There has never been light in here. My heaving breaths reverberate and I blink several times, trying to banish the hallucination. The orange glow stays when I close my eyes, embedded in my vision’s memory.

Frozen where I stand, I try to think of something to say. I don’t know if the monster speaks my language, but it doesn’t matter. My last words would be for me, not for the monster, and the monster does not care.

I could turn and run from the light. I could hope the monster doesn’t catch me. But I have spent so long in the darkness. If I’m going to die, I want to die in the light.

Around the corner, I see a torch affixed to the side of an arched doorway. Its flame dances, casting undulating shadows on the wall. I take a deep breath. I think of the flame as my heart, picturing it burning down to embers in my chest. I step up to the arch, and I am met with my own face staring back at me.