Face of a Future Yet to Be

Elias took a deep breath and stepped into the room. The first step made all of the televisions hum to life, and he was surrounded by a field of black and white on the many screens. He breathed in deeply, the last unlabored breath he would be able to manage.

“Get to the hallway behind the…tree,” he murmured to Serena. “I’ll keep that thing off of you until you escape.”

“Huh?” Serena stared at him with wide eyes. “No wait, you’re the one that said…”

His mind made up, Elias brandished the horse figurine and charged into the sphere. A blur of movement appeared in his right periphery, and he stumbled backward. The briefest flicker of a body appeared in front of him, black, white, and brown. Then the body leapt into another of the screens with the same blinding speed. It glided along the ground noiselessly just as Kuchisake did.

The speed brought to mind the volleyball match against Kuchisake and Bill. But Kuchisake had been limited to moving back and forth. In an arena like this, this creature could move from every angle. Elias looked around, but found no sign of it. Fatigue quickened his breaths to audible pants. For the briefest of moments, his tired arm drooped slightly.

The air shifted, but there was no sign of the creature.

By the time he’d realized where it had appeared, its breath ran hot on his neck.

“You’re too pretty to kill. You’ll stay here with me. Forever.” A knife swung down in his periphery. But pain did not come, and instead the creature shrieked as though in pain.

“You’re not touching him,” cried Serena.

Elias turned around to see it slipping back into another television.

While he’d been preoccupied trying to figure out where the creature would next appear and attack from, Serena had joined him in the sphere and not escaped like he’d asked. She readied the knife, the blade wet with green fluid. Droplets of the same green fluid speckled the floor.

“All that talk about us escaping together, and you want to stay behind to fight her? Don’t give me that,” Serena said. Her back pressed against his, and she compensated for his blindspot. And Elias did the same for hers. The support pushed the fatigue out of his mind.

“Not fair, not fair!” shrieked the creature, and this time it emerged from the television directly hanging above their heads. Serena and Elias stepped away from each other, and it landed between them with an unsettling grace. Before it could swing its knife, Elias smashed it in the face with the leg bone horse figurine. It tried to evade, but the blow sent it staggering. It stumbled back.

It wasn’t so quick to return to a television screen that time, and Elias finally got a proper look at the creature that had been snapping at his heels ever since he arrived in the awful labyrinth.

She was a girl that appeared around Elias’ age. Long dark bangs concealed one of her eyes. Her visible eye was not black like Kuchisake’s, but instead a piercing blue like Bill’s. It seemed to peer into Elias’ soul. She wore a cowboy hat with a wide brim like Bill’s, but the color was black instead of brown. Depictions of teeth along the brim made it seem like she was in the maw of a great beast. Or perhaps she was the great beast waiting to devour any that entered this labyrinth. She wore a long black dress adorned with a stitched flower pattern. There was a cut just below her left shoulder from where Serena had slashed it. Lime green fluid seeped out and spilled down the sleeve. The wound did not deter her, as her left hand maintained a firm grip on the knife. A bruise blossomed on her right cheek where Elias had slammed his leg bone weapon into her face.

Seeing that she was a normal girl made Elias’ eyes soften a little. The resemblance she shared with Kuchisake and Bill drew a long and shuddering breath from his lungs.

“Hey, are you…”

The girl bared her teeth at them. Her teeth ended in sharp points. She retreated back and lowered herself such that she was close to the ground, like a beast. And then she raised her right hand. The forefinger looked misshapen, and Elias realized that the top of the finger was gone. The sound of curdling flesh filled the air. The sound made Elias’ stomach churn, and then he watched as the girl’s right forefinger bubbled and frothed, before regenerating.

And then she pointed it at Serena as though her hand was a handgun.

“Move!” Elias threw himself into Serena, and forcibly moved their bodies out of the way. The dark-dressed girl shot her fingerbone like a bullet. It would’ve pierced through Serena’s chest if Elias hadn’t pushed her aside, and instead it pierced the television Serena had been standing in front of. The glass shattered with a deafening crack. With a final, weak hum, the television became a lifeless black box like all the others that Elias had smashed throughout the labyrinth.

The dark-dressed girl shrieked and brandished her knife instead. She retreated back into another of the television screens, but Elias and Serena retreated to the one she’d rendered useless. A safe space from which they knew she couldn’t emerge, so they didn’t have to fear attacks to the back. She struck at them again and again. Her knife moved with such speed that it parted the wind with an audible woosh of air. Her slashes would’ve even rivaled a fencer’s swift stabs, and if Elias were alone, he would’ve been dead twice over. But where he failed to anticipate the dark-dressed girl’s swings, Serena came to his defense.

Fortunately the dark-dressed girl didn’t fire those fingerbone bullets again. Maybe she was worried that she would accidentally destroy another television, and lose another angle to attack from with it. No matter her reasons, Elias wasn’t about to question his good fortune.

But the second wind from realizing the exit to this nightmare lay at the end of this room felt so long ago. Elias knew it’d only been a handful of seconds, but his fatigued mind stretched that to many minutes. His breaths had grown labored, and he couldn’t raise his weapon up in time to completely fend off her strikes. Small cuts and knicks slipped through.

Serena too breathed hard, but something else took hold amidst the pants for air. Her mouth broke into a smile too wide to be comfortable, the same one she’d worn when standing at the foot of Elias’ bed, and again when those mice Elias had helped her catch had grown still in her grip.

Between the sweat and grime on her face, the cuts on her body, and that too wide grin, Serena looked more fearsome than the dark-dressed girl they’d been fighting.

They didn’t seem to be the only ones tiring out, however, as the dark-dressed girl’s arm trembled from the exertion of swinging her weapon countless times. Her gliding across the ground had seemed effortless at a glance, but her once prodigious speed had slowed to something more manageable. She breathed just as hard as them.

And then she saw the hungry smile on Serena’s face, and her breath hitched. Those eyes that had shown such joy when she’d attempted to hurt Elias and Serena grew wide. She retreated back.

“Can we stop?” begged Elias. “Just let us pass through. We don’t want to kill you.”

“I…but I don’t…what do I…” Perhaps it might’ve been because she’d been driven into a corner, but a flicker of hesitation shone in the girl’s eyes. For a moment, her gaze trained on Elias.

Serena dropped her knife to the ground. It landed with a dull clack against the floor. Elias initially breathed a sigh of relief, but this sound died in his throat when his gaze fell to Serena’s side. He saw her hand. Her fingers twitched and curled at her side, as though groping for something. As though craving something. And after helping her capture plenty of mice to sate her needs, he knew exactly what she craved.

This detail wasn’t lost on the dark-dressed girl.

“You’re not feeding on me,” she cried. Her voice trembled. “I’m the one that’s supposed to feed on you!” Her declaration filled the room, and echoed off the walls. But the aura of intimidation she once held had faded. The power she once commanded over them had dwindled to nothing, and she seemed more like a desperate girl than the monster of the labyrinth. Serena did not seem deterred, and stepped forward.

“Serena, wait. We can talk with her,” said Elias, but she pressed on in spite of his misgivings.

The dark-dressed girl retreated as Serena approached.

“I need to feel pain. The pain will keep me alive.” The dark-dressed girl brought her knife up to her mouth. The tip teased the left corner of her lips.

“Wait!” cried Elias, but the dark-dressed girl slit the left side of her mouth, and then the right. She laughed as green fluid spilled from the cuts to her mouth and onto the stone floor. The unhinged laughter filled the room, and she lowered the brim of her hat to hide her eyes. Even Serena’s approach faltered for a moment, as the girl brandished her knife. She drew in a deep breath.

The dark-dressed girl moved with blinding speed, outstripping even Kuchisake, and attacked Serena over and over. Leaps and charges into the remaining televisions let her attack from countless angles, and her body was little more than a blur to Elias. Serena remained in the center of that blur, her body moving ever so slightly to dodge.

Eventually the dark-dressed girl partially emerged from one of the televisions above Serena, and reached out with her right hand. She pointed it as though it was a gun again, and her forefinger regenerated.

Mustering the last of his energy, Elias flung his leg bone weapon with a labored grunt. It arced through air, end over end, before smashing into her head. She tumbled out of the screen and fell to the floor. Serena darted over and pounced before the dark-dressed girl could get up again. Her hand closed around the dark-dressed girl’s pale neck.

“No, please.” She kicked and shoved, but Serena’s grip remained steadfast. “You can’t do this.” The dark-dressed girl’s words softened, and her limbs could barely manage light thumps of protest.

Elias stumbled backward after that final toss of his weapon, and he fell onto his back.

“Serena,” he croaked. “Wait.”

But Serena refused to listen. Her grip tightened on the dark-dressed girl’s skin.

“I don’t want to die,” the dark-dressed girl murmured. Her words grew weaker still, and her movements faltered further still. Soon she hung loosely in Serena’s grasp, barely able to support her own weight. “Mommy, daddy, save me.” But nobody came to save her, and her body pruned and sagged, as though drained of life. Wrinkles covered every inch of her flesh, and her blue eye receded deep into her face. She gave one last, labored breath, before her shriveled body burst into a slurry of lime green slime and red flecks with a wet pop.

Serena stumbled backward, hand sopping wet. She approached Elias. That crazed smile had abated, and a sheepish look appeared in its place. She looked away from him, as though afraid to show him her face.

“Sorry, I was just…I didn’t have a choice. I had to.” Her words came quickly, as though she were convincing herself just as much as Elias. “I needed to do that if we were going to survive. I did it to protect you, Elias. Yes, it was to protect you.” She tried to help him stand, but Elias barely had the strength to stay on his feet. Serena brought his arm around her shoulder, and bore his weight with a weary grunt. “Come on.” She half-led, half-carried Elias out through the passageway, passed the sirentree and chairs, and to the source of the breeze.

Elias felt something different about Serena’s body. A very faint rippling and contortion of her skin, so faint that he wouldn’t have noticed if his front hadn’t been pressed up against her back.

“You doing okay?” he said.

“I’m fine.” She didn’t turn around to look at him, and something about her voice sounded odd. “She was…more filling than the mice.”

“You need a minute?” he said.

“I said I’m fine,” she said. “We need to find a place we can hide until…is it morning?”

“Still nighttime, I think,” said Elias. Eventually the open passageway came into view, and it was indeed still late at night. That whole excursion through the labyrinth couldn’t have taken more than an hour.