Hedge Maze 1

The entity is no longer a suggestion; no longer a thing lurking in the recesses of the house, a haunt biding its time to jump. It’s here, before her, a visible threat.

It is a void; a complete lack that makes up the figure holding the lamb to its chest in a sick mockery of comfort. Darkness eating itself, swallowing its own tail over and over again. A shadow that has somehow taken solid form, slipped inside the suggestion of a person.

She expects the lamb to flail, animal panic sending a white-hot warning through its hindbrain to flee. Instead, it goes limp -same impulse, different mechanism. Little legs dangle and its head dips forward in boneless surrender. Still, docile, a gentle plea to be let go.

One of the dark hands moves, sliding under the creature’s chest with a slick covetousness that she feels the echo of on her own body. The palm cups the base of the slender neck, fingers folding around the baby soft wool. The animal doesn’t stir, doesn’t fight the hold. She stares into its frightened eyes, the stupid, wild wideness another mirror. Another reflection.

Its placidness makes her angry; its inaction sits hot and heavy in her breast.

Her heart rate kicks up, tripling as fear floods her system. She grips the earth beneath her hands hard, pulling up full fists of grass and soil as the silhouette’s own hand tightens. The dark palm moves, lifts the lamb’s head back almost lovingly, slow and measured. Fingers trail up its chin, muzzling the creature in a gentle cage.

It still does not fight. It does not cry out. Only its eyes broadcast its desperation. She wills her body to work, to stand and pry the creature from filthy hands, but she’s frozen. Stuck to the ground by some unseen force. An insidious part of her mind wonders at this inaction; is she truly unable, or has her own trepidation stilled her? Kept her down? Is she the lamb in the thing’s arms, limp and helpless? Her mind goes blank when she spots the knife the shadow wields.

It’s the knife snatched from the cake; the weapon lost to the tumultuous storm of the pool. How this thing has come to possess it, she hardly knows, but she has no time to contemplate the mechanics of its reappearance as the silhouette brings the glinting edge of the blade to the lamb’s throat.

“No.” The words escape her, small and shaky. A whimper falling from numb lips. “No, no, no, please,” she begs, looking at the dark, featureless oval of the being’s face. There is no humanity for her to appeal to, nothing beyond the vacant depths.

The cut is quick. One movement. Clean. For a moment nothing happens. There is a stillness removed from time, a quiet precipice that builds and builds and builds. The crash comes slowly; a faint red line blossoms across the animal’s neck, thin, contain just until it isn’t. The hot spray hits her face, a grotesque shower of blood that fills her eyes, and nose, and mouth before she has a chance to turn away. Distantly she’s aware that she’s screaming, can feel the rough burn of it tearing up her throat, but she can’t hear anything aside from the muffled whump of her heart in her ears.

The creature is dropped unceremoniously; limp weight crumbling upon the ground in a thoughtless sprawl. It isn’t dead, not yet. She watches the stuttering rise and fall of its brittle chest, the pink tongue lolling from its gasping mouth, the whites of its frightened eyes. She feels sick; feels beyond sick, beyond horror, beyond any level of tangible emotion. This event is simply too unbearable to feel.

She pries her gaze away from the creature, tracking up the black legs of the looming figure until she finds the knife still brandished in its hand. I’m next, she thinks -knows. There is no time for sorrow, no time for sympathy towards the dying, no time to remain motionless like the lamb. Her eyes fly back to the key around the animal’s neck -she ignores the red that has soaked into the ribbon, the same red that has coated the fresh snowfall of its wool- and she’s reaching out for it before she’s truly aware of moving. When her fingers close around the hot, slick metal, she pulls.

The key comes free just in time for her to snatch her hand back and avoid the downward swing of the blade. The knife plunges into the ground hard, sinking deep into the soil. She yelps -a frantic, animal sound- before getting her arms beneath her. She pushes upwards, her legs scrambling to assist in getting her upright. Her footing is precarious, equilibrium not quite synced, and she stumbles over herself in her haste to move. The only saving grace is the shadow’s momentum has been slowed thanks to the knife stuck in the dirt. It pulls and pulls, but the blade only moves in increments. She’s able to make a run for it well before the weapon is dislodged.

Back into the labyrinth she plunges, a newer, more pressing urgency licking like hot flames at her heels. She doesn’t know where she’s going, doesn’t have the time to think, she just hopes the turns she’s taking lead her true. Those pounding footsteps from earlier return, the now known entity trying to close the gap between them. She’s returned to the familiar role of prey, the sad, sought after creature.

She can’t judge how close or far the thing is based on its footfalls; the open space only succeeding in amplifying sound rather than pinpointing it. All she knows is she can’t stop, can’t allow any lapse in time where the silhouette can bound over the scant space her early start has afforded her.

Green blurs around her once more as her pace picks up. She turns, and turns again, each new path leading further into the bowels of the maze. Time speeds up, trips over itself; seconds become minutes become hours, overlapping until there is no distinction. Time is, and she is, and both rush forward at an unwieldy pace. She flits through a small gap in the wall -another turn in a series of turns she can hardly keep track of- only to emerge in what must be the centre.

Somehow, she takes the scene in; ornate topiaries of rabbits arranged around a large, marble fountain, rose bushes ringing the large circle in beautiful riots of red, and pink, and white. Picturesque in any other circumstance, but an annoyance as she now must determine an exit path. She moves towards the perimeter, running the outskirts of the round as she tries to absorb her options. Halfway around the ring, she spots something peaking from beyond the other side of the fountain. Her eyes must be playing tricks on her, but as she grows closer the object comes more fully into view, materializing with a reality that can’t possibly exist. A door. A freestanding frame in the middle of this maze.

Oasis. Salvation that somehow feels like damnation.

She spots the silhouette from the corner of her eye, a dark flash emerging from one of the openings to her right. Its appearance is sudden, unexpected. She thought she had more time. Foolish.

The figure is fast, much faster than she could ever hope to be. Adrenaline spikes, acidic and hot through her veins, and she pivots sharply so her body is angled towards the miraculous door. Her legs burn from all the walking, and running, and swimming she has been taxed with already, her lungs ache from the same strain, but she pushed forward despite her exhaustion. She has no choice but to run. To try.

The door grows closer, inch by agonizing inch, as she closes the distance as quickly as she can manage. She can feel the entity at her back, the cold she hasn’t noticed radiating off it in icy waves. The chill brushes her back, sinks deep into her flesh and sits, festering. She can feel sweat beading down her face, slipping down her neck, leaving clean trails amongst the tacky blood of the lamb still clinging to her skin. She stretches her arm out before her, extending the key towards the door like a homing beacon. The key must land right, must slip into the anticipated lock and turn as smoothly as possible. When she’s within close enough range, she lunges.

Please, please, please, she beseeches to any higher power that may be listening.

The metal scrapes against the hole, catches, but does not sink in.