Loretta's Labyrinth

The Top of the Labyrinth

The fall could've been weeks, years, or decades. I slept while falling, yet found I never grew hungry, nor thirsty. Before my first doze, the air was humid and cold from the sea-salt air on the surface; when I awoke, it became warm and dry. This would be comforting, but it felt as if the Labyrinth was trying to tell me "This is your home," the deeper I fell, and never bothered to change throughout the days.

I now lie at the on the cold stone at the pit's circular bottom. Overhead, a faint light looms, though too far away to light my surroundings. The stone I rest my back upon is different from the stone from my memory, which was built under the market: it's dusty and sticks to my fingertips as I rub it.

My survival of the fall was enough for me to contemplate whether I even existed here. I'd grown over a foot taller while falling and had begun to sprout facial hair. New teeth, crooked and jagged, grew and replaced my baby teeth which fell with me and rattled when I landed.

The vague sound of wind blows down and pit, and with it, the long-awaited body of Father falls. In front of me an explosion of bones echoes upwards, and blood splatters on my forehead and hair. Unlike myself, he didn't survive. I walk forward and touch his body. It's cold and stiff like metal, and little blood other than what splattered of my face leaks out of him; it seemed he'd been dead a long time before he landed.

I sat back at the edge of the well. I barely felt conscious; my mind pulled to my memory, and I often found myself shouting at nothing while trying to make sense of long-passed events. All I had felt was empty, like something had been taken from me; although maybe it was that I had been falling while I was purposed to be living. This happened while falling, but I was now able to focus and ground my attention on the rugged rock beneath me and calm down.

Time was nonsensical, but I was certain of the many steps I took around the bottom of the pit while I searched for an escape. The pit was empty, and the walls were flat and unclimbable, with the exception of two rectangular holes set eye-level where bricks should've been. But as I crawled through them, I found they connected and unfortunately left me off at the other end. I crawled through them again and again, hoping they were different openings from which I'd found before, and the outcome remained the same, but this time something was different.

They holes should've been the same, for there was a white brick standing out from the others at the end of the left opening which gave off a small light. I pressed against it thoroughly, but it never gave.

As the stench from Father's corpse filled the pit, I crawled through the left hole once more and pried desperately at the stone, but it was hopeless. I continued through the tunnel and took a sharp turn to exit out of the right entrance as usual. When I got out, Father's stench was gone, and when I searched the pit, his body was no longer there. Although, the light from the entrance of the pit was still present overhead.

I crawled through the left hole again, where there was another white stone at the end. Continuing through it, I emptied out into another pit where Father's body was absent. I repeated this several more times, crawling through the left-most hole and exiting through the right, though the system looped, and I inevitably ended back where Father lied.

"I . . . know it might sound stupid to you . . . but I'd like to get out of here," I muttered, though the darkness didn't respond. "I'm glad you're down here with me. I didn't want to climb up and meet you on the surface! Why I dreaded you grabbing me as I fell, and I want to find Mother soon."

"I . . . got scared." Father frightened me all too much for me to speak of his arrival properly. "I'm sorry! I-- I didn't want you to fall down here, and I know I deserve to be here." I scrunched my face, and imitated how a child would cry though tears were foreign to my age. "I want Mother to be here; I miss her."

I sat down and clutched the key which hand never left my neck. It kept me from insanity and made me wonder of the future.

Suddenly something smacked the ground in front of me. I jolted up and crawled forwards.

I stomped over the legs of a body, it belonged to a human, but it was only Father's. I began to climb over him and encountered the fallen object atop him. There was a hand--I remembered back to the memory of Mother holding my hand--it was the same hand. Though it was long ago, it was incredibly present, and I imitated a child's cry once more. I felt her soft dress around her decrepit body, and knew it had to be her; but I still couldn't believe it.

I crawled back to the tunnel and entered it feet-first, shoving myself through until I made contact with the light stone, and angrily kicked at it with my bare foot. My toes poked out of the torn and old shoes, and my ankle was weak, but I kicked at the stone with the old souls while gritting my teeth. With several pounds, each more powerful than the last, it finally gave way.

There was a room behind it, lit up and free. The stone I'd collapsed was not white, instead the illusion was from the brightness of the room behind it piercing through.

After falling through a blackened pitch for endless years, the immense light, and all it shined upon proved too much for my eyes. My surroundings were blurry and distorted, and my eyelids weren't enough to block out the overflow of light. I turned my face back towards the stone below me and shoved frantically with my hands to crawl out of the tunnel.

I stared at the two corpses in the pit for several hours, but couldn't percieve them. Many days may have passed before I could make out what was before me, and I rarely blinked, because I didn't want to miss the chance to see them clearly. My vision returned gradually. When I finally saw them for what they were, I still couldn't believe it was mother who'd fallen before me, even as she laid with all her beauty sapped from her.

I took a look at myself. My hands and arms were grown, but smooth, uncut and frail: not prepared to handle the Labyrinth if that was where I truly was.

"You fall in to save me, didn't you?" I asked her corpse with a voice hoarse and stretched from shouting before. "You heard my calls while I fell, and jumped in . . . I grew more and more hopeless I'd ever escape the deeper I fell, but I never gave up. I missed you! But now I have nothing at all.

"I'm glad you weren't alive to mourn, Mother. I'm sorry."

I plant the stone back in its proper place to block out the light, and sit down. I bury my face in my lap and try to sleep, though something keeps me awake: the light above the pit, as my eyes have grow accustomed to light, won't fade.

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Next part: Climbing Out

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