Trust Me

II

A breeze brushed over your body.

You mumbled incoherently, twisting your body to the side and blindly grabbing for the duvet. Instead, your hand was met with nothing. You frowned deeply, slowly opening your eyes and blinking through the candlelit darkness.

You lazily lifted your hands and began rubbing the sleep from your eyes, now blinking a little quicker as you tried to adjust your memories with the situation you found yourself awaking in.

You were lying on a cold, stone floor. Lit candles scattered the stone brick walls; tapestries depicting goblins and various creatures were strategically placed. You sat up from the floor, staring blankly at your surroundings as you tried desperately to recall the events of how you'd ended up there.

Babysitting. Yes, you had been babysitting for Mrs Williams because Sarah had failed to show up on time. But then what? You cared for Tobey and put him to bed, made yourself some tea and relaxed while watching some ridiculous show on the TV...

Sarah came home. That's right. Sarah returned home and tracked mud through the house. You'd started to clean it when, when...

Your head throbbed slightly. You winced and gently pressed your fingers into your temple, trying to massage away the stress headache that was quickly forming.

Oh. And what else happened?

Sarah had deliberately woken Tobey up and accused him of stealing her stuff. You came to Tobey's defence, which caused Sarah to lash out on you, too. Then, hadn't she spoken some funny words? A phrase that sounded poetic, almost lyrical. Sarah had pleaded with a fictional entity to have you and Tobey taken away.

Just like she had desired—The Goblin King appeared and snatched Tobey away, then whisked you away too.

You jumped to your feet, your memories now caught up in your mind. You spun around in a circle, frantically searching for some kind of indication of an exit. There was a doorway at the far end of the room, with candles lining the hallway that would only lead to an unknown place.

You had little choice, and so you went with it. You followed the hall quickly. You breathed shallow, trying to keep yourself undetected as you searched for an escape. You knew that you needed to find Tobey too. If you could find the exit first, then you could search for Tobey and make a quick escape.

A glass ball suddenly rolled into your foot. You paused, looking down at the crystal object, wondering how it had found you in this long stretch of a hallway. You frowned, feeling uncertain about its presence.

Then, you reached down and carefully picked it up. Your reflection stared back at you. You looked back at the hall in which you had come from, then in the direction of where you were heading. Nobody was stood nearby, but it was purely impossible for this ball to have just magically appeared like that.

Looking back at the glass ball, you watched with sudden interest as a white mist clouded in the inside of it. You blinked at the phenomenon. Then, the mist cleared and showed Tobey sitting in a room surrounded by goblins. His face was red and contorted as he wailed, his noise muted by the glass ball.

You gasped, clutching the ball tighter to the point you thought it might shatter. "Tobey," you whimpered, "oh, Tobey, where are you?"

You held the glass ball in your hand as you resolved yourself to continue down the hallway. If you were going to find Tobey quickly, you knew you needed to waste no time in hesitating. You couldn't imagine that the goblins would be kind enough to try and comfort Tobey, and from what you saw in the glass ball they were only taunting and making his crying worse.