My Boyfriend The Assassin: HIS

The Maze

July 16 - Prague

Why am I back in Prague?

Why are assassins always in Prague?

If you ever cross anyone: if you ever make any real, mercurial, enemies, take a tip from me:

Don't ever go to Prague.

If you do: if you manage to piss off a mob boss by getting a little too close with his only daughter, don't take her on holiday to Prague.

If you do, you're going to wind up in my pocket. It will be a blurry photo of you looking somewhere other than down the tele lens that's been used to take it. It will be pasted on to a yellowed form that was last revised when Stallin was in power, containing only the briefest of summaries about your life, typed out on the world's last Underwoods. It will tell me only what I need to know about your life to be able to hunt you down and end that life.

If you make yourself an enemy, and you find yourself in Prague, chances are I'll be looking for you. If you find yourself in Prague, I'm going to find you. You can squeeze yourself into the darkest corner of the most complicated of mazes, and I will be there, waiting, with a match to light your way.

It all started in a maze. It was THAT maze, back in our hometown, on Halloween.

It was a thing they did every year: trucking in dried corn stalks to the high school's playing field. They'd braid them together using one part bright orange, plastic snow fencing and one part black garbage bags to carry over the whole Hallowe'en theme. While the bright overhead arclights of the field were on, the maze looked harmless. Simple. Hardly a challenge at all. They'd keep them on for the kiddies, who'd wander by the field at the end of the Trick O' Treating runs to wander through the maze, laughing and trying to loose their parent/guardian so that they could have unsupervised access to their bulging sacks of Candy.

Once it got around 8:30 or 9pm—when the candles of the jack 'o lanterns were starting to gutter and all the childlike wonder of Hallowe'en had cleared from the streets, they'd cut the lights over the maze and plunge the whole thing into darkness. It was meant to be closing time, but in the dark, that same, simple maze would grow like shadows on a bedroom wall. The older siblings of the same children who had laughed their way through it earlier would come back, drawn by the kiddy parts of them that still wanted to be scared of the dark. Some would seek out the secret corners of the maze, like their little brothers and sisters, except they'd bring dates with them, and they'd be looking for something sweeter than candy. Others would do it to freak out their friends, hiding behind rows of corn stalks to rustle them and cry out in otherworldly voices when someone passed by.

And then there were people like me, people who were only interested in the challenge of running the thing in the dark. I'd started doing it when I was probably far too young. My parents would have taken me to the maze while the lights were still up, then brought me home and put me to bed. I'd wait until I heard their heavy tread retreat back down the stairs, and I'd be up and to the window, quietly pusing up the glass and climbing out onto the trellis that clung to the house just below my window. I'd climb down around the rose bushes, and set off into the night, keeping to the shadows along the way. We didn't live far from the fields that hosted the maze, and I could make it there and back—after running the maze—before my parents checked in on me on their way to bed. 

My favourite part wasn't the sneaking out—that was easy and had long ago lost any sense of peril. It was the challenge of remembering the maze that I loved: picturing what I'd seen in the light, and trying to follow my same path through it in the dark.

Thinking back on it now, and how much I enjoyed it, it's little wonder that I wound up doing the things I do. I can't tell you how many times all that practice in the maze paid off while I was trying to navigate silently through someone's house/apartment/hideout.

But back then, it was just about the challenge: about being able to solve the puzzle without being crippled by my fear of the dark.

It became a tradition for me. Even after I was through high school and well into university, I'd make sure to be home for Hallowe'en and for the maze. By that point I was skipping the initial, lighted pass through it and was only running it in the dark: relying on night vision and sense of direction to get me through.

It was on one of those runs that I first met her. 

By that point I'd been doing this so long that my night vision was pretty good, but I heard her before I ever saw her. Her breath, coming fast as if she'd been running from something for a while and now panic was starting to set in. She breathed hard, right in my ear.

I nearly jumped out of my skin. 

She'd come out of nowhere and completely surprised me, but she still hadn't realized I was standing right beside her.

Her breathing sped up as the panic took over, and in a small voice, she whispered "help."

My heart was still racing from having been surprised in the dark, and I couldn't believe she couldn't hear it pounding in my chest. She spoke again, a little louder this time, her voice even more tremulous.

"Help!"

My eyes had adjusted enough, and as she started to turn on the spot, hands groping out blindly, trying to find one of the walls of the maze, I could distinguish pick her out from the darkness enough to reach out my hand and take hers in mine. 

She froze. 

Which makes sense because some random guy had just grabbed her hand in the middle of a dark, and very creepy, maze.

I had to think quick to make up for my utter lack of thought up 'til that point.

"Don't worry. I'll find a way out."

The words flowed from my mouth before I'd really had the chance to consider them. She turned to the sound of my voice, and I felt some of the tension go out of her hand. We didn't say anything more, but when I moved and tugged on her hand, she followed without question. Her hand held tight to mine, and as I guided us out of that maze, I felt gooseflesh prickle across my arms. My head started to swim, as if I was moving through a dream, and I realized it'd been a long time since anyone had made me feel this way.

"I'll find a way out."

It comes back to me often these days, years later, when business takes me away, and my only link to her is a phone line across continents. I know the distance wears on her like it wears on me. "I'll find a way out," I tell her, and I say it as much for me as I do for her: hoping it will be true. 

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Woah. This was meant to be a much more light-hearted chapter about how Assassins always seem to wind up in Prague, but Danielle's introduction of the maze and the words in her story kind of took my down a rabbit hole. It's a pretty cool way to collaborate: havong one person come up with something completely random, then having to respond to it and fold it into your own telling.

Also, when talking to Danielle about my ideas on our Wattpad Wednesday writing session today, I was about to tell her that Harrison basically learned to be an assassin by doing stuff like navigating this maze in the dark as a kid. However, before I could say it, she replied "You know, it would be cool if hime running around in the maze as a kid helped him train to be an assassin."

No joke. 

This is more than a little whacked. 

Danielle was working on finishing up her story, Crumbs, today, so hopefully we'll get back to updating the two stories at the same time next week.