Page 12 of Of Monsters and Mazes

“What charity.” I snapped. “Let the records show that King Jericho is a kind and reasonable man.”

“Now, now. I wouldn’t want any record to show such a thing.” The Devil King whispered darkly. “Enough of the sarcasm,” he continued before he unceremoniously plunked me onto the forest floor, I scrambled to my feet and started brushing away the clumps of mud and grass from my too-short skirt. “My options were quite clear and quite reasonable. If you don’t want to be a little mouse running through my death trap, you can give up or wait out the clock and enjoy the wonderful perks of being my personal pet forever after. If you insist on your little tantrum and refuse to play along, you can die on the floor of the Labyrinth and let your blood feed the land.”

“Or option three is that I get through your rainbow maze, take back my cat, and you can jerk off in your hand.”

Jericho looked down at me from his superior height with such relentless amusement. “I guess that is an option. In theory anyway. But will it work out in execution?”

With that, he vanished, leaving me to stew in my daunting situation.

He better be on his way to get Pumpkin his wet food.

Chapter 5

Gathering my wits, I took a ten count to just breathe and orient myself to my surroundings. In front of me now was a dense forest. There was enough light from the pink and orange sky to light a narrow pathway forward, but the rest of the forest was shrouded in black.

Would there be normal animals in there? Bears? Wolves? Jaguars? Or maybe it would be something uniquely Tartarus. I imagined something akin to cannibalistic demons or heinous bugs. Dragons could be fun. Although if this alternate world was full of monsters, they’d probably consist of creatures I’d never seen or imagined, rather than beasts that mimicked the animals of earth

I could speculate all I wanted, but the longer I thought on it, the worse my fears would become. It wasn’t like I had much choice other than to press forward, so it was to my advantage to get on with it.

My only respite was that I’d seen the forest and the maze from the top of the cliff, so I had some idea of the direction and distance I needed to go. That, and I was now reasonably confident Jericho wanted me to survive long enough to entertain him. He didn’t have to save me from that fall, so he possibly wouldn’t let me get eaten before I’d even made it to his maze. He was sweet like that.

I groaned at my own inner sarcasm, then I straightened my skirt, tied back my hair with a hairband that was fortunately still on my wrist from the gym, and I set my sights on going forward.

My whole career I’d always been driven. I was the first to volunteer for every task, and I always worked the hardest even when it returned a hundredth of the respect. After a point, not even the biggest naysayers could deny the effort and value I’d brought to the table. Soon, I’d make sure this lazy, cat-stealing king learned that you don’t fuck with women who have been running uphill since the first time they were told “girls can’t do this” in pre-pubescence.

He thought I couldn’t get through his stupid maze in seventy-two hours, so I would do it in ten.

Feeling fired up without any actual skill or knowledge of the situation to back my confidence, I took my first step into the dark shadows. Leaves crunched under my feet, creating the only sound in an otherwise quiet stillness.

A prick of pain sparked on my arm, like a bite from a deer fly in the summer. I slapped my shoulder, where I splattered something akin to a mosquito. Or a very tiny fairy?

I stared at the small insect that had been crushed on my palm for several seconds, trying not to acknowledge its near human shape, when another prick on my other shoulder had me swatting another one to death.

Disturbing. I tried to resist the urge to murder more of the itty bitty people, feeling weirdly guilty despite the fact that they bit me first, and I made my way deeper into darkness.

I was maybe half a mile in, when the quiet started to feel deafening. There was no breeze through the leaves, no chirping insects, no quiet movements in the distance. It was dead silent now. Eerily so.

I’d never experienced this level of soundlessness. The city was always abuzz with the ambiance of traffic and chatter and construction, and even the country often was filled with the music of insects, distant animals, or weather.

The noiseless fog persisted, thick, prominent, and unsettling. My ears searched and strained for some sort of sound, seeking any possible twitch or rustle. At the very least, I should have been hearing the ticking clock in the sky. But nothing. This forest was a total void. If there were monsters in the trees, I didn’t hear any of them following me.

Which was good, I guess. It’s not like I wanted something to chase me through the woods or anything. I certainly didn’t want a monster to come out and attack me.

But also, like, what the hell? Where are the traps?

No vines to trip me. No big logs to climb over. This was literally just a quiet forest. Was I speaking too soon? Surely something was about to jump out at me. Jericho seemed to like cheap scares. He was definitely the type to try to lure someone into a sense of safety and security before he turned the tables on them.

I wasn’t going to fall for it, but I also couldn’t slow down knowing there was a clock in the sky, ticking away my chance at freedom.

I stopped suddenly, and I listened some more, still waiting for that surprise.

That dead silence remained. The leaves no longer blanketed the forest floor, so now not even my steps made a sound. I stomped my feet for the comfort of some sort of squish or tap in this void, yet even that no longer worked.

Had I gone deaf? I patted my ears, and I couldn’t even hear the sound of my palms displacing the air or slapping against my face. I was still here. I was still whole. I could see, smell, and feel everything around me. So where was the sound? I’d lost that one and only sense, and despite no obvious danger, a nagging feeling of disorientation started to crawl through my gut.

The forest must have had an enchantment that blocked out noise. This place was magical after all, so it could probably work like that.

I resumed running, hoping to get through the trees quickly and find my senses again. I couldn’t hear my breathing, internally or externally, and it was starting to freak me out.