Radley's Labyrinth for Horny Monsters by Annabelle Hawthorne (highly recommended books .txt) 📕

“I’m dreaming?” Beth asked hopefully.

“No. This place is a figment, but it is my figment. It is real.” She lifted her head, the hairs on her face never parting. “My name is Jenny. You’ve been here before.”

Yeah, I doubt that, Beth thought to herself. “Okay, Jenny, fill me in.”

Jenny sagged against the wall. “No time for everything. I am exhausted and cannot speak long. You are in the Labyrinth, a maze, a skip, a hop, and a jump away!” Jenny shook her head, placing her hands against her temples. “No, wait. That’s not what I meant. You are here with Mike. You need to find the others.”

“What others?” Beth asked.

“Others like Lily. But not Lily. Lily is at home. You don’t know the others.”

Jenny wasn’t making any sense, but at the mention of Lily, the morning came back to Beth. The car crash, the story Lily had told her, the demon in the mirror. “Will the others hurt me?”

Jenny shook her head. “The Minotaur might if he catches you. Avoid him at all costs. He will charge you what you cannot afford. Put it on my tab!” Jenny tightened her hands into fists, pressing them even tighter to her head. “Dangerous. He’s dangerous.”

“Minotaur?” Beth asked. “Head of a bull, body of a man?”

“Don’t leave my body…” Jenny sagged against the wall, sinking to the floor. “I’m…tired.” The house shook and crumbled into darkness.

Beth was standing on the shore, kneeling over the little doll that had collapsed.

“Well…okay.” Beth stared at the river, a sudden desire to toss the doll in surfacing in her mind. Jenny freaked her out. When she grabbed onto the doll, it occurred to her that she had gone to the trouble of bringing it to this place. Whatever reason she had had for bringing the doll, she could figure it out later. After adjusting the straps on the messenger bag, she tucked Jenny back inside. Shivering, she examined the shore around her.

“I could really go for a fucking fire,” she muttered to herself, climbing the slope. At the top was the entrance to a tunnel. After crouching to go inside, she walked for several feet, marveling at the bioluminescent moss on the walls. She touched it, surprised to find it was slightly warm.

“I’ll take it where I can get it.” She ran her hands along the moss as she walked, fighting the chill that threatened to chatter her teeth. The tunnel opened up, and she found herself staring at a four-way juncture.

“Hey, Jenny, which way?”

The doll remained silent. Beth took the turn closest to her, keeping her left hand on the wall. Since she had no idea where she was going, the least she could do was try her best to avoid getting lost.

A thought occurred to her. She backed up to the opening she had come from, found a bright patch of moss, and used a rock to scrape the letter R for river. After heading back down her chosen path, she scratched an arrow into the wall. At least if she got lost, she would have some way to tell where she had been. She walked briskly but paused long enough to strip off some of her clothes and wring the water out of them, hoping it would help her warm up faster.

The Labyrinth itself was a fascinating place. Sometimes the paths were long with no breaks, and other times she found herself backtracking. A couple of paths had caved in on themselves, and these ones she marked with an X over the arrow. Other times, she spotted simple traps. Walking down one particularly long corridor, she saw a break ahead. Eager to get to it, she almost overlooked the scattered leaves across the path. It was only when she was about to step on one that she realized there were no trees to be seen. She found a large rock and tossed it onto the patch of dead leaves only to watch the whole area collapse inward into a spiked pit below. The pit itself was easy to bypass by walking on the edge, but the old bones in the bottom informed her that someone was here to reset the traps.

In the distance, something let out a howl. Beth assumed it was the Minotaur and was grateful that it sounded distant. Her stomach growled, and she wondered how long it had been since she’d last eaten.

“I hate this place,” she muttered, scraping PT into the wall. She turned left at the next juncture and scraped in the appropriate arrows, then promptly stumbled over a wire. Not knowing what to do, she threw herself onto the floor, eyes closed and praying. Spears crisscrossed above her, the trap maker assuming that the victim would simply continue forward. Her heart pounding, Beth crawled backward to inspect the trap. The spears were made of wood that, when Beth pulled hard enough, snapped off at the wall.

“Hiking stick,” she declared, examining the pointy end. The wood had been capped with a sharp, steel tip that had a nasty barb in it. Looking down the tunnel at the crisscrossed spears, she could only imagine the poor creature that would get caught on them. She gave the spear a squeeze, hefting it in her hand.

Another roar bounced off the walls, this time slightly closer. Closing her eyes, Beth imagined how sound could carry through this place, wondering if the Minotaur was in the next corridor over or half a mile away. Shuddering, she got on her stomach and crawled beneath the spears, her hair tangling harmlessly in the barbs.

The corridor narrowed, then curved. She imagined herself walking along a giant letter O, her mind immediately going back to Oliver, the mirror demon. Messing with a demon had to be the literal definition of playing with fire. Her pelvis was still slightly uncomfortable from the fucking she had received. Despite the chill of her damp clothes, she felt a deeper warmth at his memory, wondering if it would be