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

The typewriter spat out the paper with a final ding. Dana picked it up and closed her eyes instead. She could hear the strange shifting of wood on metal and opened her eyes to see that the typewriter was now an ornate desk clock. Picking it up, she inspected the surface, looking for hidden limbs.

“Are you really in there?” Dana asked. In response, an unseen flap opened, and a cuckoo jumped out at her, announcing the top of the hour. “Okay. Well, I guess we are just waiting for Sleeping Beauty to wake up.”

The clock chimed again.

Mike watched the cyclops swing to and fro. He wasn’t entirely certain whether to laugh, but two things had occurred to him while watching her.

The first thing that he realized was that the vines had restrained Sofia in such a way that her arms had been pulled up behind her. Her breasts had pushed hard against the fabric of her blouse and, in conjunction with the tightness of the vines, had caused the fabric to split, revealing an enormous amount of cleavage.

The second was that this woman was the reason everyone was now in danger. She had lied to him, treated him like garbage, and was currently glaring at him as if this was somehow all his fault. His hands were now clenched into tight fists, and it took a couple of deep breaths before he could relax them.

“Are you going to keep staring at me or what?” Sofia asked.

“I haven’t decided yet,” he told her. “You lied to me.”

Sofia rolled her eye. “Of course I lied to you. You were only going to get in the way if you came with us.”

“And yet here you are. I don’t know if Abella or Tink are even alive, and I believe the blame lies solely on your shoulders.” Mike walked closer to her, contemplating the thick foliage that had pinned her in place. “As for getting in the way, it looks like I made it this far without your help. I’m busy trying to save your ass so that we can get out of here and stop a coven of assholes from breaking through the geas.”

“The house is under attack?” Sofia asked.

“Yes. Yes, it is. I left the others up there to deal with it so that I could come down here and find Tink so that she can show me how to turn on the house’s defenses.”

“Which is something she needs her goggles to do. Or rather, you will need her goggles.” Sofia frowned. “Years ago, Emily tried to make amends with Tink by giving her those goggles. It was after an incident involving some guy who broke in. I don’t know the full details. When the Caretaker uses them, they allow the home’s defense system to be properly activated. I thought it was a terrible idea at the time, and the fact that Tink didn’t teach you how to do that right away only proves that I was right. However, Emily and I weren’t exactly on speaking terms when this happened, so it wasn’t like she was going to listen to me anyway.”

“I’m hardly on speaking terms with you right now.” Mike was near enough that he could see she wasn’t so much tied but completely wrapped up. So many vines currently held her in place that he wasn’t sure which one to cut first. He didn’t need her face-planting on the stone beneath. “It occurred to me, on my very long walk into the forest and back, that you have been particularly nasty to me.” He chose a vine and grabbed it only to jump when it tried to curl around him. He drew his dagger and sliced through it. “Shit, that startled me!”

“Now you know why I’m stuck.” Sofia cast her gaze toward the floor.

Mike saw the hilt of her collapsible sword.

“I tried to cut myself free, but there were too many of them. My sword is sharp, but I wasn’t quick enough. The few that grabbed me lifted me up into a whole tangle of these things.”

“Right.” Mike contemplated the structure of the vines again. If he wasn’t careful, he could end up getting grabbed. He would have to cut selectively.

“I wish our positions were switched,” Sofia grumbled.

“Oh. I’m sorry. Would you like someone smarter to come along? Seriously, what’s your problem with me?” Mike selected another vine, then cut it. This vine retracted into the darkness like an elastic band, the other half dangling pitifully off Sofia.

“I wasn’t being rude,” Sofia muttered. “It’s my gift. If our positions were switched, I could have you out in a couple of minutes.”

“Your gift?”

“Do you know why a cyclops only has one eye? We gave up the other for the ability to see the future. We were tricked, and the only future we got to see was our own deaths.” Sofia let out a sigh. “However, after centuries of living with this curse, the magic has evolved, creating some interesting variations. Being able to see the deaths of others was highly uncommon but was a great moneymaker. My variation is one of the closest to what should have happened.”

“You can see the future?” Mike asked.

“Only about thirty seconds in and not always. Something has to trigger it. My death, for one. I have seen myself die hundreds of times. Extreme emotional or physical sensations, like a bucket of ice water being dumped on me or pain. All those things.”

“All the traps that were set off.” Mike looked back at the door to the Labyrinth. “You set them all off, didn’t you?”

“I was running from the Minotaur. Tink got caught in a cage, and when he got near, I tried to lure him away.”

“How did Tink get caught in a cage?”

Sofia shook her head. “It was such a simple trap. A stone pedestal in the middle of the room had her goggles on it. She got excited and ran up only for the goggles to vanish and a cage to drop