The Maze - the Lost Labyrinth (6 page)

I had no idea how long I’d been wandering around. I was beginning to have some understanding of how the Israelites felt in the wilderness. The atmosphere inside the labyrinth had gone from a damp mossy smell to dry and stale, like air trapped inside a mausoleum for hundreds of years.

As I reached the next ninety-degree turn, I noted the faintest hint of motion and caught a whiff of something that smelled like it had baked on a slab of desert highway for a week or two. I stopped, holding my torch tightly, willing the fire to keep burning. It was the closest thing to a weapon I had.

Listening and peering intently into the darkness, I waited for a couple of seconds, wondering if the motion I had seen was nothing more than shadows dancing on the walls, set into motion by my flame. It was a definite possibility. But what about the smell? Shadows didn’t stink. Or at least they didn’t in the reality I knew and longed for.

I inhaled the stale odor of eons and the pungent stench of musk. I felt like I was trapped in a system of ancient catacombs. I hadn’t run across any decaying corpses or brittle skeletons yet, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that I was walking the halls of the dead.

A sudden buzzing filled the labyrinth, seemingly from all directions, making it impossible to hear anything else. Without warning, a wave of flies filled the corridor, their wings fluttering against my skin, their mirrored eyes observing me with an alien intelligence. I was too busy swatting them away and trying to escape to hear the clop-clop-clop of approaching hooves.

I swung my torch in wide arcs, trying to get the flies off of me. The kamikaze insects were persistent, biting me, lighting on my face, flying in circles around my head. I didn’t know it at the time but they were stalling me, buying time for their master.

My skin was a patchwork of red welts and inflamed bumps once the insects had done their work and moved on. I clawed madly at the bites although I knew that would only make things worse. As it turned out, the itching was the least of my worries. A set of smoldering yellow eyes peered at me from the darkness.

I cried out and backed away, but the behemoth had his sights set on a feast. It emerged from the shadows, towering over me with a set of horns that could have doubled as javelins. Gunpowder clouds of smoky breath rolled from his nostrils, smelling of raw meat and decay. The creature walked upright on hooves as big as cinderblocks, with legs that were sinewy with muscle. Its hands were covered in a thick, coarse brown fur and were as large as dinner plates. Its face was that of an evil cow, leering at me with eyes like black marbles. A halo of flies circled the minotaur’s head, crowning it in perverse glory.

It sniffed the air once and then looked at me. Although I couldn’t be sure of its expression, I thought it was smiling with pleasure. No doubt, it knew the state of my heart and considered it a delicacy.

Fearful that I was about to die, I threw my torch at the beast and ran for my life as the minotaur howled. I was pretty sure the fire had burned it, and I knew that might buy me a few extra seconds. I just hoped that a few extra seconds would be enough time to allow for my escape. I sprinted down the hallways, taking whichever turn seemed right. The minotaur gave chase, roaring and snorting and growling at me. The gunshot report of its hooves on cement sounded like miniature explosions in the tightly-constructed maze.

It hadn’t been that many months since I had been in the habit of jogging two miles every morning before work. Unfortunately, I gradually lost focus and dedication and stopped exercising altogether. I hadn’t regretted that decision until now. My calves burned, my lungs felt like they were on fire and my side ached, throbbing in time with the beat of my racing heart.

And yet no matter how badly I wanted to stop and catch my breath, I knew that to do so would almost assuredly mean instant death. I had seen the way the Spaniards in Pamplona got tossed around year after year during the Running of the Bulls, and I had no doubt that my fate would be worse.

The beast howled with rage, and the entire labyrinth seemed to quake as the beast’s anger spread outward in waves. I made turn after turn, hoping to elude capture, and at long last I saw something that gave me hope. There was a tiny bit of light burning in an opened doorway.

I headed for that light immediately, knowing that I couldn’t run much longer. My side felt like someone had stabbed me with a hot branding iron. I was definitely not in good enough shape to play chase with a minotaur.

I heard the beast behind me, closer now than ever before. I was too afraid to look over my shoulder, but I imagined gusts of hot breath on my neck.

I reached down deep for that one remaining burst of energy like a runner on the verge of winning a race and focused on the opening ahead. The minotaur snorted behind me, increasing his efforts as well.

I screamed and forced my legs to run when all they really wanted to do was lock up and cramp. I saw the opening just in front of me, and heard the monster not far behind. I didn’t think I was going to make it, but somehow I did.

The moment I ran through the doorway, a panel slid shut behind me, effectively sealing me off from the rest of the maze. The minotaur’s cries were suddenly silenced. I heard the creature ram the door with its shoulder, and I was afraid that the barrier wouldn’t hold. But I was too tired to do anything about it.

I placed my hands on my knees and tried to regain my breath. After nearly a minute of panting and wheezing, I looked up to see what kind of place I had entered. Even after careful study, I still wasn’t entirely sure. It was like a cross between a mad scientist’s laboratory and a cabinet of curiosities. Strangely enough, I wasn’t all that curious. All I wanted was to find the exit and return to my humdrum life.

If only it would have been that simple.

I pulled the scrap out paper out of my pocket I had found in the glass bottle at the beginning of the maze. The message written on it was different this time.

“When is a door not a door?”

It was a joke I had heard a thousand times before, and I knew the answer.

“When it’s ajar.”

It was painfully obvious why the brain teaser was applicable to this situation. Glass jars lined shelves that ran the perimeter of the room. They were filled with what looked like organs, floating in formaldehyde. I did a quick mental count and figured that there must have been hundreds of them there, on display for some reason or another.

Placards had been mounted to the shelves to describe the contents of each jar. I stepped up to one and read: “Hardened heart, William James, 1999.” Inside the glass jar was what looked like a heart that had been petrified. Was it possible that a rock had eroded into a heart-like shape? Or was this something some industrious sculptor had fashioned? It wasn’t immediately obvious what was in the jar, but I knew it couldn’t have been human. Hearts, after all, couldn’t turn to stone, could they?

Another jar was labeled “Deceitful tongue, Michael Curtis, 2003,” and featured a gray flap of muscle that looked like it had been torn straight from someone’s mouth. “Lustful eye, Mitchell Black, 2005,” a third read. The eyeball spun lazily in solution, studying the world yet seeing nothing.

“What is this place?”

I browsed through the body parts like a selective shopper. There were jars containing thieving hands, ears attuned to gossip, feet that frequented dens of iniquity, lips that feasted on forbidden fruit, brains that dwelled on carnal knowledge, and a dozen other various appendages that could be used in the pursuit of evil. All of the glass jars were labeled and attributed to specific owners.

Then there were the empty jars.

I couldn’t help wondering if the architect of this labyrinth was responsible for the collection of these organs or if the owners themselves had been expected to make the sacrifice. This seemed like a place of penance, and I didn’t like the implications of that. I wasn’t sure how I would respond if expected to cut some part of myself out.

I read the names on each of the empty jars and stopped at one with my name. I was surprised to look at the next empty jar and see that my name was on that one too. And the next one. And the next one….

“No,” I whispered. But there was no mistaking the engravings laid in front of each empty jar. “James Michael Burroughs.”

The labels read like accusations.

“Malicious tongue.”

“Lustful heart.”

“Judgmental eyes.”

“Hands that work for selfish gain.”

I looked around suspiciously, wondering if someone was waiting in the shadows with a sharp knife or a Stryker saw, prepared to fill those jars. Fortunately, he room was empty except for me

I knew that if I were to give up all the things that the jars demanded, there would be very little left of me. It didn’t speak highly of the person I was. I had been reduced to my flaws, and there were quite a few of them it seemed. I had never realized some of these things about myself before, and it took a dramatic display like this to open my eyes. My sins were engraved and displayed for the world to see, and I couldn’t really argue that any of them weren’t true.

My heart suddenly felt heavy, and my soul felt cold. Was this the kind of man I truly was?

Although I knew it would hurt more than anything else I had ever done before, I fished one of the amber guilt pills out of my pocket and swallowed it. The effect was instantaneous, and the scenes laid out before me like snippets of film brought tears to my eyes.

“You make my life miserable!” I said this to Amy in a memory taken from a recent argument.

Another scene showed me surreptitiously ogling one of the secretaries at the office when I thought no one was looking. She wore a short skirt, and I wore a leering lustful mask.

In a third memory, I watched with disdain and disgust as a homeless man begged for change. I held up my hand to him impatiently and waved him away, wanting nothing to do with him.

The empty jars on the shelf deserved to be filled, but was I willing to make that kind of sacrifice? Was I willing to give up those parts of who I was? I wasn’t given the chance to decide.

Without warning, something large and powerful slammed into the door, knocking some of the jars off of the shelves. Clouds of long-settled dust filled the air, making it hard to see. I didn’t need to open my eyes to recognize the stench that pervaded the room. The minotaur was nearby. I suddenly thought I had a good idea how all those organs found their way into formaldehyde.

Frantic, I searched the room for any alternative method of escape. Of course, none were immediately obvious. There were no weapons either. I had no options, no ways of defending myself, no way of getting out of this room.

Had I simply been condemned to wander the halls of this maze until the minotaur sniffed out my sins and killed me? Was this the only reason I was here? The maze seemed much too elaborate a setup for something as mundane as murder. However, I wasn’t sure if anyone had bothered to tell that to the minotaur.

My options were limited, and my time was short. I consulted the scrap of paper from my pocket again, hoping for revelation. Once again, the message had changed.

“The fastest way to get your life together is by falling apart.”

I wadded the paper up angrily and shoved it into my pocket. I didn’t need any more fortune cookie-styled clues. I needed tangible instructions on what to do and how to get out of this place. I needed to know how to keep the minotaur from killing me in this dreadful maze, and if I didn’t figure that out very, very soon, I was going to die.

The walls trembled as the beast rammed the door again, and motes of dust displaced by the impact swirled around my face. I searched the room frantically, knowing there was something I was missing, some clue that would lead me to safety. So far every problem in this labyrinth had a solution if only you knew where to look. The problem was knowing where to focus.

Cracks appeared in the smooth surface of the door as the minotaur hit it again. It howled at me from the other side in rage and frustration. Quite a few of the glass jars had fallen from their shelves and shattered on the floor. Various body parts lay strewn about in puddles of formaldehyde. I knew if the minotaur gained access to this room, I would become just another pile of human flaws added to the collection.

The cracks in the door spider-webbed with each new blow, spreading outward from the point of impact. It wouldn’t be long before the beast got to me. I picked up a broken jar and planned to use it as a weapon. It wasn’t much but it was all I had. It was the equivalent of staring down a Sherman tank with a BB gun. This wasn’t going to end well.

With my back to the wall that faced the door, I sat there on the cold, hard floor and watched as my hopeless situation grew more and more hopeless. The door was flaking away in bits and pieces. It wasn’t wood or metal, and it didn’t seem to be rock exactly. The composition meant little, however, because soon the beast was going to gain access to this room, and that would be the end for me.

Over and over again, I watched the jars slide off the shelves and listened to the cacophony of shattering glass. How many people had it taken to fill this room? How long had it taken to harvest so much transgression?

I watched as sin rained down all around me, and something happened as I watched. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something irregular. The minotaur still did its best to break down the door, but strangely enough, my attention wasn’t on that anymore. Maybe I had just accepted my fate and wanted to spend my last few minutes of life focused on something other than my impending death. In any case, I saw a jar filled with a strange, blue substance sitting far back on one of the shelves. There were no discernible body parts inside that I could see; there was only the dark blue goo. I couldn’t think of anything in the human anatomy that was such a color, and I got to my feet, intent on seeing what was inside.

The moment I put my hand on the jar and caught a whiff of the heavenly scent of blueberries, I realized what it was. Good ol’ fashioned, homemade jelly. The kind you put on biscuits on Sundays before church (and trust me, I knew about church- Mama had me there every Sunday without fail). In an ordinary setting I would have immediately guessed what was in the jar, but this was far from normal.