The sound of her feet hitting the cobbles was in sync with her racing heartbeat. Every breath she took was like an icy dagger to her throat. A massive roar rang out in the distance as she turned what felt like the millionth corner. It was getting closer, and the maze seemed to go on forever. The only light came from moon above her, unreachable from within the labyrinth. She stared into it as she ran, using it as her guide. Her steps were rushed and sloppy, causing her to slip on a loose stone and smack into the bricks in front of her. She slid down the wall, allowing a second of rest to rid the dizzy feeling. Before she could stand, another roar rang out, too close for comfort. She knew there was no more use in running. She got to her feet and turned to face the beast.
In front of her stood a monster so frightening she could feel her fear rattling through her veins. It had the body of a god, with muscles that bulged so fiercely it had to have been a myth. Its face was that of a mighty bull, if bulls had razor sharp teeth and the eyes of a snake. Extending from his monstrous forehead were horns half the size of the girl herself. The monster let out a snort-like breath, it tickled her now bloodless face, smelling of death. He opened his mouth, blood and dirt stained saliva dripped from his fangs as he went to let out another roar, but the sound that escaped him was merely an oddly familiar jingle…
Ruby awoke with a start, the jingle ringing from her cell-phone on the ground next to her bed. As she swiped the dismiss option, she couldn’t help but feel uneasy. The dreams were getting worse and worse. Ruby had found her astral-self lost in the labyrinth many times before, but this was the first time the beast had ever actually caught up to her. Scott, who Ruby had been with for just over a year, was still fast asleep next to her. Ruby gently caressed his unshaven face and placed a soft kiss on his forehead. She wanted to wake him and tell him about her dream, she wanted him to hold her and to comfort her, but the thought sent a pain through her stomach. She knew she wouldn’t get what she was looking for out of Scott. She knew she would be asking too much of him, for him to be there for her.
It was 7:00 AM on another Tuesday morning. Ruby had forty-five minutes to get ready and then 15 minutes to drive to work. She stood in front of the mirror in her bathroom, her counter a mess from makeup and other beauty products. The flat-iron was on, because Scott once said he liked her hair better when it was straight. As she went through her morning routine she thought of the labyrinth. Some nights she didn’t see or even hear the monster; some nights she would just roam around the corners, following the walls and looking for new pathways.
Uncomfortably numb.
Ruby’s morning routine stretched into her day-to-day routine. She was nineteen years old had been working alongside an insurance agent for quite a while. It was never in her plans to work in insurance, in fact, she hated insurance. She hated how adult it felt. More than anything she hated how she felt like every ounce of creativity in her body had been turned into statistics and sales techniques and legal terms she never thought she’d need to know. In high school she had planned on going to college for studio arts, but a part-time summer job where she was telemarketing for the company landed her an offer to go full-time. Ruby didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to get out of her broken home and be successful in a practical career. So there she sat, at her desk in the front of the office, using the idea of success as her guide, though it seemed unreachable.
That day at work seemed almost identical to the day before. She answered calls from clients and serviced their policies, changing their information in her computer or giving them quotes for new vehicles. In her down time she’d shuffle through the neat stack of pages her boss had left on her desk for her. Each page was filled with a list of names accompanied by phone numbers. Ruby never asked where the leads came from, she just assumed that the poor souls gave their contact information to the wrong website and they ended up on the list of people Ruby had to call and hassle about their insurance policies. As she went through the list, contacting more answering machines than actual people, she thought back to the maze once again. With each forced introduction and every scripted line she spoke, she thought of the moments in the labyrinth when she would turn a corner and find herself staring down a pathway she had walked down several times before. On the rare occasion a lead would actually answer the phone, it was even rarer for them to react kindly once Ruby had stated her business. When the line went dead she was reminded of the feeling she got during those times in the maze; the feeling of gaining no ground.
Ruby got home that evening to an empty apartment. She allowed herself to collapse into her vacant, unmade bed. Her pillows smelled like Scott, like cigarettes and aftershave, like home. She wondered if he was going to come back that night or if he would go home to his parents’ house. Opening the messages in her phone, she sighed at the zero unread. She wanted to text him and ask him where he was staying that night, but she knew it would result in a fight. Scott had a habit of making Ruby feel bad when she sought his attention, even when she wasn’t blatantly asking for it. Ruby sighed at the thought, staring down her cell phone with heavy eyes. Maybe I’ll sleep for a moment, and when I wake up there’ll be a message from him, a message just for me. Her last thought before drifting away.
The air was thick and wet; breathing was a challenge. She looked around to find herself in the middle of a four-way pass. Each path went on and on and disappeared into darkness. She had no idea which direction she had come from and even less of a clue which direction she was headed. The roar of the monster assaulted her eardrums. It sounded close, but she couldn’t decipher which direction it had come from. The pit of her stomach was on fire as she looked down each pathway. She couldn’t stay there. She had to keep moving, but she was sure that if she went down the wrong path she would be running straight to the beast.
She took a deep breath, looked behind her, and ran.
Ruby was woken abruptly by the sound of the door to her apartment slamming shut. Her grey eyes gleamed as Scott came through the bedroom’s threshold. As he passed by the bed, Ruby extended her neck looking for a kiss. Instead, Scott turned on the television that was rested on her oak dresser and he grabbed the Xbox controller that was left on the ground in front of her. Her stomach burned again, the way it did when the monster was close. The rest of Ruby’s night was another familiar feat. She cooked dinner for Scott and herself, and she made sure they both had clean work clothes for the next day, all while mourning the death of their passion. She wondered if Scott loved her at all, she wondered why he stayed with her, she wondered why she stayed with him. She shut her eyes tightly before tears were able to fall, so that he wouldn’t see her cry again. He hated it when he saw her cry.
It was midnight when Ruby realized she wasn’t getting much sleep that night. She decided to get out of bed and watch something on Netflix in the living room. Something about lying in bed next to Scott, who was fast asleep, was too lonely to bear. She put on some old cartoons and curled up under a pile of blankets on her couch, thinking back to the days when she would draw cartoons of her own. She wanted so badly to draw again, but every time she tried, nothing would come out to paper. For a moment she was considering school again. She contemplated quitting her job and taking some loans and pursuing her desires as an artist. Her face heated up as she thought about the risks. She didn’t want to lose her apartment and Scott and she feared more than anything needing to return home. Ruby dismissed herself, once more, and set her alarm for 7AM.
The labyrinth was warm and humid that night. She felt as if she was walking through molasses as she dragged her feet along the twists and turns of the maze. She placed a hand on the wall to the right of her, and she traced the mossy bricks with her fingers as she made her way. She was hoping it would help her avoid back-tracking. The path widened and opened into a large courtyard. In the middle of it stood the ruins of a massive marble statue. She got as close as she could to it without losing contact with the wall. The statue was old and covered in vines, mushrooms were popping up all around its base. Though damaged, she made out the figure of a man standing over a collapsed creature. The creature was unmistakable. It was her monster. She half expected to hear its roar coming from the marble. The man was holding a great sword, not a made of marble but of iron. She wanted to investigate more but she felt like she was finally making headway. She pressed her palm against the wall and ventured on.
Ruby wasn’t sure how long she had been wondering through the maze, still caressing the right wall. She must have only turned a few corners but it was impossible to keep track. She was so tired, but she couldn’t stop moving.
Suddenly, a mighty roar boomed from behind her.
She turned around quickly, losing grip on the wall. There was nothing behind her, not a thing out of place besides the finger paths in the moss she made on the bricks. Her heart beat raced away, and she took off right after it. She ran as fast she could, she couldn’t face the beast again. Only a few moments had passed before she tripped over another stone on the ground and was sent hurling forward. She jumped to her feat, but the quick movement sent her head into space and she and had to stop to catch her breath. Looking around to assess her surroundings, she was horrified. Directly in front of her was the marble monster.
A low growl came out from behind it…
Ruby woke up, drenched in sweat and trapped between couch cushions and too many blankets. She was physically and mentally exhausted, it felt as if she hadn’t gotten any sleep at all. She grabbed her phone to check the time, internally begging for a couple more hours of sleep.
6:58 AM.
Wednesday was just like Tuesday, which was just like Monday. Ruby’s days melted into her evenings which fell into her nightmares, and she wasn’t sure anymore which was more exhausting. By Friday morning, Ruby was fed up.
She refused to wander through the maze anymore. She was done going nowhere. Her boss addressed the no-longer-neat stack of pages on her desk. She was supposed for have called every lead on each list by the end of the week, and she wasn’t even close. As her boss’s voice raised, Ruby stared him directly in the eye. Though he began to shout louder and louder she was hearing less and less of him, and suddenly she was in the labyrinth. The monster stood in front of her, staring her down in the middle of the familiar courtyard. Ruby’s stomach wasn’t burning, and her heat wasn’t racing. Her eyes dashed from the beast’s snake-like eyes to the marble statue standing tall a few feet to his left. Without a word or a breath or even a thought she took off, climbing the marble statue. The monster roared in anger, his breath catching up to her as she scaled the muscles of the marble man. The beast began racking its horns against the base of the statue. Ruby reached the tallest point, where the marble man was holding his iron sword above him. She reached for its hilt and the marble fist around it crumbled, sending bits and pieces into the eyes of the beast. He roared once more and shut his eyes tightly, shaking his massive head back forth in a frenzy. Ruby gripped the sword in both hands, it was nearly bigger than her and it felt like it weighed a ton. She looked down at the raging monster below her, and a smile crossed her face. She dropped down, sending the sword directly through the beast’s right horn, it fell to the ground and ruby tumbled down after it. She allowed the sword to escape her grasp as she tucked and rolled across the ground. The monster screamed out in pain, grasping at the stump that once held its horn. Ruby rose to her feet, the sword steps away from her reach. She took a look at the wounded monster, and let out a sigh.
“I quit,” She said, back in her desk at the front of the office. Her now former boss stood in silence with a confused look on his face. Ruby grabbed her coat, left her office key, and she went home.
When Ruby got home, Scott was still in bed. She walked though her apartment, picking up his clothes, guitar picks, and empty beer cans that he had left on her floor. As she approached her room the apartment around her faded back into the labyrinth’s courtyard. She was standing feet away from the wounded beast, the sword in her sights. The monster lunged for her just as she had jumped toward the sword, they were inches from colliding but zoomed right pass each other. She grabbed the sword and turn to face the beast once again. It let out gnarly snarl, his fowl spit landing at Ruby’s feet. He leaned his head down and foreword, charging toward her. She welcomed this like a matador and waited for her time to strike. Just as it got too close for comfort she dashed out of the way and turned, sending the great sword through his remaining horn. It fell to the ground, and so did the beast…
“Go home,” She told Scott, dropping the pile of his belongings on his sleeping body. He jumped up, sending his things flying every which way. Ruby calmly picked them back up and placed them in his arms. He went to argue, but she just grabbed his keys from his dresser and added them to the pile he was holding. He left without another word.
Ruby collapsed into her vacant bed. Her pillows smelled of cigarettes and aftershave. Her stomach began to burn and she allowed a few tears fall before she drifted away into a much needed sleep.
She didn’t dream that night.
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from Short Stories
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