The Maze
The Maze
It is a Strange Thing to Grapple with Grief
It is a Strange Thing to Grapple with Grief
The young man gets up from the stone slab where he sleeps.
Gray stones as high as twenty feet surround him on four sides. A vault door with a huge spindle, he sees.
Confusion is his ally. He has no memory of what happened and how he got here. His head flooded with pain and his lower back cracks.
“Hurry,” a whisper says. “PLEASE!”
“W-Where am I? What is this?”
But no answer comes.
Abruptly, the vault wheel turns and opens slowly. He steps out. No shoes, he wears.
Creeping down the first hallway, the gray sky haunts his dilapidated heart. Birds fly up ahead. He turns a corner and sees for a second someone crouched in the corner but then they’re nowhere to be seen. He sees a white figure with dark black hair, but in reality, no one is present.
He creeps around another corner not knowing what to expect.
“David,” a voice whispers in his ear. He turns but no one is there. He looks down in the corner where he thought he saw a body.
David. That was his name! He remembers his name, but only that. He has no recollection of what his life was before he woke up here.
He walks slowly down the endless maze weaving in and out of the strange and mysterious silent day. He hears nothing, no noise of cars or even the wind. Lifeless, his breast aches.
He continues stealthily and sees a shadow pass over across an intersection of the tangled paths. Quickly, he runs down but sees nothing. Turning, he sees the lady in white quickly dart to the right. He follows.
Leading the way, the white dress flies away into the complicated ways deeper into madness. A trap door opens up and swallows her as it closes preventing David from seeing in or entering. He curses and slams the stone wall.
Loneliness comes to him as his senses become dull and he breathes heavily. The depths of the place are haunting his mind. The walls seem like they are closing in.
But as he limps down the darkened stairs, he finds the center of the maze. He approaches cautiously and sees in the center a giant mirror leading up onto a platform. It stretches high and shows his reflection. Then seeing a woman in white appear by his side, he looks to his left but cannot see her, only in the mirror.
“Do you remember, David,” she asks gently. “What you did to me?”
He shakes his head. “No, no, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not what you did but what you DIDN’T do!” she curses. “You left me when I needed you!”
“I’m-I’m sorry, I don’t remember!”
“REMEMBER! REMEMBER!” Screaming for an eternity. “You need to REMEMBER!” The mirror shatters all of a sudden and covers David as he shields himself from the sharp and painful glass shards.
Then he glares up into the gray sky and sees a small red balloon in the distance. “That was our-”
“First date.” He looks and sees his girlfriend pregnant caressing her belly. “I remember it like it was yesterday. How you bought me that little red balloon. I let it go, remember?”
“Yes, yes, Susie.”
“Yes,” she smiles placing her hand on his cheek.
“Now, I remember, and I’m… a father,” David remembers it.
Susie smiles but then the pain comes to her face and she starts to weep, “Yes, but we, we lost her.”
“No, no!” Horror enters his brain and he remembers the terrible loss.
“And you. You left me when I needed you! You left me to die, bloody and alone,” she accuses.
“No, I’m sorry, Susie. The nurses they, they, kicked me out-”
“Always with the excuses! ALWAYS!”
“Please, Susie, no! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” David hears her screaming from the pain of childbirth. Her bloody body writhing on the table scarring him as he was forced out of the room.
The terrible feeling of no control spasms through his body.
He sobs and collapses in his sheets wrapping himself up tightly like a tiny baby. He cries into his pillow uncontrollably in his house. No one is there to console him. His voice echoes through the dark halls alone and empty of his girlfriend and his daughter.
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