It started at my feet.
The burning sensation twisted and slithered along my calves, crawling up the back of my legs.
We wouldn’t make it.
The walls blurred, twisting around us, forcing us to shift with them as we wove through the maze.
The madness approached.
I felt her next to me, her breathing matching mine in it’s labored attempts to get enough oxygen into her body.
Death, my constant companion, now seemed preferable to the madness that stalked us.
The moon hung like a guillotine above us.
It was tangible, this suspense, a sentence upon our lives. I could feel it tickle my skin.
The blurred images of the gray walls seemed to mock me. Was I going mad already?
I knew it was close.
The tavern.
And the madness.
I plunged through the Labrynth.
The doorway materialized before me in the wall and I ran through it blindly.
The door closed behind me.
My heartbeat was all I could hear for a moment.
Until I heard my own scream.
She wasn’t with me. She must have tripped or fallen at some point.
I felt my body, dead with exhaustion, slam against the door.
Hands pulled me back, restraining me.
It was too late.
For a moment, time seemed suspended, waiting, waiting….In that endless moment I could only hear the pounding of my heart.
And then the pounding on the door.
From the only person that I truly love.
I couldn’t move. I was bound.
The pounding became urgent, pleading.
My body was frozen.
The pounding stopped.
And in it’s place came a scratching, the raking of claws against wood.
I died then. There was nothing left inside of me. Not pain, not grief. Just death.
And then I was lost within my own madness.