Aldous begins to hurry, then to jog as she follows the yarn back toward the entrance–not rewinding the ball, just wadding it into her hands. She comes to the room with the chair in the corner and stops.
The yarn is cut.
The games one plays in dreams are never fair. Aldous grasps this knowledge hard, pulse pounding, as she stuffs the yarn back into her bag and turns away from the lie of its origin. She’s still not hungry. Her watch has stopped.
A labyrinth is a device for holding monsters. Aldous sets out to look for its heart.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Aldous steps from a room empty and innocent into one that is not.
The walls are covered in gouges–no, she sees after a moment, hash marks in groups of five. A prison calendar (though the door has no lock). The corners are grimy, the smell strong. Rust runs in dark blobs down to the basin of the old water pump near the wall.
Aldous summons her times tables and tries to count the days: ten thousand? Tens of thousands. What happened here? She picks up a wadded paper from the corner and smooths out a child’s drawing of a cat.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Inside are three more doors and a trap leading down. With the rising certainty of dreams, Aldous avails herself of the secret of Ariadne, and takes the ball of yarn from her bag. She was never going to finish that scarf anyway.
Room opens upon room; some are furnished, most bare. Windows hint at a dim moon, though she’s sure she shouldn’t see it in that many directions. The widely-spaced floorboards mewl beneath her weight.
It smells like dust and childhood. Unraveling her way through the labyrinth, Aldous remembers her father paint-stripping, bare-chested, a kerchief on his head.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Once Aldous has made up her mind to leave the train at the next stop, it seems to be a long time in coming. They plunge into a tunnel, or so she assumes; but when the train brakes, she understands that the darkness is open and infinite. The platform floats in a pool of black.
But a decision is a decision. Aldous steps out into the glow of an old lamp, before a bench and a sign that just says 12.
There’s a door. As Aldous walks toward it, a moth pings feebly off the globe one more time, and falls.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Sara’s stumbled over her words since she was a child; it made her cautious, then precise, and now she’s an irresistible brand of fire when she speaks. But on rough days she falls back to fifth-grade habits. She rehearses sentences as she walks, over and over, in mutters of breath.
“Nasser’s and my relationship is,” she begins, then “Nasser and I have this weird thing. Listen, there’s this guy Nasser–”
She shuts up on realizing she has no reason to explain any of this to Zach. Before she can think of one, she’s at the safehouse door, already scenting blood.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
“Do you mark me?” asks Chell, pacing. “I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. But I have accomplished it now! She is gone, and that bright eye will trouble me no more.”
The observers sit and smile. The beat grows louder–flat and regular, like a watch wrapped in cotton.
They know! They mock! She stares at them, pulse pounding. Anything is better than this derision–
“Here!” she cries, smashing her chair into the floorboards. “Villains! I admit the deed!” Beneath the planks, they see it: the face of the Companion Cube, and its tell-tale heart.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Zo Relaxed Und Watschen Der Blinkenlichten is a bad name for a band but it’s the one they got, so Effy locks her jaw and tries to get on with expressing herself via theremin. The only people at their shows are middle schoolers wondering why they’re not yelling German.
“Hey!” Charlie finds her after a gig as Effy sips Jameson neat. “You guys sounded great.”
“No we didn’t.”
“Aww, don’t pout! Band names are a nonrenewable resource, you know.” He buffs his nails, quite deliberately. “And not everybody can be in 99 Teen Science Machines.”
Effy says something rude in theremish.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009