Back to the Maze

Chapter 4

It's been a week now since the Box came back up. That means I've been here three weeks. Twenty days have been tallied up on my chunk of wood, which rests in my home. I'll mark day twenty one down tonight before I go to sleep. Every night I pray that I will wake up again the next morning. Something could happen in the middle of the night. The doors could open, and a harrow could find me. Maybe the stone walls won't even have to open, the monster could already be in here.

Waiting.

I keep my weapon close to me at all times. I may be scared, but if the time comes, I will hack that sucker with my machete thirty times over. That, I can assure you. I'm sick of being terrorized by it's constant wailing at night, taunting me. I want to kill it.

I want to kill them all.

Shuck, I really am going crazy. Shuck? Where'd that come from? What the shuck is a shuck?

I feel as if it's a word planted in my brain. Like I've used it before. I look around, a door in my memories has been opened. I've been here before. Maybe not here, but somewhere similar. I reach for my head, which now throbs with pain. "Gah," I mutter.

My eyes close at the sudden pang. I try to remember something, anything. It's as if it's right there, if only I could reach out and grab it. It's right at my finger tips.

It's gone.

My eyes blink open, and my hope is shattered. Why can't I remember a single thing? Besides my name, of course. I look around at the giant walls, and I wonder. The question that I've been avoiding since the second I got up here. The question that I probably don't want to know the answer to.

What's beyond those walls?

Chills run down my spine. Half of me wants to know, the other half says it isn't a good idea to know. I start to walk towards them, my heart begging my feet to stop. My curiosity controlling them.

It's cold in there. That's my first observation when I reach the stone gaps. It's dark and gray. Quiet. I grip my machete tighter, which I forgot I was even holding. It's just a long hallway.

No, it has to be more than that.

I still have a few hours before sundown, so I know for sure I won't be locked in. Before I even have a chance to think, I begin walking. Walking right through those doors. I clench my fist, nails digging into my palm. I don't notice whether or not it hurts, I just know I'm doing it.

My thoughts are racing so fast I don't even know what I'm thinking. Butterflies swarm my stomach. I'm scared and excited all at the same time. I breath in and out deeply, trying to calm my nerves, but I'm more terrified than I've ever been since I got here.

And I about pissed myself when I first woke up in the Box.

I finally reach the end of the hall. I have two choices: turn left, or turn right.

"Neither," I say louder than expected. I turn around, and run as fast as I can. "Nope, nope, nope." I have the feeling that something is going to reach out and grab me from behind, but I don't look back. "Not today. No scary hallways today. No, sir. Not me," I just keep rambling on as I sprint back to my little house. I scramble inside, trying to catch my breath. "Holy frick." I thought I was so savage going in there at first, only to be run out by the sight of a dark corridor.

I'm brought back to reality at the sound of my chickens. I roll my eyes, and walk outside; then I grab the bag of chicken feed, rotating between watching all four doors. "I'm gonna eat one of you someday," I say to the chickens as I pour feed on the ground beneath them. I made a cute little chicken coop for them out of the crates they were sent up in. It's really not that cute, but it makes me feel better to say it is. I had to make the repurposing wire spools out of floss sent up in the Box. Which was a good idea, but not a very attractive one. But it will do.

It's not like anyone besides me is gonna see it anyway.

Nine days pass. I've about gone insane. The lonliness is overwhelming. The cold of the night is unbearable. The heat of the day exhausting. If this is my life now, I don't want to live it. What's the point? I wake up every morning another day closer to death. There's no way to repopulate the habitat I am trying to build. Once I die, that's it. This prison ends along with my house and all of it's memories. I will die peacefully and no one will know. I'll bet no one even knows I'm here.

My throat scratches at the loud, gargling scream I release when I hear it. The alarm. Its different from the supplies alarm. This is the one I heard when I first came up. I peek my head out from around the back of my house where I had started to make a garden. I crouch down so that I will not be at eye level when whatever pops out...pops out. I grab my machete, which seems to be my best friend because I always have it around. I expect a harrow to come scratching from beneath the Box doors, but it doesn't. Nothing does for at least thirty seconds. That's all the time I give; my curiosity is greater than my patience.