“Why the fuck are you so flippant?” Always angry. Always afraid. “Do you think we’ll find our way back?” She finally asked in a small voice. The maze had a way of diminishing people. She’d flattened from the terrible pressure of the walls. I dared not to peek at my own reflection— for fear of what it had done to me.

Cowardly, but not without merit. If it took lying to myself to get out of the maze, then I’d be a hologram star and lie my heart out.

The clench around my heart was a cousin to the cold running down my spine.

The depth of fear conjure horrors— but emerging out from the shadows were creatures stranger still.

A terrible pressure built in my ears, I heard an all consuming explosion that ended as quickly as it began. As if I’d lived through the birth of the universe only to be dropped back into my own life.

Who’s to say I hadn’t?

A voice as deep as distant thunder.

A voice that belonged to the dark that existed before the first expansion of stars. Before the first shining suns.

If there is something to fear— it’s that which crawls past the far reach of time.

Whatever called from the center of the maze didn’t belong to a linear universe.