“If you stand in the darkness too long it will eat you alive,” said the cat in a mischievous tone, echoing in the corridor of glass and mirror. Bounding to her in a single leap the singing voice spoke in upturned glee as she rounded another corner and stared at yet another icy pane. The walls all around were of glass and mirror, the glass letting one see through to the end but the mirrors telling lies of direction and place. The ice encrusted the stone of the floor and the lies all around, the world shaded in shadow and that eerie glowing blue.
“You would know wouldn’t you?” The dark haired girl asked, shooting a glare over her shoulder to the amber eyes, glimmering pools of disgust in the shadows, which swirled and spiraled in a dance to reach around in the mist that pooled the floor now.
“Don’t hate me because I’m right.” He hissed hatefully, even though his eyes never narrowed and his toothy smile had yet to wane, “I’m only making polite conversation,” he whispered, his breath sending the mist away before it returned.
Turning her gaze back to the pane before her; she stood for a moment and felt the cat creep up behind her. His shadowy body misty in the bleak blue light that filtered about. “Making haste does not but waste more time…” She said in a low monotone, her arms bear to the freezing temperature but she did not shiver and her pale face reflected the light around her as she lifted a hand to test her new path.
Nothing came as she pressed her hand to what she had assumed would be another pane and she stepped forward slowly. Thunk, thunk, thunk; heavy black boots came down on the floor, leaving the sound to rebound over the walls, who reflected all they saw. “You know the rules,” she grumbled and the cat hissed with his grown smile.
“I was there when they were made!” His tail of wispy black thrashed in irritation but soon melted back into a gentle rhythm. “Hurry or not, you won’t last long.” And with that he melted back to the cornered shadows, with big angry and appalled irises and that grin of filed teeth.
The girl made another turn and almost hit a piece of glass that blocked the way, followed by a wheezy and dry laugh. “Wong way again my dear, don’t be fooled by the fool.”
“Why do you always smile?” The girl asked; her face a mask and her voice never wavering. Her stride stopped as she turned back to him, her sudden movement sending the mist at her ankles spiraling away. Caught off guard by her sudden question the cat grumbled in response and simply sent his tail swishing in a more erratic pattern.
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” she replied simply, folding her arms, “I’m just curious.” Both of them knew the saying that went with such a statement but neither spoke it for irony did little for them in this place.
“A curse,” a simple response for a simple question the cat supposed, trying to evade the obvious. The girl’s eyes became half lidded at his response and she nodded, unfolding her arms and starting to walk again. “You’re getting nowhere,” the cat spoke but the girl still did not stop in her stride and his irritation seemed to return. “Why don’t you just give up?”
“Why did you?” She asked and once again she stopped in the doorway to another hallway. The cat stopped behind her, rising on a dark cloud to be level with her.
“What are you talking about?” He snapped but there was a quiver in his voice as she once again turned to him.
“I’m not cold or tired, hungry or even scared here,” she whispered and the cat’s toothy grin seemed to almost grow but his eyes remained steady in their hatred. “I’ve been here before…But many of the foot prints in these hallways were not made by my boots and seem encrusted in the frost from long points of standing.”
The cat turned upside down by this point, his smile turning to a frown. “What’s your point?”
“I also noticed,” she continued as if he had never interrupted, “that your paws have touched these passage ways more than once…More than just you and I over these years have passed through this place.” The girl leaned in closer, “you said if I stood in the darkness long enough it would eat me alive…”
She stepped closer to him; pushing her finger through his shadowy body and feeling a sort of cold over take her limb. “You were cursed to stay here, cursed to live in total silence and to smile and bear your pain. Whatever did you do?”
His body turned once more to where his smile returned with his hateful eyes and he spoke, “they put me here because I stood up for them! Now I must walk the labyrinth and escape but I’ve been here so long and stared forever at the end…I got tired of it. There is the end right there,” he motioned to a pane reflected off a mirror that depicted a field of green, “but I can never reach it and I’ve stepped every hallway in here.”
“That’s easy,” the girl said, “this isn’t a labyrinth. It’s a prison. Your prison, a punishment for betraying them, and everything you once stood for. That ‘end’ is just a false hope so when you finally did figure it out you’d destroy yourself.”
The cat stared in horror, the realization finally coming to him. “You’ve brought people here in hopes of finding an ending but you’ve only withdrawn deeper into yourself. The darkness hasn’t eaten me because it’s the end for me. Not you.”
She stepped through him and he dropped to the floor, into the mist. Howling in anguish he ran down to the end of the hallway, the reflected glass cracking as he rammed his smile straight into it. The glass screamed in protest, the ice raining down in crystals as he sat there, dazed. “Perhaps I was wrong,” the cat stopped and jumped, spiraling and collapsing on the ground as he heard the resounding voice of his last ‘helper’, “don’t be fooled by the fool.”
The cat turned to look at the hallway and noted with shocked hope that…His paws were the first to touch the ground…
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