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The walls are wrong.
It’s all she notices about the halls as she runs: an odd, ever-so-slight strangeness. They are all of them the same, each corner she turns yields another corridor of identical grey stone stretching off into the distance. Even though the air is as still and stifled as the air of a crypt the rock looks as if it’s weathered eons. It feels familiar to her somehow, as if she’s run these halls before, in something less than a memory but more than a dream. But this is not why the halls feel wrong.
She can’t place it, not quite. It’s as if the wrongness lurks on the back of her eyelids, visible only when she blinks. Yet there’s something decidedly incorrect about the maze- perhaps the way the ceiling never quite joins with the walls below, or the way the stone seems to recede into stark nothingness in the corner of her eyes. Or maybe the way she can round four right corners in a row yet find herself in a stretch of corridor she’s never seen before. She can’t tell what it is for sure though, and she’s running too fast to look closer.
Ariadne knows she has to keep running. If she doesn’t, She might catch her.
The Woman is always there: a flicker in the corner of her iris, white silk brushing against the floor. The scent of lilies on the air. A flit of grinning lips: red, so so red. And always her voice, honey smooth and lilting like a brook in springtime, clawing at Ariadne’s ears as she runs. The words are soft, and always variations on the same theme.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
Her words seem almost familiar, like lines of a forgotten nursery rhyme. They’re part of a larger work, she remembers this much. And more than anything, Ariadne knows she has to escape before She finishes the verse. The alternative fills her with a nameless dread; there is no concept in her mind of what comes after, but that absence is terrifying enough.
I lift my lids and all is born again.
The voice is closer this time; Ariadne imagines the Woman near enough to stroke the hairs on the back of her neck with death-white fingers. She doesn’t dare turn, instead puts on a burst of speed, choking as the stifled air burns hot in her lungs.
I fancied you’d return the way you said.
Faster, faster- but can she be fast enough? The walls, ever-same, ever wrong, rush past her in a blur; she has no idea where she is. Will she escape? Or is she doomed to run this maze forever, always only a single step away from doom?
But I grow old and I forget your name.
She closes her eyes and runs for all she’s worth, runs so fast she fancies she can feel the air blur around her, the burning rubber of her sneakers on the stone. She runs for maybe seconds or maybe days or maybe longer; it’s hard to tell. Finally she risks a single fettered peek over her shoulder, almost tripping when she sees no sign of Her, only the empty corridor.
Has she lost Her? Is she safe?
The precipice comes out of nowhere; she almost doesn’t see it, almost falls off. Precipice is a misnomer, some part of her brain thinks as she doubles over, laboring to catch her breath. Precipice implies a cliff, a drop. What stretches on before her is none of these things: it is an absence. Where there should be floor there isn’t, only an inky void.
And silk on stone, and the scent of lilies on the air.
Ariadne wrenches her head up, her heart dropping like lead in her chest as the Woman rounds the corner, a placid smile hanging crimson on her face. The woman’s tongue slips out to lick her lips before they part and begin to disgorge words.
Ariadne knows with a leaden certainty that this is it, this is the last line of the poem.
I think-
She cannot hear it, she will not hear it. Ariadne catapults herself out into the darkness, fists balled and eyes clenched shut. She feels her body go weightless in the dreaming void-
And crashes out of the dream in a heaving gasp, falling from her chair onto the cold cement of the warehouse floor. She lies there for one breath, two, willing her hands to stop fluttering. Oh, but She had been so close, so very close-
Ariadne stumbles to her feet and shakes her head. She can’t think about it, won’t summon the woman back with her thoughts. Instead she hurries down the corridor into the warehouse’s office, forcing her eyes away from the grey stone walls, as if they’ll stay the same if she doesn’t look at them.
The office door opens and Ariadne nearly cries out in relief because Dom is there in the doorway, looking out at her.
“Dom,” she pants. “Dom, there’s something not right-“
And then she makes the mistake of letting her gaze flicker to the stone corridor stretching on behind him, and her heart spasms like she's just been engulfed in ice water.
The walls are wrong.
She turns back to Dom in horror and realizes he isn’t looking at her, not really. His eyes are fixed on someone behind her, someone standing just on the edge of her vision. She sees the flutter of white cloth ghostly against the warehouse floor, hears the soft inhalation of breath over softly painted lips. It takes all of her concentration not to turn her head.
“Dom,” she whispers to him, begging, pleading. “Dom, please.”
And now he’s reaching for her, for whoever it is behind her. She feels, rather than sees, red lips stretching in a grin as pallid fingers reach out to grasp his hand.
The walls begin to collapse; Ariadne opens her mouth to scream but no sound comes out, none at all. She feels herself falling, falling, falling-
I think I made you up inside my head.