Work Text:
“Emma, I don’t want to do this,” Ray complained as she dragged him and Norman to the other side of the fair.
“But it will be fun,” she said. They were at the fair for the day and Emma had decided that the trio should do the corn maze.
“It’s fine Ray, it shouldn’t be too hard,” Norman said smiling. “Plus we’re so smart together that we can do this in two minutes.”
Ray rolled his eyes but conceded. He could sometimes fight back against Emma but both of them and he was clay in their hands.
“Here are your tickets,” the worker said as Emma paid. Then they were in the corn maze.
“Let’s go straight,” Emma said, pointing to the first path she saw.
“Yeah because that’s totally what we are,” Ray quipped.
“Stop making those jokes, they're so stupid,” Emma said, slapping him over the head.
“Okay then I’ll break up with you.”
“What about Norman then?”
Ray turned to his other partner. “Who do you love more?”
“We should’ve turned right,” Norman said, looking at the walls. “If we take four rights we’ll get back to the beginning.”
“Oh really?” Emma asked, dropping their former conversation.
“Yes it’s basic geometry.”
“Well let’s just take four more rights and we should get back to this point and can turn back then.”
Ray nodded, as they walked up to the next crossing point.
“It’s our first right.”
By their third right Norman knew something was wrong. They were walking west again. Normally he wouldn’t pay attention to the direction they were walking in but the setting sun was glaring into his eyes.
“I think we’ve been here before.” He said picking up a piece of orange hair from a bush.
“Emma, you're shedding again,” Ray said, taking another strand of hair from the ground.
“Well you are too,” she said, grabbing all the black hair she could find.
“Yeah but I have anxiety.”
“You two calm down,” Norman said, walking between them. “We’re walking west again but we have only taken our second right.”
“Well the maze isn’t straight lines,” Emma said, shrugging.
“I understand that but we should be walking at least north or south.”
“I don’t know what to tell you Norman,” Ray shrugged. “Maybe instead of trying to find your way out we should just enjoy this.”
“But I want to find a way out,” Norman said, face growing hot. “I just want to prove I can get out of the maze quickly.”
Emma placed a hand on Norman’s shoulder. “You have nothing to prove to us, we love you just as you are.”
“Yeah, but I want to find the exit.”
“Okay, we can do that, in an hour,” Ray said and he started running off in a random direction. “Race you.”
Emma yelled at him and chased after him. Norman sighed and slowly jogged after them since he wasn’t in shape as they were.
“Okay I think we’re lost now,” Emma said, slumping down on the ground. They had run around the maze for an hour now and still couldn’t find their way out.
“Did we access all our options?” Norman asked, sitting down next to her.
“All our phones are dead so we can’t call or use GPS, we tried doing it your way,” Ray said, pacing around the other two. His head jerked up. “There’s only one thing we haven’t tried yet.”
Norman paled at the twinkle in Ray’s eye. “What?”
“We break through the maze.”
Three hours later the trio burst through the maze into the cold night air. They were covered in corn husks and dirt.
“We did it!” Emma shouted she ran to the car.
“Com’on let’s get out of here before they see what we did to their maze,” Ray said, grabbing Norman’s hand. Norman grinned, he had proved he could get out of the maze. Just not conventionally.