Work Text:
In the Office of Assessment and Incident Response (OAIR) main office room, 18th April 2024.
<TMP modem noises>
<Fr3-d1 activates, Chester starts reading >
No one can blame you
For walking away
Too much rejection
No love injection
Life can't be easy
It's not always swell
Don't tell me truth hurts, little girl
'Cause it hurts like hell
But down in the Underground
You'll find someone true….
Fragment terminates.
****
Tim Stoker is walking on and on through a familiar-feeling maze. There is ivy and greenery climbing the numerous walls which are too high to see over. In the far distance there is a tall amber-walled castle. The sun is orangey-red and low on the horizon.
He reaches a square clearing area, boundaried by a mix of hedging and stone walls ,and almost bumps into a woman dressed in a leather waistcoat, white shirt and brown trousers, with a large bundle of keys, pouches and a tankard at her waist. She’s bending over and busy examining a bright red arrow that has been drawn onto one of the stone floor tiles that line the clearing.
“Did you do this?” she asks him crossly in a Mancunian accent “Because it’s clearly vandalism, and I have to say I’m not impressed.”
“Hey, just chill, lady, it’s only an arrow drawn on the floor in lipstick” , Tim finds himself replying, “and it might just help us get out of here”.
As he talks, the tile pops up, he hears several tiny imps gabbling and arguing at each other from underneath, They shuffle and twist the tile round through ninety degrees ,changing the direction of the arrow, and then it pops down again into the floor.
I’ve seen this happen before, Tim realises. This is a dream and I’m in the middle of the Labyrinth. Well, I suppose it could be worse.
He notices there’s an tall, scrollworked iron mirror propped up against a tree at one side of the clearing, and moves over to it.
He views himself quizically, then groans as he recognises brown loafer shoes, blue jeans, a white flowing blouse, foliage-embroidered waistcoat, and long straight brown hair either side of his face. Ohhh, it is worse…
“Seriously?” he explodes out loud. “I get to have my own personal Labyrinth dream, and instead being of the Goblin King with his manly eyeshadow and magnificent codpiece, I’ve manifested as chuffing SARAH? “ Tim makes a noise of disgust.
Next to him the woman bursts into a poorly concealed fit of laughter.
“Oh”, she says in between gasps, “the look on your face. That’s priceless, that is.”
“Mind you”, she adds, looking down at herself, “I’ve got the feeling I’ve not come out much better, this get-up reminds me of Hoggle, if you’re familiar with him. My name’s Lena, by the way”.
“Tim.” says Tim, as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out an obviously recently used tube of red lipstick. “Labyrinth used to be one of my favourite films as a kid.”
“Mine too” says Lena. “Maybe that’s why we’re both here. I agree, we’re both dreaming this place, though I’m not exactly sure why.”
“Would have thought that was obvious” , Tim remarks. “Desire to escape from a bloody nightmare job with no idea how to achieve it. Threats around every corner, and not a Helping Hand in sight. Sounds pretty much exactly like the plot of Labyrinth to me.”
Lena thinks. “I’m not sure I necessarily want to escape mine, as such” she says carefully. “But I’ve been doing it a very long while and to be truthful, I’m not sure the place will last long if I were to go and do something else. It’s complicated.”
Tim sits down and starts idly doodling with the lipstick on some of the other floor tiles.
“At least you have a choice about it. There’s been some seriously maladaptive staffing decisions at the Institute recently. Elias has seriously overstepped his boundaries and I’m literally forbidden to quit. Believe me, I’ve tried, and it didn’t end well. We’re all stuck there.”
“All of you?” says Lena curiously, “Which Institute is this?”
“Magnus Institute” says Tim nonchalently. “We work in the Archives. Elias’s the main boss, Jon’s the head Archivist, and then there’s Sasha, Martin and I who are his research assistants. Plus a couple of others who signed on afterwards. But it’s all gone to hell in a handbasket in recent months. “
Lena fiddles with her jingling set of tankards, chains and pouches. “Something tells me you’re not from the same place we are” she says. Us both being here at the same time, It makes things feel… out of balance to me. I don’t like the idea of that at all. Tell me, do you have Externals where you come from? Creatures that work with your Institute from time to time on a sort of mutual agreement basis?”
“Nope Hogbrain, nothing like that. Just endless streams of unnatural things that want us mutilated, dead or just fancy using us for worm food…it’s all very cheery stuff at our end”.
“It’s HOGGLE. Dammit, I mean Lena. At least try to get my name right, or I’ll start calling you Sarah. That’ll show you.”
“Relax Lena”, says Tim, “I’m just joking. We both probably know this film inside out, so I’d suggest we look for something that doesn’t belong here, maybe that will give us a clue towards what’s going on”. Lena concedes that this makes sense, and they both start to search.
She walks over to the edge of the clearing, and discovers a carved dark wooden signpost with three arms pointing in different directions. They are labelled “Not that way”, “Never go that way”, and “Straight to That Castle”. Ah, thinks Lena, now this is something I do recognise.
“Hey, Tim” says Lena, “I think we’ve found your clue. How do you feel about going straight to that castle?” Tim raises an eyebrow, and she knows he understands why.
It’s been a long while since I found anyone I clicked with like this, she admits with a touch of self-pity that she’s only finding someone who she really gets on with in a dream. He’s not bad-looking either, even if he’s a bit rough around the edges.
They march off in the direction that the pointing post suggests, just as a small blue and orange worm bustles out of a hole in the wall with a tiny teapot, sees it has missed its chance to talk with them, and shrugs at their retreating backs.
There is a blink, and Tim and Lena find themself transported into the great hall at the centre of the castle, although they appear at opposite sides of the room, which is filled with a multitude of different staircases at impossible angles.
“It’s the MC Escher scene ” calls Tim across the wide open space. “There should be crystal globes and the baby in his stripey sleepsuit somewhere. See if we can get to the same piece of stairway before the clock strikes thirteen. and don’t eat anything, especially not peaches”.
“I know all that” says Lena, “Don’t you go mansplaining, Timothy Stoker. Just look for something else that’s not meant to be here, like you said.” That’s odd, Lena thinks. How did I know his surname? Oh well, that’s dream logic for you.
They walk up and down and round in different directions for several minutes, but the stairways are featureless and winding, and they can’t seem to end up on the same level, or even in the same axis, as some of the stairs are upside down or perpendicular to the floor. Lena begins to feel rather vertigenous. This dreamscape is starting to annoy her. Then she hears a shout come from Tim.
“Lena, Look! Over there..”
Tim is pointing to a pair of intricate pillars that are stretching majestically between yet more sets of stairs and a small landing.
“Those pillars. They’re built in the style of Robert Smirke. He designed loads of the most unnatural buildings in England, he’s dodgy as hell, and they definitely don’t belong here. Quick, we need to get to them.”
Lena tries to navigate the stairs to head in that direction but as she gets closer the stairways start to break up and detatch from one another. Then the stairs and sections and bits of pillar are all slow-motion-falling through a pink endless background, just as Lena remembers from the film.
“I don’t understand” shouts Lena. “Tim, where have you gone?”
A voice drifts from somewhere in the void.
“Don’t worry about me, Boss. I’ll try to keep things balanced for you. Just watch out for anything to do with Robert Smirke, or weird arsed clowns or circuses. And get out of the bloody Institute while you still can, I have the feeling it’s too late for me.”
Lena manages to kind of swim through the falling debris and finds herself clinging round a section of pillar which has a bronze plaque attatched to it just above where her arms encircle it. The plaque’s engraving states:
——-
Magnus Institute London,
Opened 1843 by Jonah Magnus.
Building Designed by Sir Robert Smirke.
——-
London, not Manchester. So you are from somewhere else. She hears a clock strike thirteen, abruptly wakes and finds that in bed, she is merely clutching her pillow.
I’m not in the Institute, Tim, Lena thinks to herself. But also wonders, if maybe in some way she is, and just doesn’t realise it yet.
******
In the OAIR, Alice has arrived and is starting to get ready to set up when she looks behind her and notices the dark wooden coatstand that stands by the door.
“Sam?” she calls loudly. “You didn’t tell me you’d been skip diving again. We are allowed to have nice things you know.”
“Nothing to do with me” Sam’s voice comes out of the break room. “I think Lena got hold of it from somewhere”
“Oh well” says Alice. “Get yourself away from that kettle and get logged in. No rest for the wicked, remember?”
She turns back to her monitor and begins the slow wrestle with the computer to log on.
The coatstand is starting to look quite well appreciated, and one of the back prongs now has a blue and green hawaiian shirt hanging from it. It is rather crumpled and looks to have some reddish stains here and there on the fabric. There is still plenty more space if anyone else were to want to use it, but somehow nobody seems to.
*****