GadielMay 8, 11:00 am, Queanbeyan, Australia
Gadiel"s head felt fuzzy. He opened his eyes slowly, blearily, groaning as he pulled the sheets off his face. His bed was weirdly hard and cold. Almost like it was metal. He could feel it all over his back and legs; it seemed like he was naked, save for a pair of black boxer briefs.
Did he sleep somewhere else yesterday?
Wait, bed?
Gadiel blinked, his blurry vision slowly coming to focus. He gripped the sides of his "bed," realizing that he was lying back on something metallic. He looked around, to find there were other "beds" with people in them around him. Someone else in front of him was also getting up. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, then blinked as he took a good look at where he was.
Oh.
He was in a morgue.
The LED lights flickered above him, and Gadiel felt himself surprised to be here. Mostly because she wasn"t exactly sure how he got here. He gazed over the rows of bodies beside him and frowned. He tried to remember what he had been doing before all this. Where had he been?
He remembered the labyrinth...
Gadiel blinked as he noticed the other person moving in the room. He looked up, only to find that it was his reflection.
He didn"t look any different, but for some reason, a s.h.i.+ver of fear crept through his body. The more he watched himself, the more his labored his breathing became.
His reflection smiled.
CRAs.h.!.+
Gadiel, blinked, and found himself standing up on the morgue table, sweating. He looked down at his hand, surprised. He had thrown an ice spear at the mirror immediately after he thought he saw his reflection smile at him.
Why had he done that?
"Wow, so that"s what trauma looks like," said a sarcastic, biting voice. As soon as he heard it, Gadiel felt a surge of irritation surge up within him.
Of course. It had to be her.
He turned to find Ai ogling him from a plush, red sofa chair, completely at odds with the surrounding. She was still in her silver one piece, eating popcorn out of a bag as she watched Gadiel, clearly interested in the area below his bellyb.u.t.ton.
"I see you haven"t changed out of your one fas.h.i.+on statement," said Gadiel, not bothering to keep the irritation out of his voice.
"Mmm, and I see you"re still annoyingly handsome," Ai sighed, eyes traveling up his body slowly. "Couldn"t you like, get really skinny or something? Lose all that muscle and just like, become a skeleton. Get an eating disorder on top of that eisoptrophobia ."
"Eiso-what?" Gadiel asked, sitting down. Ai let out a moan and scrunched her face up in a grimace of pleasure.
"Boy, I hate your guts, but I sure love package they come in," she said, taking another look at Gadiel"s ma.s.sive chest.
Annoyed, Gadiel took the cloth he had been covered in, and used it to cover his body.
"Boo, you"re no fun," said Ai, throwing popcorn at Gadiel.
"What are you doing here?" asked Gadiel.
"It"s a fear of mirrors," said Ai, getting up from her seat. She left the popcorn in her seat, and walked around to Gadiel to the broken mirror. She started inspecting it, looking at her own fractured reflection.
"Or at least, the fear of your own reflection. Eisoptrophobia."
"I"m not afraid of my own reflection," Gadiel scoffed. At the same time, he felt a weird sinking sensation in his stomach.
He wasn"t afraid of his own reflection...was he?
Ai turned and raised an eyebrow. For some reason, Gadiel found that incredibly annoying.
"If you don"t want to remember in your own dream, I won"t force you," she sighed, turning back to the broken mirror. "But you"re gonna have to come to terms with it at some point."
"You didn"t answer my question," said Gadiel, turning towards Ai once more.
"I did? I answered what eisoptrophobi"
"What are you doing here?" Gadiel asked again, more forcefully.
Ai rolled her eyes, and stood back up. She turned to face him once more.
"Has anyone ever told you how boring you are?" she said. She sounded and looked incredibly annoyed with him. "Like, you seriously have no sense of humor."
"Maybe you"re just not funny," Gadiel shot back.
Ai put her hands together in front of her mouth, and shook her head.
"And then there are times when I have hope for you," she said. "Like just then. See, that was funny. Or it could"ve been, if it wasn"t coming from a gorgeous hunk like you."
"Are you hitting on me?"
"No, I"m considering how to take your body out while destroying your brain," said Ai. "See, the mirror monsters would"ve been able to do that perfectly, if it wasn"t for your annoyingly strong connection with Tarik. I"ve clearly underestimated your bond with him."
Gadiel blinked as unwanted memories started to surface, but he controlled himself. He focused on the one part of the sentence that elicited anger from him.
"You stay away from Tarik," he growled.
Anger was good. Anger was safe. Anger meant he didn"t have to face his other emotions.
He could lose himself in anger.
Ai put her hands up in mock horror.
"Oooh, I"m so h.o.r.n.y for your growly, angry voice," she said in a high, baby voice. "Or at least, I would be if it wasn"t you, Gadiel. See, that"s the problem with you. You"re too much like yourself. You should really just change everything about yourself."
"Get out," said Gadiel. He had had enough of this.
"Alright, fine, whatever," said Ai, turning and waving a hand. "Just know that I"m not going to be there in the next room. But I did leave a special surprise for you all."
She snapped her fingers, and the world completely shattered into pieces.
And Gadiel woke up.
***
Gadiel
May 8, 11:15 am, Queanbeyan, Australia
Unlike in his dream, Gadiel was instantly awake when he came to. Along with his alertness came a the sudden rush of memories from what had happened before he had pa.s.sed out.
"Urk!"
Gadiel couldn"t help it. He turned over and threw up all over the floor. His vomit was mostly black, with only traces of food.
At some point, he became aware that someone was holding him from behind, making sure he wasn"t choking or anything. Once he was done heaving, he looked up behind him, to find Tarik there.
Tarik smiled, and Gadiel was instantly dealt 100 points of emotional damage, straight to his heart.
"Hey," said Tarik.
"Hey," Gadiel managed to croak back.
"Feeling better?" Tarik asked.
Gadiel nodded, not trusting his voice yet. He looked away, and found Medina standing just a little further away. Tarik noticed, and motioned for Medina to come closer.
"I"m good," she said hastily. "I"m just...as long as he"s..."
"I"m okay," Gadiel managed to say. "And I"m sorry."
Medina"s expression twisted and changed for a moment, before settling on a complicated smile. Gadiel understood.
It was hard to separate the current him from Not-Gadiel.
Once Tarik was sure Gadiel was alright, he filled him in on what he had missed. They were still in the hall leading towards the final room, and had set up camp here.
"Set up camp?" Gadiel frowned. "How long have I been asleep?"
Tarik hesitated, then answered.
For a moment, Gadiel thought he misheard. Then-
"A WHOLE DAY??"
Needless to say, Gadiel"s panic was long and tedious. It took about twenty minutes for Tarik to calm him down, by the time which Medina was able to definitely see that this was no longer Not-Gadiel, no matter how much they looked alike.
"Isn"t it exam week? Haven"t you already turned everything in?" Medina asked, handing Gadiel a muesli bar. For a panicked moment, Gadiel wondered if there was some a.s.signment he had forgotten about.
"I mean, yeah, but what if they a.s.signed something during cla.s.s?" said Gadiel, panic rising again. "What if they-"
"The cla.s.ses this week are just for review" said an exasperated Tarik, shooting Medina a look. As Medina backed off, he continued:
"They won"t a.s.sign anything new. Plus, you can"t pa.s.s if you"re not alive."
Gadiel was forced to admit this point. With a sigh, he opened the muesli bar Medina had handed him, and took a bite. He was ravenous.
He looked up at the walls, and noticed that the paintings were all gone.
"You took care of those then?" he asked.
Tarik nodded.
"What about..."
Suddenly, Gadiel felt like something was stuck in his throat. He coughed. And went on.
"What about the...the mirror?"
He managed to say it in the end, with some difficulty.
Tarik frowned.
"We left it alone," he said. "We figured we"d open it once you were ready."
Gadiel nodded, and took another bite of his muesli bar. Inside, he was torn.
On the one hand, he wanted to look at the mirror, just to be sure. Just to be sure that it was his reflection in there. That it was just a reflection, nothing more.
On the other hand, Gadiel was terrified that looking back into those eyes would put him back in there. Gadiel had never felt more powerless in his life than for the brief moment he had become his own reflection.
He never wanted to feel like that again.
"That"s right, you"re a coward, aren"t you? You won"t be able to face your own mistakes, your own problems. You"ll just let them fester, and grow, until they consume you. Because that"s what you really want, don"t you? Just an escape. An escape from any real responsibility."
Gadiel forced himself to think about something else, anything else, while he ate his muesli.
"I met Ai again," he told Tarik. Medina instantly perked up.
After recounting his dream, Medina seemed disappointed.
"So she won"t be there..." she muttered. "That..."
She called Ai a very inappropriate word.
"She could be lying," said Tarik. "She sees herself as our enemy. She doesn"t have to tell us the truth every time she talks to us."
Gadiel and Medina admitted that it was a possibility. But everyone present felt that Ai"s words were probably true this time.
"Alright," said Gadiel once he had finished his muesli. "I"m ready."
Tarik looked at him in surprise.
"You sure?" he said. "You just got up. We don"t need to-"
"If I miss any more cla.s.ses, I am going to have an aneurysm," said Gadiel. "Out of anxiety. And then I will be dead, and I will miss my cla.s.s, and also not be able to get out of this G.o.d forsaken labyrinth."
Tarik looked worried, but Medina seemed at least a little amused by Gadiel.
"He says he"s fine, and I"m getting sick of this place too," said Medina. "Let"s just get this over with."
Tarik sighed, and relented.
Gadiel got up, then took a deep breath. Behind him was the door, and the mirror.
"You guys just...go ahead and open the door," said Gadiel, raising a bottle of water to his mouth. "I"ll be there in a sec."
Tarik seemed confused by Gadiel"s sudden weirdness, but Medina urged Tarik to come with her.
"If you think I had it bad with Gadiel, how do you think he feels towards his own reflection right now?" Gadiel heard her hiss.
He had to hand it to her. Medina was a lot more reliable, insightful, and clever than he had initially thought.
That worried him a little.
Gadiel took a long swing from his bottle. He could hear the sound of something big and heavy opening up behind him.
"It"s open!" Tarik called out. "Come on!"
Gadiel took a deep breath, then turned around. Sure enough, the doors were wide open, leading into what seemed like pitch darkness.
Nice. This looked like it would be fun.
Tarik and Medina were already walking in. Gadiel ran to catch up with them, and together, they entered the final room.
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