Freedom

Finally, a moment to rest. They slow down, allowing their breath to catch up with them. Bloodstains frame the tears in their clothes. They wear muddy masks that hide their bruises. Both of them slump against the wall, slowly sliding to a seat. Whether it’s the adrenaline or the persistent pain flooding their bodies doesn’t matter. They can barely feel the jagged stone that forms the walls of the cavernous maze.

Their moment of rest lacks peace thanks to the constant drips echoing throughout the vast corridors. Each drop stings the soul, sinking deeper into their psyche. Moments of rest are swiftly interrupted as the dripping is joined by the familiar eerie thumping, reigniting their fear.

As usual, it comes slow, deliberate—like something that knows they’ll break before it does.

She curls inward. Her eyes stay fixed on the corner just ahead, where the wall curves in a soft suggestion of a bend. He stares too, but not with hope. With calculation. With dread.

The light is there—barely a shimmer, trembling against the far stone like breath on glass. It shouldn’t be. They’ve never seen light inside the labyrinth. Not like this. Not white. Not warm.

She speaks, barely: “It’s calling.”

He doesn’t answer.

Doesn’t move.

The thumping grows louder.

She looks back over her shoulder into the void they came from and gives a tug at his sleeve. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!”

He doesn’t look at her. Not yet.

The light flickers again—no brighter, but closer now, though neither of them has moved. He blinks.

A hush rolls through the corridor behind them, as if the thumping paused to listen.

“I don’t trust it,” he says. His voice is low, hoarse, carved raw by too many turns and too little water. “What if it’s not freedom? What if it’s a trick?”

She grips his sleeve tighter. “Then let it trick me. I’d rather walk toward something than hide from nothing.”

The thumping resumes—closer, heavier. The air trembles.

He stands. But it’s not a decision. It’s gravity.

“No.” He says, snapping his head to look at her. “This is wrong. It’s all wrong.”

His head swivels in search of an alternative. Another gloomy path hides in plain sight just beyond the encroaching light.

“This way.” Her arm yanks along with him as he quickens his pace. The thumping resumes as they narrowly avoid the false security the light implied.

The moment they break from the path, the light flares—sharp and searing, like the sun scorned. The air behind them groans. Not from wind. From something disappointed.

Their shadows stretch in opposite directions as they plunge into the hidden corridor, deeper into the dark.

Her breath catches. “You saw something,” she says. “In it.”

He doesn’t answer.

He can’t.

Because what he saw in the light wasn’t escape—

It was stillness.

The kind that never ends.

And it had her face.

It’s nothing new. Him seeing what others can’t. She’s the only one to realize it’s worth trusting. Her fear almost betrayed that knowing. Here she is again, following his lead.

They rush deeper and deeper into the pitch dark. Her eyes are of no use here, only her heart, as it keeps pace with his. That is until his hand suddenly rips from hers. She stops dead in her tracks and whispers,

“Where’d you go?”

No answer. Just breathless dark.

She reaches out, but touches only air thick with silence. The kind that feels listened to.

Then—

Not footsteps. But a scrape. A pull. A sound like fabric resisting stone.

She takes one step forward. Another. Her voice comes again, barely:

“Say something.”

And then—

From just ahead, just barely—his voice. But it’s… wrong.

Like it’s being repeated, not spoken.

“Where’d you go?”

Her own words, echoing back—not an echo, but an imitation.

Tears well up as fear replaces trust. Her frozen feet keep her there, breathless. The dark consumes her.

She wipes the tears from her eyes, and as she does she begins to see in the impossible black.

It’s him—but not. He raises a single pointing finger and aims it behind her.

She turns—

Slow, as if time thickens around her.

Behind, the path they fled:

The glow has returned, but not as it was.

It no longer whispers. It reaches.

Light spills like tendrils through the cracks in the walls, curling through the maze-like veins. It doesn’t illuminate—it hunts.

The figure beside her—his shape, his silence—lowers the pointing finger. Then vanishes like steam off a blade.

She’s alone.

But the light is coming.

Blinded by the mix of light, trust, and fear, she bursts in the direction of the point, into the hunting light. Her eyes fail to perceive first. Then sudden deafness hides the thumping and even her own footsteps before those disappear altogether. Weightlessness, then nothingness.

In this abyss, she hears him whisper:

“Freedom.”

Thanks for reading and Good Fortune to you.

Before you go down around the next bend, please take a moment to leave a like and set up your subscription to let me know you want more content like this. If you have any input or requests, please reach out in the comments below or on Facebook at Tales From a Madman.

What would you have done with light on one side and dark on the other?