Dazed in the Maze | Teen Ink

Dazed in the Maze

January 16, 2024
By Devangelista BRONZE, Franklin, Wisconsin
Devangelista BRONZE, Franklin, Wisconsin
4 articles 0 photos 0 comments

I awake in a daze surrounded by crops, my head throbbing and my entire body stiff. As my eyes begin to adjust to the dusk sky and environment around me, I notice that there’s something off, I just can’t put my finger on it. Everything looks how it should be there’s nothing visually unsettling but the air, aroma, and feel of the place I’m in is off. I stand up and I’m met with rejection from my body, my knees feel as if they’re about to buckle, my finger is cut, and my head feels like it’s about to explode. But I can’t let that stop me I need to get out of this field and get some sort of food in my body, my mouth is dry as the Sahara and my stomach is ravenous, growling for something, anything at all to consume. As I look around I spot a mirror, “What the hell?” I say out loud to myself but with my raspy voice, I can barely produce a decibel. I look at myself in the mirror and I take note of what parts of my body look the worst and make it a priority to protect those parts, my face is bruised, there’s dirt in my hair, and I have a nasty scrape on my left knee, I have to keep moving so I stumble west toward the sunset.
Just as the sun has fully set, I spot a building but it doesn’t look like it should be out here, I’m in some rural, middle-of-nowhere, rustic cornfield, so tell me why there’s a building that looks like a lab straight from a 2000’s Sci-fi movie. Just the light emanating from the building is enough to make me shield my eyes and look away, but I carry on and walk towards it. I don’t hear a sound coming from this place, not a peep except for the buzzing of electricity emitting from the building. As I walk toward the building, motion sensor lights activate and I hesitate a bit, but I persevere forward, I have to. As I approach the entrance, the scrape on my knee begins to hurt even more than it has already. There’s dirt all over my clothes and blood from my knee bleeding through my pants, I need to get inside and get help. The door at the main entrance looks like it leads into the Batcave, it opens vertically rather than horizontally and looks like it weighs a ton. As I go to make the most pointless knock ever performed in the history of mankind the entire door opens in a matter of a second and I don’t skip a beat, I quickly walk in and take my chance to get help.
As I walk around I can hear my footsteps echoing throughout the hollow room, there are doors to my left and right with labels that are in a language I have never seen before. I take my chances and head toward the door on the right, as I approach the door it slides open and I walk through, another room the exact same as the last, this means I’m entering from the left door so I try the door across from me again, the same thing happens. I turn back and walk through the door I entered from, it slides open into a much darker, smaller, and hotter room than the room that had been there before. I walk in hoping to break the cycle and I spot something in the corner of the room, it has a glint to it and has some light coming from it. As I approach the sound of nature grows louder, birds chirping and crops rustling are soothing to my ears. As I approach closer, I notice that the noise this thing’s producing isn’t a video but actually real nature. It’s a portal to a field of crops, all of a sudden I see myself walking across, “What the heck?” I say, my clone says the exact same thing, only in a much quieter and raspy voice. I watch him analyze his injuries and I notice that all of my injuries that I had prior to finding this portal are gone. He isn’t acknowledging me because he can’t see me, so I shout at the top of my lungs trying to grab his attention but to no avail. He starts to walk away so I try to barge through this portal, and after constant and repetitive bashing I fall through and scrape my left knee on the rough dirt, causing my knee to turn a bright red. I can feel dirt in my hair and the glass shards around me loom as a dangerous presence that I need to carefully avoid as I stand up. I pick one up to examine my face but I cut my finger in the process, I see dirt all around my face and my hair, not good. As I stand up I walk over to where I saw myself walk away, and I realize this is the same situation I had found myself in earlier. My injuries are back, and I’m stuck in the same field as before, I need to set foot in the opposite direction, the sun is about to set and if I make my way out of here now, I could maybe find a place to stay by the time the moon sets into the sky. As I walk to where I originally woke up, I hear the crunch of glass behind me as a stampede of footsteps rush me and I turn around to a baseball bat striking my head, I fall down to the ground, my head throbbing and my injuries more painful than ever. I can’t get up and I see the silhouette of a man walking away with his head down, starting the cycle all over again.


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