A-Mazed

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Dave woke up to the ominous chatter of invisible voices that seemed to be vibrating from the walls around him. He scanned the environment and could feel sweat trickle through his thighs while his legs trembled with fear. He was confused as to how he found himself there.

It was a dark and desolate landscape, filled with eerie shadows that seemed to move on their own. Every shift of a shadow seemed to heighten his anxiety levels and each step he took only deepened the feeling of being watched by unseen malevolent eyes.

His brain was foggy and his memory seemed to be replaced with layer and layer of trepidation as every chitter seemed to be a call for his soul from an invisible power. He looked blankly at the line of high walls in front of him that seemed like a deliberate barrier at his escape. The walls looked dated and abandoned, but they also had an eerie feel of an ancient prison with markings all over it.

As he stepped closer and had a feel of the wall, he began to have flashes of memories and could see himself stumbling through the maze while using the walls to maintain balance. Immediately, as if in a reflex action, the wall seemed to shift. Dave took a step back in fear, but there was no further movement. But he could swear that he observed a movement.

Dave spent the next few minutes trying to figure out where he was and how he got there. But he could barely string together coherent memories as his head pounded, but only flashes and this time around he could see his friends sitting round a camp fire, chattering and laughing. Then with a sudden surge of adrenalin, Dave garnered courage to step into the walls.

As he stepped in between the walls, he noticed that he was in an ever-changing maze, its walls shifting and twisting, making escape look like an impossible task. Every turn led to dead-ends or loops that led right back to where they started. Panic set in, and my his heart began to pound in his chest as he felt the walls closing in.

Strange and ominous whispers echoed through the labyrinth, heightening his sense of dread. The sounds seemed to come from all directions, making it impossible to pinpoint their source. Dave's mind began to play tricks on him, and in a few minutes he began to feel like he was in a virtual game and struggled to distinguish between reality and illusion.

The air grew colder, and a chilling mist enveloped him, making it hard to see beyond a few feet. In the distance, a flickering light teased Dave, luring him deeper into the abyss with hope of an end in sight. The curiosity to uncover its origin was overwhelming, yet it felt like a trap, set by a malevolent force.

As Dave stooped low in exhaustion, he noticed that the sweat that had trickled through his thighs earlier had turned to him wetting himself.

"Screw me" he swore under his breath as he stood up feeling exhausted and hopeless. The ominous voices had become even louder now, and though he could not make out what it said, he felt as if it was sapping his energy and draining oxygen from his lungs.

Time became distorted, with minutes feeling like hours, and hours like an eternity. The boundary between fear and reality blurred, pushing Dave to the edge of sanity. There seemed to be no escape, and the claustrophobic confinement gnawed at his mind.

As the nightmarish ordeal continued, Dave stumbled upon a cryptic message scrawled on the walls, hinting at some clue of some sort. The signs looked like hieroglyphs of some sort. Trying to decipher the message in the writings, Dave noticed particles of cigarettes on the floor which triggered another memory of him smoking the previous night.

He decided to follow both his own trails, combined with the hieroglyphs which were obviously written on specific walls. The signs seemed to be written on diagonal walls pointing in different directions. All the walls on his left seemed to be pointing towards the northeast, while those on the right pointed at the northwest, forming a zigzag of some sort.

But every step that he took without a glimpse of the light he had seen earlier intensified the horror of his predicament. He was so terrified that he was close to tears, but decided to trust his instincts and keep going.

As he went on, he began to leave marks on the walls, creating a trail to retrace his steps in case he found himself lost again.

After what felt like an eternity, Dave stumbled upon a faint glimmer of hope—and a faint sight of light that flickered as a wall turned. With the last remnants of strength in his system he started screaming for help hoping that someone on the other side will hear him.

His screams seemed to have made no difference and after speeding through the maze in a rush and urgency that surprised him, he could see the last two walls getting closer to each other, like they were about to shut close. Hurrying with the last piece of strength left in his lungs, he lunged forward and squeezed through the two walls.

Laying exhausted on the other side, he was startled as voices started screaming his name from behind him.

"Hey, are you okay?" the first person queried as the others arrived behind him

"Where the heck were you guys" Dave hit back

"Here, looking for you" the second person replied

"You left the camp last night drinking, saying you wanted to be left alone" a girl started "we began looking for you this morning after we noticed that you were missing. What happened?"

"The maze happened" Dave replied exhaustedly.

"We just learnt that the villagers usually activate the maze every morning to use it as sport" the first person cut in. "But we did not know that you were trapped in there" he added.

"I guess its their voices that I heard and thought that I was being hunted" Dave replied scoffing.

"Hunted? Is that why you wetted yourself?" the girl replied, making a funny face while drawing attention to Dave's pants that elicited a raucous laughter from the group.