Fun House

Day 3 of StoryADay September.

The Prompt:

Your character is lost in a maze with the instructions to find a very important document or treasure hidden in its center. Or perhaps the character has lost this important thing, and must find it before the wrong person does.

“Let’s go to the fair,” she said. “It’ll be fun,” she said. Literally, those were Clara’s words.

I had no interest in the fair. Cows, goats, chickens, and deep-fried everything held no appeal for me. What did appeal to me was Clara. I was into Clara.

It turned out the Clara wasn’t into the animals and food, either. She was into carnival rides. After two roller coasters, a spinning room with a dropping floor, and the Ferris wheel she drug me to the Maze of Mirrors.

It was late on a weeknight, so the few people who had been keeping us company were drifting away. We were alone in the funhouse.

Clara darted ahead, laughing as she dodged around corners. I followed, searching the glass in the flashes of light for a glimpse of her. Her laugh and smile bounced around me, pinging from one mirror to another.

The more I focused on the flashes of her face, the harder she was to see. I struggled to keep up, to follow the echoes of her voice as her laugh turned to a cackle.

I was frustrated with this game of cat and mouse. I wanted to catch her, now, but it felt like I was moving slower and slower, falling further behind.

Out of breath, I stopped. Gasping, trying to capture the air around me, I turned my focus from the hunt for Clara to the mirror inches in front of my face. An old man stared back at me.

I wheezed out an attempted scream and backed up a step, crashing into the mirror behind me. I sunk to the floor. The old man in the mirror sunk to the floor with me.

I turned onto all fours, crawling and dragging myself around the next corner, hoping to see the exit. Instead I found more mirrors.

My arms collapse, dropping me down onto the rough wood floor. I stared at the old man in the mirror, watching him grow older. Watching him turn to dust.