“Dear guest, I thank you for your attempts at hospitality, but really, I have no use for music. You can stop now.” The voice returned suddenly, whispering in Jake’s ear. Jake froze, flute raised to his lips mid-blow. With the voice's return, he felt fatigue retake his body as he withered before the voice’s presence. Lowering the flute from his mouth, Jake repocketed it before the voice could offer any objections and stumbled a bit, his newly returned strength quickly evaporating.
“So kind of you, dear guest, to do as you're told. At least one of you knows how to play this game. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I think it’s time you continued on your way. Don’t you agree, treasured guest?”
Jake shuddered at the voice’s sugary tone, questions dying in his throat as he exploded internally, dying to ask about Alice. The way the voice spoke of her didn’t fill him with confidence, but with little option left available to him, Jake stumbled forward, dragging his feet beneath him as he continued following the paved lights.
“What is with that look, dear guest? So worried, so serious? Oh, I understand. You must be worried about your little friend, Alice, isn’t it? Don’t you worry, dear guest. We just had a little disagreement. Nothing to worry your little head about, we resolved it most amicably. I doubt it’ll happen again. And if it does, well… A host must protect its home. You agree, don’t you, dear guest?”
This voice distorted and faded into crooked laughter as Jake continued forward, in no way reassured and now more worried than he had been before. The only solace he could take was it sounded like Alice still lived. It made sense if he thought about it. The voice was enjoying this, whatever it was doing. Jake doubted it would end its game so easily by allowing them to die. Gritting his teeth, he pushed his worries to the back of his mind and forced himself forward.
He didn’t know how long he chased after the lights, chasing after nothing as his head pressed into the wall, allowing the ever-present ticking to mock him, bore into his brain, and rot him from within. Teeth chattering, he stumbled forward as minutes and hours and seconds and days seemed to pass with each step. It felt like every time he stepped forward; he’d made no progress, walking in place for no reason along the identical corridor for all eternity. As Jake began to wonder if this was the voice's game, forcing him to march to his death for no reason, he suddenly saw something glinting in the dim light up ahead.
“See, as I promised, dear guest. A wonderous resting ground prepared just for you. You should hurry to it, enjoy it while you can…” The voice spoke in a slick whisper, rolling off Jake as he gave his tempting offer. Jake stood stock still, staring ahead, fear gripping hold of his soul as he looked toward the faint glint ahead. He had no desire to approach whatever interrupted the endless corridor. No part of him doubted it was evil, a trap designed to torture and break him. As he looked ahead, he realized that for as painful and monotonous walking the unending hall had been, actually reaching something was even more terrifying.
“Go on now, dear guest; you deserve a rest!” The voice said cheerfully, forcing Jake forward with an unseen push. Jake was sent sprawling, flying through the air for an unnaturally long time before ending up sprawled before the glint. Looking around, he saw now the glint was the product of a glass bottle positioned in the hands of a rotted corpse, bits of meat still hung to his arms and legs, yet its skull was visible. Neither the bottle nor the corpse were singular, as more of both littered the area.
Three corpses in total lay sprawled out, rotted to nothing but bones. Around them lay sprinklings of glass from broken bottles, though a few still lay intact. With a gulp, Jake pushed himself up and away from the rotting corpse and felt his hand brush up against something cold and coarse. With a shudder, he turned quickly, expecting the worst, only to find his hand resting near a leather-bound book. No title was printed on its cover. Looking around, Jake expected the voice to chime in with mock repour at his discovery of the bodies, but it sat oddly quiet. With a gulp, Jake picked the book up from the floor and flipped to the first page.
“Rob and I found a shortcut, at least, he says it’s a shortcut. It could save us millions. No one ever goes near it, at least not for the last few decades. Documenting for future use:”
Below was a crudely drawn map of a region Jake didn’t recognize, with a squiggly line cutting across the page, clearly to chart a path. Flipping a few pages past more maps and charts, Jake saw another entry inked into the pages of the book:
“The door was right there, Rob promises it was right there. Kyle and Pete are freaking and can’t say I blame them. Just wanted shelter from the storm, didn’t want to get trapped in this weird labyrinth. At least we should have plenty of wine to keep us company till we find a way out.”
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The rest of the page sat empty save for a few stains and spills, a dark red color. Flipping through, Jake found more writing on the next page:
“Wines running low, only thing keeping me going in this place. It keeps telling us to walk and walk and walk and walk and walk and walk and walk and walk… I can't take it anymore. Only two bottles left, what’ll I do when it’s gone? Would have more if the other didn’t make me leave the crates behind. It’s all their fault, all their fault…”
A second entry sat below this, scrawled in much more erratic chicken scratch, barely legible to Jake:
“Rob cut his hand today, I saw it spill from him. Deep red and beautiful. They're hiding it inside them, leaving me to suffer now the bottles have run empty. Acting innocent. They're hiding it inside, hiding it inside, hiding it inside, hiding it inside…”
The rest of the page repeated the phrase “Hiding it inside” In an increasingly worsening pen till it suddenly stopped. With a gulp, Jake flipped to the next page and found it blank of any text, stained only in crimson smears and smudges. Flipping through dozens of pages left marred by these crimson markings, Jake finally found a page with text sprawled across it. Just one phrase repeated over and over in crimson ink:
“No way out”
“All rested, I trust, my dear guest?” the voice chimed in, sickeningly sweet and smug. With a gulp, Jake closed the book and dropped it to the floor, allowing a small cloud of broken glass to rise into the air.
“Oh dear, I hadn’t realized some of my old guests were still here! This is truly embarrassing; you must forgive me, dear guest! Still, though, truly a tragedy. I tried so hard to tend to these guests, and they turned on one another! So violent! You're truly lucky, dear guest, to be left alone…” The voice let out a series of cackles as Jake stood amongst the rotting corpses, chills racing up his spine.
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“I’ve grown bored watching you fall, dear guest; I believe It’s time we continued on our way.” The voice spoke as Alice suddenly and violently froze in the air. The force of the sudden stop knocked the wind from her lungs and gave her whiplash. Without another word, she found herself thrown from the dark and back into the stone corridor. Rolling across the floor, she slammed into the wall with a weak gasp of pain.
“I trust we’ll have no further issue, right, dear guest?” The voice asked, seeming to grow closer to her with each word spoken.
“N…No…” Alice choked out, still struggling to recover. Silence followed her statement before a short chuckle rang out around her.
“Good. Now let's move along, dear guest, you’ve already delayed your schedule so much I worry you’ll never catch up!” The voice let out a laugh and fell silent, leaving Alice to cough and sputter as she rose to her feet. Looking around, she was back in the standard stone corridor the voice usually trapped her in. On one side of her was only pitch-black darkness, and on the other, the dim lights lit the floor, forming a path for her to follow.
With a gulp and one final shaky breath, she set out down the lit path with renewed vigor. She did this not out of fear of the voice or desire to obey his will. She followed the path with such vigor as it led straight toward where she suspected the sudden noise to have come from. She’d been left falling for what felt like days and given plenty of time to think alone. She realized the best explanation for the origin of the noise. With renewed vigor, she marched down the voice's path, straight toward where she suspected Jake to be waiting.
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Jake felt like he’d been marching for months. Maybe years now. He couldn’t remember much except for the endless trek through the corridor. The gray of the walls had become all he knew anymore. The empty concave of his stomach, the scratching of his throat, the creaking of his joints. They were his normal now. His withered form pulled itself forward through the twisted corridor for no reason other than the voice's sick pleasure.
It would come in to mock and laugh at him as he walked endlessly. Jake didn’t know why the voice did this, what thrill came to it from his torture, but long ago, Jake had learned to stop fighting or questioning the voice. It would only lead to worse pain. The only way to survive was to keep walking.
Stumbling forward, a glint against the stone ground caught his eyes. Crawling across the ground, he soon came across a set of withered, decaying corpses who lay amongst a field of shattered glass. They sparked something in his brain, a memory he could barely cling to, yet this didn’t matter at the moment. All that mattered was one of the corpses still sat only partly decayed. Some rotted flesh still clung to its bones.
Like a wild animal, Jake dove forward and ripped the arm free of the skeleton. It came loose easily; nothing remained to hold it in place. Lifting it up, Jake placed the rotted flesh upon his tongue and devoured it. He was so hungry; it had been months, years, maybe since he last ate. So, so hungry. The rotted, disgusting taste of the corpse may as well have been steak for how greedily Jake devoured it. He swallowed and blinked and suddenly returned to his senses.
The hunger, fatigue, and thirst that had clung to him melted away instantly, and with it, he realized he’d not spent months wandering the corridor. It had only been five, ten minutes tops since he left this collection of corpses. Horror and disgust rushed through Jake as he released the rotted arm he held and fell backward. Turning over toward his knees, he began gagging himself in a desperate attempt to vomit, forcing the rotted flesh out of his body.
As he knelt over, desperately trying to vomit up the corpse, the voices of cruel laughter soon filled the air, circling around him like a vulture coming to pick apart its prey.
“What’s wrong, dear Jake?” The voice asked with mock sympathy. “I thought you were hungry? Starved even!” The voice laughed harder and harder as Jake began to vomit, yet nothing came up but bile.
“You said it yourself, right, dear Jake, don't you remember? Anything to survive, anything to get back home?”