Radley's Labyrinth for Horny Monsters

by Annabelle Hawthorne

  “Sofia!” Tink stood, clutching onto the back of the chair, her tail whipping from side to side in excitement.

  “Tink?” The figure lowered her blade, pulling back the hood of her cloak. Long, braided hair framed a large forehead, at the center of which was a single purple eye. “What are you doing here? And who is that?” Sofia pointed at Mike with the tip of her sword. “Where is Emily?”

  “Tink have long story to tell Sofia.” Tink hopped off the chair, swatting Mike’s chest playfully. “But Tink hungry.”

  “I think I can help you with that.” Sofia flicked her wrist. The sword folded itself up until it was the size of a butter knife, which she tucked into her belt. “But first, you two made a mess in here. Let’s get these books all put away and you can catch me up.”

  PLANTING THE SEEDS

  Mike and Tink followed Sofia out into the main hall of the Library. A podium of her own had been parked up against the railing. She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. Seconds later, a full floating platform arrived, easily ten by twelve feet, with a small coffee table in the middle surrounded by comfortable-looking chairs.

  “Uh…” Mike stared at the platform. It didn’t even have rails. Sofia and Tink walked onto it without a second thought, but Mike hesitated. He had to fight every fiber of panic in his being, but he crossed over, and the platform moved gently away. Standing near the edge, he felt the familiar sensation of multiple hands on his body, holding him in place. Seeing that Sofia wasn’t looking, he tried to brush some more of the smashed Pop-Tart off the back of his pants, the crumbs falling to the marble floors far below.

  “Please. Come sit.” Sofia gestured at the table, leaning back in a chair that was large enough for her frame. Mike sat in the chair across from her. His feet just barely touched the ground. Tink fit easily on the cushion of her chair, looking almost like a little green doll. Sofia tapped a small bell on the center of the table, then spun a nearby dial until it pointed at the number three.

  “Oh!” Mike watched in amazement as plates of food and drink appeared. Small sandwiches and beef stew in silver bowls, along with a small bottle of wine. He picked up one of the sandwiches, smelling the bread. It was fresh baked.

  “Food here super good,” Tink informed him, picking up a spoon. “Always best food in Library!”

  “But how?” Mike asked. “Is it magic?”

  “It is,” Sofia told him. “Have you ever been at a restaurant and had your order go missing? Same principle. Out there, in the universe somewhere, somebody is wondering where their lunch is at.”

  “Wait, this is stolen food?” Mike took a bite of his sandwich. It was delicious.

  “High-quality stolen food,” Sofia corrected him. She undid her robe, letting it fall away from her shoulders. She wore a tight blue blouse beneath that matched her skirt. Large breasts were packed inside of her blouse, making Mike think she was wearing some kind of sports bra. She grabbed a bowl of her own, which looked more like a giant mug in her hands. “So fill me in. How long have I been asleep this time?”

  Tink, between bites, told Sofia all that had happened since Mike had inherited the house from the previous Caretaker, Emily, a distant relative he had never even heard of who had died and left him with a magic house and no instruction manual. For the most part, the story was to the point, but she spent several minutes explaining how (she thought) a magic screen worked and then announced that Mike was her new husband.

  “I see. You are the new Caretaker, then.” Sofia poured herself some of the wine. “Then may I offer my services? This is the Library of Thoth. Built for him by his brother, it sails beyond the reach of mortal man, currently connected only to your home on Earth.”

  “How many books are here?” Mike asked.

  “All of them.” Sofia smiled, blinking gently. With only one eye, Mike wondered if she had been winking instead. He also wondered how big her breasts actually were. It seriously looked like they were struggling to get free.

  “All of them?” Mike asked. Was the cyclops fucking with him?

  “As they are written, yes. Much like the magic that brings us our food, these books simply vanish from the real world. It is my job to read them before finding them a permanent home here, properly catalogued.”

  “Wait.” Mike set down his sandwich. “Is that what all those boxes in the garage were?”

  “Yes. Those were books I loaned out for the people of the house to read, and Emily was kind enough to store them in bulk so I could focus on my job here. It seems like there’s been a sudden rush on the number of books published lately, and I…” Sofia squinted at him. “What do you mean, were?”

  “Boxes all gone. Witch blow them all up,” Tink announced, happily slurping her soup.

  It was weird watching Sofia’s eye twitch. Just one side of her eye spasmed, her giant lid rippling with each movement. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, staring down into her lap.

  “Shit.” Shaking her head, the cyclops poured herself some wine. “That’s going to leave a gap in the collection.”

  “Can’t you just magic up some more?” Mike suggested.

  “The Library only brings one of everything. Part of its magic.” Shaking fingers clutched the wine goblet, lifting it slowly to her crimson lips. The instant the wine touched her mouth, she threw back the whole glass, swallowing it in one giant gulp like a shot. “What happened to the witch?”

  “She’s dead.” Mike pictured Sarah being dragged into the giant pod of the Mandragora, a fate he had avoided almost entirely by chance.

  “Good.” Sofia poured herself another glass, slamming it back like she had the first. “Stupid bitch.”

  “Uh, yeah.” Mike worried more than a little about the cyclops and her booze. Maybe alcohol affected her differently? She was already starting to look a little pink in the cheeks. “So,” he said, “we were wondering if you knew how to activate the gateway to the Labyrinth.”

  “Oh. That’s easy. However, I don’t think you want to go down there empty-handed. Minotaur are warriors—even if you fought one that was unarmed and naked, you would have a tough time hurting it, even with a weapon. Your best bet is something with a solid enchantment on it.”

  Mike sat up. “Like a knife sharp enough to cut through a spirit?”

  Sofia was already filling up her glass again. “Yeah, that would do it. I have no idea where you would get one though. A blade capable of damaging an ethereal creature is extraordinarily rare. They have to be made of a non-Earthly metal, and that stuff is extremely challenging to come by.”

  “The witch had a knife that did that.”

  Sofia’s drink paused on the way to her lips. “I seriously hope you stuck it in the Vault.”

  “Uh, no.” Mike looked down at his feet. “I left it in the greenhouse. With the Mandragora.”

  Sofia dropped her goblet, wine spilling everywhere on the table. “You left it? You actually had a powerful magical artifact practically in your hands, and you just left it behind?”

  “I wasn’t exactly thinking properly.” Mike looked to Tink for help, but the little goblin was suddenly deeply engrossed in her sandwich. “I’m sure it’s where the witch dropped it. Next to the Mandragora.”

  “I…you…why…” Sofia massaged her temples, her eye rolling dramatically. “Zero reason. You had zero reason to leave it behind. Part of the purpose of the Caretaker is to lock stuff like that away. I just…” She stood, and the floating room dropped out of the air. “You need to get it right away.”

  “Well, sure, yeah, I can do that.”

  “I mean right away. Now. We’re going now!” Sofia commanded.

  Mike watched Tink practically inhale the remaining food in front of her, the subtle shift of the ground beneath him signaling a change in direction. The Library spun around them as the flying platform navigated the building, and Mike realized he could potentially lose hi
mself in such a place forever.

  The platform set them down in the lobby. Sofia, Mike, and Tink stepped off it, and they walked together toward the bookshelf.

  “Do you know how to get back?” Sofia asked.

  “I assume I just remove the book,” Mike told her.

  “Oh good. You can actually think for yourself.” Sofia yanked the red book from the shelf, and the room spun around them.

  Returning to the house was simple, but retrieving the knife right away had to wait. Upon looking outside, Mike realized that night had fallen, which meant he had to listen to a disgruntled rant from Sofia about how he was wasting time due to his unwillingness to try and find the Mandragora in the dark. A boy scout when he was younger, he simply knew better than to try and wander through the jungle at night, but no amount of reason seemed to placate the cyclops.

  Strangely, though Sofia was extremely rude to him, the others were more than happy to see her. Naia and Abella both greeted the cyclops with big hugs, and even Cecilia appeared, greeting the creature with a curtsy. The decision was made to wait until daybreak before setting out for the knife.

  Mike didn’t sleep particularly well. His mind was on what would happen after he got the knife. Were they really going into a Labyrinth to fight a mythical beast? Was he going to have to kill someone? He was still struggling with the idea that he had watched Sarah get eaten by a plant, but he had no choice in the matter. His midday nap with Tink was the other reason he couldn’t fall asleep. Just when he felt his eyelids getting heavy, dawn broke through his window, and Sofia opened his bedroom door.

  “Time to get moving,” she announced.

  Tink, who had been sound asleep, practically threw herself out of bed to follow the cyclops. Mike was beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about when his nostrils caught a whiff of the scents filling the air.

  The home was filled with the aroma of eggs, meat, and bread. He found Tink seated at the table, a pile of bacon, Texas toast, and an omelet the size of a frisbee on her plate. Tink had a fork in each hand, demonstrating her ambidexterity by shoveling food into her mouth with both of them.

  In the kitchen, Sofia moved back and forth in a powder-blue dress with an apron tied around the front.

  “I fixed you a plate,” she informed him, turning toward him with a stack of food in each hand. Bacon, eggs, and sausage in one and then a stack of waffles in the other. “Tink insisted you liked something called an Eggo. I threw those away.”

  Mike couldn’t even care about the loss of his preferred breakfast because he also happened to notice that, with her arms apart, the front of Sofia’s dress hung perilously low, putting her cleavage on display. Her breasts still had that strange, overtly full quality to them, and he could see that she was practically spilling out of the wrap she had her breasts in.

  “Where did you get all this food?” Mike asked.

  “The Library. I acquired the raw materials before the sun rose and made everybody breakfast.” Sofia frowned at the amount of food on the counter. “At least, I thought I did. I have a bunch left over, but it’s just the three of us eating.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure that’ll change at some point. Thank you!” Mike took the offered plates and joined Tink at the table. She barely acknowledged him.

  “You act like I haven’t been feeding you,” Mike told her before putting a greasy piece of bacon in his mouth.

  “Husband tried. Did okay,” Tink told him between bites. Sofia joined them, a large breakfast sandwich on her plate. The three of them ate in silence, the dining room louder than usual with the sounds of silverware on plates. Sofia sat with her back to the window, the sunbeams scattering around her auburn braids. She closed her eye, savoring the food on her plate. Tink, having finished her meal, ran to the kitchen for seconds.

  “You like cooking?” Mike asked.

  “For other people, yes.” Sofia sipped at a glass of orange juice. “I remember doing it for Emily, but not much else. This whole house is like déjà vu, every memory ready to be rediscovered.”

  “The geas.” The enchantment on the home that scattered memories when the Caretaker died, a fail-safe meant to prevent people from capturing the monsters within.

  “Yes. I refer to them as resets. Let’s see, I think this is only my second reset.”

  “So you haven’t been here as long as the others?” Mike asked.

  “Yes and no. The Library went undiscovered by one of the previous Caretakers, which meant I slept for nearly a hundred years.”

  “You sleep between Caretakers?” Mike asked.

  “Sort of. We all wake up just prior to being discovered. It’s as if the geas knows that you are ready to find us.” Sofia smiled, watching Tink shove her second plate of food on the table. “We don’t even exist in a physical state, as far as I can tell. It’s like we become dreams.”

  “Interesting.” Mike finished the rest of his meal in silence, mulling over the idea that he had missed finding a new monster simply because the geas hadn’t deemed him ready. Was the geas itself alive? Could a spell have a consciousness of its own?

  Once finished, he and Tink cleared the table, and they all did the dishes together. Sofia hand-washed the plates, and Tink dried them. Mike put each one away, hoping he was at least getting them in the right area. After, he went up to his room to change, getting himself ready for his trip into the greenhouse. Jeans, a lightweight shirt, and a belt. He didn’t think he’d need a jacket. As he walked back toward the stairs, his eyes caught on the tall ebony wardrobe at the end of the hall. It had ornate silver handles that opened both of the doors on the front. His hands were nearly on the handles when he heard Sofia shout.

  “What’s taking you so long?” she called, and Mike spun on one foot, jogging casually down the steps and back into the dining room.

  “Are you sure you can get there and back by nightfall?” Sofia asked him. She stood next to Tink at the kitchen table, arms crossed in front of her. Tink had unrolled the original map of the Labyrinth, using small mugs to hold it open, carefully drawing a replica with a ruler and a protractor.

  “Oh yeah. Should be back around lunchtime. I know right where I left it.” Well, that was a small lie. He knew that it was by the Mandragora, but nothing else. Sofia had spent what little had remained of last night harping on him for details regarding the knife, where he had set it, and if it had runes carved into the hilt. The truth was that he didn’t know. Shortly after Sarah had dropped it, he had been too busy getting high on the spores the plant had released that had made him and Sarah fuck until they’d been too exhausted to move.

  He wasn’t about to share that detail with the cyclops. She seemed to be in a constant state of disapproval of him, and he felt a strange desire to please her. Was it that she was the latest monster in the house, and he felt the urge to protect her? Or maybe it was that she didn’t seem to be that interested in him at all.

  “I guess I’m off.” He gave a small wave, but Sofia ignored him. Tink was already busy with the copies of the map. It had been Sofia’s idea to leave behind the original and provide all three of them with a copy, just in case. Sofia had informed them this morning that she intended to come along, for Tink’s sake.

  “Bye,” Tink muttered, waving dismissively with her free hand.

  Feeling a little let down, Mike stepped out the back door into the garden. Abella had found a dark corner beneath the roof, her iPad clutched tightly in her hands. Mike couldn’t be sure, but he was fairly certain that she was watching Friends.

  “Good luck, lover.” Naia blew him a kiss. A small watery sphere splashed against his cheek.

  “I shouldn’t be long,” he told her. Abella and Cecilia had offered to go with him, but he asked them to stay behind and watch out for the mysterious woman in white who had been spotted in the front yard yesterday while he was at the Library. Now that the Mandragora was properly fed, the onl
y danger in the greenhouse would be the sudden storms.

  The greenhouse looked innocuous enough, but Mike knew better. The Mandragora opened the door for him, the vines pushing it open gently. The sudden blast of warmth and humidity felt good against his skin, and the smells of the greenhouse flooded his nostrils. Miles of sky in every direction greeted him, and he shut the door behind him. Above the door, glass windows extended all the way into the sky. Mike could see clouds reflected in those upper windows and wondered just how high they went. If he could climb that high, would he find more world beyond the metal and glass? Or did the world truly end right there? If so, how far did the jungle go?

  “Okay, sweet pea. Lead the way!” He gave one of the thicker vines a gentle pat. The Mandragora rubbed gently against his leg, leading him toward the edge of the cliff that bordered the forest. Last time he had been here, he had led Sarah the witch to her demise. This time, the Mandragora led him along a hidden side path that was not only far easier to navigate but took him along a shaded part of the path where he was out of the sun. Whistling softly to himself, he made his way down the cliff.

  Beth stepped out of her car, setting her coffee up on the roof. Using the reflection in her driver’s side window, she straightened out her dress, tucking the fabric of her light-pink blouse into her black skirt. Letting out a sigh, she grabbed the file from her console, closed the door of her car, and was almost twenty feet away when she realized that she had left her coffee behind.

  Disgruntled, she went back for it. There was no way she could survive today without her coffee.

  Walking into the office, she didn’t bother taking off her sunglasses, hoping that the receptionist wouldn’t see the bags under her eyes. Somehow, in the span of less than a week, she had gone from being good at her job to a complete wreck. Her boss had informed her that he wanted to meet with her about last week and had told her to bring in a paper summary of the Radley file. In the back of her mind, she wondered if she was going to get busted down to a legal secretary again or if he was just going to cut his losses and let her go. Last night hadn’t helped—every time she’d dozed off, she’d had strange dreams about being chased through a cave.