You Can't Plan Everything
By CJ Knight
Story created for Day 8 of Bradley Ramsey’s The Halls of Pandemonium Challenge. This is a continuing story of mine for the entire month of May. We turn back to now to James. At the conclusion of Day 6’s story he was trapped in a labyrinth and lost his vision. In keeping with the day’s prompt the 3 genres of this story are Psychological Horror, Fantasy, and Coming of Age fiction.
James
This wasn’t the type of darkness that came with a moonless night where someone couldn’t see what was in front of them due to an absence of light. Those instances came with a comfort of knowing that the darkness had an expiry. It was a solvable problem. Light the way and you would see. Nor was this the darkness that came from closing your eyes. Open your eyes and you would see. Again, a solvable problem. This wasn’t darkness at all. Blindness presented nothing. No amount of light or bodily reflex would solve this problem. For James, this was a problem he couldn’t solve.
Blindness brought a sense of pressure that closed in from every direction. Walls of unknown that you couldn’t touch. An endless chamber had become a cage. James couldn’t tell if he was still standing or simply drifting. He fell perfectly still. The sounds of the labyrinth intensified. Wooden gears winding, swinging blades of pendulums, even his own laboured breathing, all twisted together to create a deafening chorus jumbling the thoughts racing through his mind. He tried to force the noise from his mind. “Remember the model.” He tried to picture the perfect miniature model of the labyrinth. The rotating platforms, pendulums, floor triggers, and gaps between the platforms. Move! James ducked. A massive blade passed where his head had been. A gust of wind exploded above him. He crawled backward on his hands and feet. This isn’t right! I hadn’t moved. There weren’t any pendulums in the first section of the model! Panic gathered in his throat. The labyrinth is changing! Realisation sent his head into a spin. The model, planning, supplies, all meaningless. James understood it all. As he entered the labyrinth, the gas took his sight. All of the supplies, and the model were nothing more than a cruel joke. Now blind, the labyrinth was changing around him. Shifting where the traps were. All of this was designed to make him believe he could form a plan to get through, before stripping it all away. There’s still a pattern. James listening to the swinging blade in front of him. He dropped flat to the floor and crawled beneath it. The blade was swinging faster than before, gaining momentum. Not only was the labyrinth changing its layout, but it was also adjusting its timing. The pressure of the blindness closed in further with that realisation.
Every movement forward was an unknown. James brushed the stone of the platform with his fingers, testing for pressure plates that would cause a trap to activate. Gust of wind threatened of the swinging blades hunting him. Too slow he’d die. But too fast would also have the same result. He hated this. Without knowledge he was relying on chance. Helplessly unable to plan his route. His fingers descended as he brushed the stone of the platform. A mechanism clanked behind the walls. James rolled sideways as part of the ceiling collapsed beside him. How did I avoid that? The response came in the form of a memory.
***
His boots sloshed in the soggy mud of the soccer field, as pouring rain soaked his jersey, causing it to cling to his skin. James was thirteen years old. The hands t his back sent him face first into the waterlogged grass. He pushed himself up from the ground. “Keep hitting him!” A player from the opposing team shouted. They’d scouted ahead and figured it out. Stop James, stop the team. They bodied him every chance they got, kicked his ankles, shoulder charged, one played even elbowed him to the face bloodying his nose. The referee either missed it, or ignored it. Frustration burned through his body.
“Use your head, James!” His coach shouted form the sidelines. He was. They were coming for him and he knew it. Every time he was near the ball he braced for contact, planned his way through. But it was slowing him down, causing him to play carefully.
Halftime came, James slumped on the bench. His father crouched beside him. “You’re letting them get into your head.”
James’s reply held an unintended edge of frustrated anger. “They keep fouling and the ref doesn’t give a shit!”
“And you’ve stopped playing the game. You’re trying to avoid them.”
James’s brow creased. “What else am I supposed to do?”
His father smiled. “Stop thinking, and play.”
James shook his head. “You’re not even making sense.”
CJ pointed to the rain soaked field. “When you first started playing, what made you the best wasn’t planning ahead, it was your instinct. You used to feel the game, not think it.”
James rolled his eyes, but things changed in the second half. He stopped worrying about predicting the other team’s movement and bracing for hits. He wasn’t planning ahead, just played.
His moment came. The all broke loose from a tackle, and he moved on instinct. No time for plans, or calculation, he simply played. Defenders lunged and he slipped between them. One touch, then another. The goalkeeper left the box and rushed him. The ball left James’s boot. He’d fired the shot without deciding to do it. The ball sailed into the back of the net and the crowd erupted.
***
In the labyrinth, James was still blind, but his breathing steadied. The memory lingered. Instinct. He sensed the labyrinth shifting around him. The chambers groaned, wooden mechanisms shifted behind the walls. Under normal circumstances this would be where he’d stop and observe. Analyse the changes, adjust his plans, and predict. Instead, he moved. A blade swung toward him. James twisted beneath it without thought. The platform cracked beneath his feet. He leapt on instinct. The sounds of the labyrinth shifting and activating become a scream as traps activated one after another. Despite the blindness, James knew when and where to move. The feeling was both terrifying and freeing. His movements were based on feeling, trusting in something deeper than rational thought.
Another memory surfaced.
***
He was walking home from school with his headphones on, mind wandering. Before setting off he’d planned to take the most direct route home via a busy intersection. Halfway there, he changed direction, it wasn’t a conscious decision and he couldn’t explain why. James wandered the side streets, distracted and aimless. Even over his headphones he heard the crash. Screeching tyres and twisting metal. Sirens soon followed.
When James eventually reached that busy intersection, he saw the two cars crumpled together. They sat exactly where he would have crossed. A nearby police officer looked at him. “It’s just luck that no one was crossing the street.”
James stared at the wreckage somehow knowing he would have been crossing at the time of the crash if he’d stuck to his original plan. A strange feeling forced the hairs on his arms to rise. It wasn’t fear, more the unanswered question of whether it was lucky coincidence that switched his route or some unknown instinct that guided him.
***
In the nothing of blindness a soft glow appeared in front of James. “Caedyn.” James staggered toward it. A flash exploded, and James’s vision returned. He blinked hard as his eyes adjusted to the sudden change.
“You made it.”
Caleb found himself at the end of the labyrinth. Behind him a twisting nightmare of madness. Somehow, he’d crossed it all without sight or a plan. James laughed. Not from humour, but disbelief and relief.
Caedyn’s words dissolved to form more. “You understand now.”
“Somewhat.” James shook his head. “I still think planning is important.”
“It is.”
“But I guess the lesson is you can’t plan for everything.”
The wall parted behind Caedyn’s light, revealing a doorway. Beyond it, darkness. “Ready to continue?”
“No.” James smiled. “Come on then.”
James stepped in the void of darkness. He couldn’t plan for what was to come next, but now he was confident he could make it through whatever it was without one. Caedyn’s light followed him inside.
Brilliant work. Many thanks