“Heart to [heart]”
by Konnor Braden
Night falls upon the sparse settlement like a solemn fog. Darkness seeps down
from the sky, pooling in corners and cracks. Fraus stares up at the blotted out stars,
lying on the roof of her …house? It’s more of a hovel than anything, but better than the
cold, wet brush around her. She feels most comfortable without a ceiling, the sky
hanging as always above her. She knows she can close her eyes and find it there when
she opens them again. It feels like the only real certainty in this two-faced land. She
closes her eyes, and the faint glow of the half-moon brings her to the doors of sleep.
When she opens her eyes again, the sky is gone.
Instead she is met with a cold, dark slab of something above her. The air is stale,
almost chokingly so, and mechanical whirs and clanking chains echo around her. She’s
back in the elevator; a sickly sense of dread blooms in her abdomen as memories of the
fear and disorientation of her first moments in the maze come flooding back. Thankfully,
the sandbags quickly fall as the elevator reaches its destination, automatically creaking
open to a crisp, empty night sky. She climbs out into the familiar scene of the clearing,
but this time, it isn’t Simon that’s there to greet her. Sitting solemnly on the bench at the
forest’s edge is… herself?
Almost. This Not-Fraus is shorter, her hair is longer, and dark circles pronounce
themselves under her eyes. She stares with a gaze somehow simultaneously intense
and lifeless. As Fraus approaches, she pats the space next to her on the bench, and so
Fraus sits at its other edge.
“Who are you?”
“I’m, well, you.” She turns away from Fraus, from the moon, and shadows obscure her
face. “I was you.”
They’re silent for a while, the owls and crickets in the forest speaking for them.
“I’ve been watching, you know. From the back of your mind. The fear, the friends, the
maze. Not all of it but… enough. The closer you get to them, the more it’ll hurt, you
know.”
The words cut into Fraus’s soul like a jagged shard of glass, and that familiar, terrible
dread pours back out like blood.
“…I think that you’re wrong. You don’t know them and I don’t either.”
“Exactly.”
Not-Fraus brings her knees up to her chest, sighing into the night.
“I just want to keep you… to keep us safe. I know it’s not my choice to make anymore
but…” her voice breaks, and as she turns back to Fraus, she sees tears stain her face
like forlorn raindrops from cloudy eyes. “Please, please don’t let them in.”
