maya’s maze
Content Warning: Onscreen death of child/childlike character (in my opinion not very graphic), depiction of human organs
This is a story about a little girl named Maya.
Maya (who’s name is pronounced like Gaia with an “m” instead of a “g”) is a bubbly girl, interested in flowers, stuffed animals, coloring, and mazes. Maya really likes mazes. So it’s certainly a good thing that Maya lives in a maze.
At the start of every day, Maya wakes up in her room. She gets up off the floor, and looks at the bench in front of her. It’s got her stuffed animals on it. They seem to change position on their own, and sometimes some animals aren’t on it. Maya thinks they have some sort of hidey-hole somewhere, but she can’t look around her room for it. She has to be out within five minutes. It’s important that she’s out of her room in five minutes.
Maya feels pretty good about today. On the bench is Coyote, Jackalyn-The-Box, Bearty, Springheel, and Oct. Coyote not as fun to talk with as her brother, Canis, but she really likes playing “I Spy”. Jackalyn-The-Box plays wonderful music - Maya can’t help but dance to it, even if she’s tired or sleepy or sore. Bearty and Springheel really like to roughhouse and set up obstacle courses together. Oct likes swimming, though she’s a little bit shy.
Maya leaves her room through the doorway on the right side. There’s two doors, actually; one on the left and one on the right, but Maya doesn’t like to use the left doorway. Turning to the left means she might catch a glimpse of the rocking chair in the corner. Maya doesn’t like the rocking chair, because she doesn’t like who uses it. He scares Maya.
As Maya leaves her room, the doors shut up behind her. That’s pretty normal. Maya doesn’t really know if the doors ever open back up, since she always wakes up back in her room at the beginning of the next day. Besides, it’s not like Maya could find her way back. The winding, twisting corridors outside her room are so massive and large she could never find her way back home once she got going. It wasn’t like she wanted to find her way home anyways. Maya liked mazes. Maya liked to wander. Maya liked to play with her friends.
Maya walked. She walked, and she walked, and she walked, and she walked, and she walked. Up and down, all around. The corridors bent and weaved and turned in ways that resulted in Maya being unable to tell wall from ceiling, floor from wall, and ceiling from floor. It was mesmerizing in a way Maya didn’t have the vocabulary to explain.
Eventually, Maya came across something interesting. A room with piles of stuff everywhere. She smiled wider than usual, for this must’ve been Coyote’s playground. It showed up earlier than it usually did in the maze. The maze seemed to shift and warp, and nothing was ever in the same place twice in a row.
“Oi, Maya,” called a voice with a southern drawl wrapped up in a smooth, honeyed voice. Maya looked up to the tippy-top of a pile of stuff, and lounging on it was a pinkish figure with triangular ears, a snout, and a tail. This was Coyote, who rolled down the pile and landed right in front of Maya’s feet.
“Hiya, Coyote,” Maya chirped, bouncing up and down on her feet. “Are we gonna play I-Spy?”
Coyote chuckled. “You betcha! The usual rules, as always. Three rounds, and you’ve got two minutes each to guess what I’m spying. And if you don’t figure it out in time—”
“I know, I know!” Maya, impatient, stood on tippy-toes and pouted. “Let’s just play already!”
“Alright, alright.” Coyote rested her chin in between her finger and thumb, making an exaggerated “hmm” sound.
With Coyote holding still and standing right in front of Maya, it was easy for her to see that Coyote looked rather… off. Her arms were just a mite too long for her body, which was far too short-looking in comparison to her legs. Her fingers were also just a hair out of proportion. Not that Maya would mention this out loud, mind you. That would be mighty rude.
“I spy with my little eye… something electronic,” Coyote said, pointing off to her side to give Maya some kind of direction. Dutifully, Maya ran off to go and root through the piles and Coyote trailed behind her, hovering over Maya’s shoulder.
Maya was a fan of these little I-Spy scavenger hunts. So many cool things to look at! Like this laser pointer, or this old computer monitor, or— Ooh, a broken cell phone! Maya grabbed it from the pile and showed it to Coyote.
“Ooh, I see we’re feeling sharp today,” Coyote praised. “You got that right off the bat!” Coyote took the phone and chucked it over her shoulder, the poor thing landing in another pile of assorted objects.
“Now, for round two! I spy with my little eye… something made of cartilage.” Coyote pointed off to her left, and that’s where Maya went. “Something made of cartilage” was actually a less specific instruction than you might think. Maya noticed that lots of things were made of cartilage. She found a set of ears in the pile and showed them to Coyote.
“Nope, not those. You’ve got the animal right, though.”
Maya went back to rooting through the pile, leaving the ears on the floor. As she dug through it, she felt her fingers press up against something hard, but she couldn’t quite reach it.
“You’ve got a minute left,” Coyote sing-songed from over Maya’s shoulder. At this, Maya began to hurry her rifling. She didn’t want to lose at I-Spy. Maya hopped up onto the pile and shoved her arms deep into the pile, finally managing to grab that hard thing she felt. With some straining, she managed to yank it loose from the pile, falling over onto her back.
“Thirty seconds~” Coyote intoned.
Maya scrambled to her feet, and, without even looking at the object she grabbed, presented it to Coyote.
“Ah, good! I was wondering if that might be a bit tough for you to find.” Coyote took the object from Maya, and crouched down. “Do you know what this is, Maya?” Coyote showed the object to Maya, who cocked her head to the side and squinted. Overall, the object was a grayish-beige color, with a bunch of… things strapped together and with bony fingers jutting out of it.
“It… uh… It kinda looks like a bridge. Is it a bridge,” Maya guessed, a hopeful look in her eyes. Coyote laughed and turned the “bridge” around in her hands.
“No, but I can see why you might think that. This is actually a rib cage.”
Maya made grabby hands for the rib cage, and Coyote gently placed it in her hands. “What would anyone need one of these for?”
“Well, to protect the heart, I’m pretty sure. You’ve got one too, you know.” Coyote playfully jabbed a finger into Maya’s chest. “Should be right inside here.” Maya giggled, a silly little smile on her face.
“Alright, let’s move onto round three,” Coyote announced, taking the rib cage back from Maya. “I spy with my little eye… something red and fleshy.” Coyote didn’t give Maya any directions, so Maya just dashed off in a random direction.
The final round was probably the second easiest one besides the first. Sitting near the bottom of one of the piles was a heart. Maya picked it up and ran it back to Coyote, who smiled. “Yeesh, I need to think of harder things to look for. You did great today, kiddo!”
“Thanks…”
Coyote had a concerned expression on her face. “Huh? Something wrong?”
“I don’t like holding this,” Maya confessed, staring down at the heart in her hand. “It makes my chest all achy.” Rather promptly, Coyote took the heart from Maya.
“Geez, I’m sorry girly. Lemme take that off your hands.” Coyote chuckled awkwardly, before throwing the heart at another pile. “Well… y-you won, so that’s good! Say, if you happen to see my brother, tell him I said ‘hi,’ okay?”
“Okie-dokey,” Maya chirped as Coyote ushered her along, feeling much better now that the heart was out of her hands. She waved goodbye to Coyote and continued to wander the maze.
A good while after Maya had finished playing with Coyote, she came across a gap in the maze, with a singular, winding gray catwalk leading across it. More accurately, the framework of a singular, winding gray catwalk. The actual part of the catwalk one was meant to walk on was nowhere to be seen at the moment. In fact, there weren’t any guardrails either.
Cautious, Maya peered over the edge of the gap, and saw that the floor below the bridge was covered in thin, metallic needles. Well, they were technically spikes, but Maya was more familiar with needles than spikes, and they were so thin at the point that they might as well have been needles.
Maya shuddered a little. She didn’t like to look at the needles, so she stopped peering over the gap’s edge and looked for some sort of way to make it so she could walk on the bridge. Looking over to her right, she saw a large box with a crank sticking out of one side. A look of realization flashed across her face as she gripped the crank and began to turn it.
A jaunty little tune played as Maya cranked the box, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see the catwalk’s floor slowly coming out from the sides of the framework. Once the tune was over, the catwalk’s floor was firmly in place, and a few seconds later, a goofy “sprong” sound played.
“Tah-dah~,” sang a theatrical voice. Maya looked up to see that Jackalyn-The-Box had, well, come out of her box. Embedded in her upper body and chest were bits and bobs of a jukebox, neon lights where veins should’ve been, speaker grating instead of a large intestine, that sort of thing. There weren’t any parts in her lower body, because she didn’t have one. It was just a big ol’ spring.
Maya clapped happily. “Jackalyn!”
“Yup, it’s me, Maya-dear. In the flesh. Or fur, as it were.” Maya giggled a tad at Jackalyn’s joke, before giving her a hopeful look.
“Are you gonna play one of your songs?”
“Certainly am. What else would I be here for?” Jackalyn-The-Box flicked a quarter into her mouth and swallowed. A few moments later, a jazzy tune began to play, and Maya felt her legs move on their own. She shook her arms around and around and twirled and whirled and shimmied. Jackalyn-The-Box was probably Maya’s favorite friend. The music, the dancing, the smiles, it was all so much fun! Even if Maya was a clumsy dancer, meaning she often stumbled about and lost her balance.
As Maya danced around, she moved onto the catwalk, stumbling around corners and tripping on the floor, until she tripped at just the wrong angle before a hairpin turn in the catwalk.
Maya’s last thoughts were those of dancing, smiling and bubbling with laughter, as the needles tore through her skull and bored holes in her brain. One even tore right through her eye. Maya perished of puncture wounds through nearly every part of her body, a dopey smile plastered on her face.
This is a story about a little girl named Maya.
