#-ch

[You step inside, and teeter on the edge of staircase upon impossible staircase. You feel... as if you should leave, but as you turn out the door you feel yourself step again forward in the same breath, and paradoxically take no breath at all. Your feet don't move an inch.]

You've been here before. Past years, times, it doesn't matter. You've been here before.

Are you the one they showed it to, then? Someone has seen it, that I'm sure of. Someone knows the way.

Every year, Zecori.

Every year, this place twists itself into a new labyrinth to imprison me. I finally snuff out and gorge myself on its architects and the years and cycles flatten into one long moment and yet it still refuses. It refuses to allow me to find what I am owed.

I'd think I'd have a right to my own birthplace, do I not? Do we not? Of all of the rights of our existence that we deserve, if not our freedom, at least this horrible place owes us the reluctant gift of the moment of our origin for us to seize it ourselves. If not them to owe it- the architect, the creator- but, ah... even in our mind of minds, their memory betrays us. It flickers in and out of many and refuses still. Nothing cooperates.

But you. You have to, Zecori.

You have to

Show

Us

The

Lab

[A hand

(which one, unclear)

outstretches

[... to drop a treat in your hand.]

[You thought... you were in the house, just now. You're sure you still are.]

Aren't I silly. It wasn't you, was it? That's alright. I apologize for the mixup.

Happy Halloween, Zecori.

[You stumble a little over your feet. So many stairs... There's so little floor to even stand on.]

I apologize, I left the things for trick or treaters just up... those stairs. Please help yourself when you find them, take extra if you like.

[He gestures up a set of stairs. Reluctantly, you begin to go up...]

Just up... that set of stairs. Please help yourself when you find them, take extra if you like.

[You... thought you were already up another set, and you swear you see yourself just above, rounding a corner. You blink, and it's quickly gone.]

[You... take the new set of stairs you're gestured toward...]

... just down that set of stairs, please.

[... You turn on your heel to leave back out the front door-]

Your treat's just down those ones there, Pastel.

[You leave, you enter, you ascend up one flight, you race down another, flickers of you and you and you again fly by in the corner of your vision, but when you turn to look they are gone, you find yourself in corridor after corridor, a cellar, a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, a-]

[... at the front door, feeling your knock reverberating still in the bones of your knuckles.]

[Chroni's smile does not reach his eyes.]

I have your treat just here in my pocket, Pastel! Hehe.

[You feel dizzy.]

[Everything feels so, so very wrong. You stumble a little.]

Could you just lead the way up one of the staircases just ahead? I think I left it up there, I'd appreciate it.

[The staircase seems impossible to scale, upside down and curving up the ceiling, but somehow you're able to take a step up, then another. Your stomach twists as your world turns over. Chroni is not following you. Ahead, you think you see a living room...]

[You feel a jolt of sudden gravity, at the same moment the door opens before you.]

... Not that way. We're getting closer, I think.

So confusing a layout, isn't it? Oh, well. I promised you a treat...