Level One

  Just as Cooper had hoped, the voting and re-voting went on for like an hour. There were objections and amendments and proposals and counter-proposals, all of which Cooper tried to follow at first, though he lost track after the first few minutes. The Cyclops shouted and ranted and begged, but every time they voted, the count was 3 to 3. Eventually, someone pointed out that it was getting late, and finally the group voted 5-1 to pause for the night and take up the issue again in the morning. Cooper was re-blindfolded and marched back to his wicker cell, where he was given a canteen full of water but no raisins. They didn’t even loosen the twine around his hands.

  Once he was alone again, Cooper lay on the ground for an hour just staring at the ceiling of his cell. He did that for two reasons. The first was that even though his body felt fine - the Cyclops had healed him before sending him back to his cage - mentally, he was a complete wreck. Like he could easily have just laid there staring at that ceiling for a solid week if it was safe to do so.

  The other reason Cooper laid there was because he was waiting for night to fall. Not ‘night’ in a literal way: Cooper’s best guess was that the maze was like a casino, running the lights full blast 24/7. But the kids had to sleep sometime, and they had all seemed super tired at the end of their little vote-a-rama, so it seemed reasonable to think that if he waited for an hour or so, most of them would drop off. As it turned out, Cooper was wrong about the first part. Night did exist inside the maze. It was just very subtle. Maybe 30 minutes after they put him back in his cell, the lighting changed, growing a little bit dimmer and slightly reddish. It was as if the whole maze had suddenly entered Happy Hour. If Cooper had blinked, he might not have even noticed, but as soon as it happened, he found himself yawning constantly. He sat up against the wall of his cage to make sure he didn’t doze off. Only after the room beyond the wicker jail cell fell completely silent did Cooper finally make his move.

  Phase One of the plan was easy. Bringing his wrists to his face, Cooper took the twine between his teeth and began chewing, first on the left side of his mouth, then on the right side, then back to the left, and so on. It took him a good 15 minutes, and by the end, his teeth were bleeding, but eventually he weakened the twine enough that he could snap it in half with his arms. He then untied the twine around his legs and proceeded to Phase Two: retrieving the crazy naked chick ring.

  As anyone who has ever been to county jail knows, there are a few different ways to hide things on your body so they won’t show up on a strip search. Some of them are fairly extreme. Others are more laid back. It all depends on how motivated you are to make sure that thing isn’t found. At some point while he was lying on the floor of the maze near death, or perhaps later while the kids were dragging him into their little lair and rifling through his duffel bag, Cooper had apparently pulled the ring out of his pocket and stowed it somewhere safe. He didn’t actually remember doing it, but he was 100% sure it was still there. (The method of concealment Cooper used was not the most aggressive, but aggressive enough to make him fairly uncomfortable.) So Phase Two of the escape plan was to retrieve the naked chick ring ring and give himself some relief.

  As soon as the ring was back on his finger, Cooper’s body disappeared. He stood up, taking off his BVDs. Completely naked now, he crumpled up the pair of underwear and dropped them in the center of the cell. Taking a few steps back, he charged forward, hitting the door of the cell with his shoulder as hard as he could. The wicker held, but the crack it gave off echoed off the walls of the room beyond the cell. Cooper rammed the wicker door one more time for good measure, then returned to the rear of the cell. A good two or three minutes passed before the cell door swung open. Fidel and Mouse Boy stepped inside, their mouths dropping open in horror when they saw that the cell was now empty. They immediately took off, hooba-foobaing at the tops of their lungs. As he had hoped, they were so upset they forgot to shut the door again. Cooper waited a few seconds before quietly walking out of the cell.

  The room beyond the cell turned out to be a kind of old-timey barracks. At the near end, by the corridor that led to the auditorium, there was a little stone enclosure containing a fountain and a metal witches’ cauldron, which Cooper guessed was the caveman equivalent of a kitchen. Beyond that was a line of pedestals holding clay pitchers, then a row of planters full of stumpy little trees, then a big open space with metal hooks set into the ceiling from which hung two rows of hammocks. In the far corner, opposite from Cooper’s cell, there was another wicker cage of roughly the same size and design. Five of the six kids (all but Lurch) were standing at the entrance to that other wicker cage, jabbering at one another. The Cyclops, meanwhile, was rooting through that cage, passing out old-timey metal helmets and swords to anyone who would take them.

  Cooper might have figured out what they were saying if he had focused really hard, but the truth was, he didn’t give a shit. Instead, he walked quietly through the low stone corridor into the auditorium, taking a seat on the bleachers. Every few minutes, one of the kids would poke his head in from the corridor, but whoever it was, he always ended up getting sucked back into the five-way argument in the next room. So for the most part, Cooper was free to begin Phase Three of his plan: finding the door back out to the maze.

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  His memory was hazy, but Cooper was pretty sure he recalled being dragged across the floor of this amphitheater in between trips to Belize. If that was correct, then the door ought to be on the wall opposite the corridor back to the barracks room. The wall in question had a huge painting of a jumping bull on it, but Cooper was pretty sure that there was a secret door concealed somewhere inside. After all, he had staggered right past that same door without noticing it just before Bird Girl found him. Assuming, obviously, that he didn’t hallucinate the whole thing.

  The first thing Cooper discovered when he reached the wall was that the painting wasn’t a painting at all. It was one of those things where they stick pebbles and broken tiles and little bits of glass into cement, and it makes a picture. That actually made Cooper’s life much harder, because if there was a hidden catch or trigger or button somewhere that opened the secret door - which every movie Cooper had ever seen told him there must be - then the more bumps and divots and nooks and crannies there were, the more searching Cooper would have to do.

  Still, he did his best. He started by doing that thing where you put your hand over the wall to feel if there is some breeze blowing through the door. That trick always seemed to work for the Hardy Boys, but apparently those assholes were full of shit, because when Cooper did it, he felt nothing. Once that failed, Cooper began running his hands over the wall, poking and prodding and pulling and twiddling. But nothing happened. Eventually, Cooper started to feel ridiculous, standing there naked and invisible, fondling a stone wall while a bunch of boys in miniskirts in the next room debated how best to hunt him down and kill him, but he kept at it, dividing the wall into zones so he could eliminate them one by one. He had just finished the portion around the bull’s tail and had started on the part between its horns when suddenly there was a whoompf and the wall began opening inwards.

  Cooper jumped backwards, nearly falling on his ass. It was good he didn’t, because a moment later Lurch stepped in through the gap in the wall, and if he’d been on the ground Cooper might have been stepped on. Lurch was wearing a metal shirt and a matching helmet and carrying a wooden spear. He shouted as soon as he was inside, and the other five kids appeared from the other room and immediately began arguing with him.

  Cooper didn’t catch everything that was said, but the gist was that Lurch had gone out into the maze looking for Cooper but hadn’t found anything. After Lurch gave his report, the kids got into another argument about some related topic, then took a vote that tied 3 to 3, then took another vote on some other thing that also tied 3-3, at which point Fidel and Spiro got into another scuffle, and so on. Cooper watched the whole thing from the back row of the bleachers. It took them like another 30 minutes before they finally managed a 4-2 vote in favor of quitting all their bullshit and going the fuck to sleep. As they filed out of the amphitheater, Lurch returned to the wall to double-check that the secret door was closed. Cooper was like six inches away from when he did it, holding his breath.

  The last thing Lurch had done before leaving was to press a tiny little pebble right next to the jumping bull’s crotch. So once the coast was clear, Cooper carefully approached the door, inspecting the same pebble. It had a bit of give to it, like it was spring-loaded. Cooper carefully depressed the pebble until he heard a soft click. Meanwhile, the wall shifted slightly, an edge appearing in the bull’s face. Grabbing the edge with his fingertips, Cooper pulled as hard as he could, swinging the massive slab of rock inward to reveal the maze beyond.

  Cooper could have just left. Like there was nothing stopping him. The main problem was that he was naked and starving, and wasn’t confident at all that he would make it very far with his dick flapping in the breeze. Also, these assholes had his money. So rather than rush out once the secret door was open, Cooper moved on to Phase Four. First, he opened the door as wide as he could. Then he picked up one of the wooden stools from the stage and smashed it against the ground. A moment later, Spiro stepped into the room. His eyes immediately went wide.

  After that, there was a bunch more shouting and running around - which, Cooper was realizing, seemed to be the main way these kids dealt with problems - before a heavily-armed patrol finally stepped into the maze with the mission of tracking Cooper down. The vote had been unanimous. Even Bird Girl agreed to join. The only kid left behind was Mouse Boy. After the others were gone, he (Mouse Boy) sat on the bleachers, staring at the closed door like a cocker spaniel waiting for his owner to get off work.

  Cooper, meanwhile, wasted no time. As soon as they were alone, he carefully got up from the bleachers, padded silently into the barracks, picked up one of the heavy clay pitchers from the row of pedestals, returned to the amphitheater, and then brought it down as hard as he could on the back of Mouse Boy’s head.

  * * * * *

  Name: Cooper of Vancouver

  Gender: Male

  Affiliation: None

  Age at Entry: 29

  Current Level: The Labyrinth (1)

  Jing: 10/10

  Qi: 2/9

  Shen: 0

  Status: Normal

  here.