Radley's Labyrinth for Horny Monsters by Annabelle Hawthorne (parable of the sower read online txt) 📗

shadows again, shadows with fiery eyes. They milled about in fast-forward, keeping up with the distorted time. Mike wondered if their movements were random or if every shadow had a schedule it would follow for all eternity.

The bell signaled the start of class.

In their haste to get out, Mike and Ratu tipped over the recycle bin, scattering cans and Gatorade bottles across the ground. They picked themselves up off the floor but heard Baba Yaga holler with rage above them.

“Go!” Mike entered the gym, his feet pounding against the polished wooden floors. The bleachers were folded away, giving them a clear line to the door at the far end. Behind them, Baba Yaga hollered once more, and the doors to the locker rooms filled with shadows that chased after them. Mike tipped over a cart full of basketballs, hoping it would slow their pursuers. His heart was in his throat, and he could hear Ratu gasping just behind them. He chanced a look back. The swarm of shadows was close on their heels, and Baba Yaga’s ugly visage had appeared in the entrance, her lips curled into a snarl. Looking ahead, he grabbed at Ratu’s hand, sprinting forward for the last ten feet.

Shoving the bar down, Mike pushed on the door with his whole body. He hollered in triumph when it opened, expecting his feet to hit the concrete of the outdoor basketball courts on the other side.

What he didn’t expect was for the world to tip over. Clutching the bar with one hand, he held on to Ratu with the other. The gym rotated, Mike and Ratu dangling over open space. The shadows fell against the back wall, splattering into dark mist.

“What’s happening?” Mike yelled. He could barely hear himself over the world folding in on itself.

“The artifact!” she yelled back. “This is where Baba Yaga’s magic intersects with it!”

Straining to hold on, he looked down again. The back wall of the gym collapsed, the school folding in on itself. Doors, halls, and stairwells closed in on one another, the wood of the gym splintering and floating around the room. Desks crashed around them, windows shattered, and Mike could hold on no longer.

His fingers slipped free of the bar, and he and Ratu fell. Gravity warped, and instead of crashing to the ground below, they fell at an angle. Striking the hard surface of the gym floor, Mike let go of Ratu and watched her slide away in a completely different direction.

Colliding with a pile of desks, Mike slid to a stop. He was in a giant cube made of the entire school folded up. Stairs and doorways were scattered in every direction with no logic in their orientations.

“Mike?” At his name, Mike looked up. Ratu was standing on the ceiling, which was at least thirty feet up.

“What sort of David Bowie bullshit is this?” Mike muttered, disentangling himself. Surveying the room, he saw that the gym door was now halfway up the far wall and turned sideways.

“That’s still the exit,” Ratu said. “If we can get through the door, then we will be out of Baba Yaga’s spell.”

“That is correct.” The thick voice made them both look back. Standing in a large doorway was Baba Yaga. She was upside down to Mike, on the same floor as Ratu. “But bad little children must be punished.”

“Get to the door, Mike!” Ratu ran away from Baba Yaga, the old witch’s metal leg clunking against the ceiling as she followed behind. Mike tried to keep track of them, but Ratu disappeared through a doorway.

Mike ran across the floor, passing through a doorway of his own. The room inside had a slight curve to it, and Mike realized by the time he was climbing through a broken window that the door was now at a forty-five-degree angle to him.

“So fucking weird,” he muttered, careful not to cut himself. He was on a flight of stairs now that terminated on a small platform. A doorway was within jumping distance, so he leaped across. Beneath him, Ratu was on the wall, hiding behind a column. Baba Yaga was sniffing the air, moving in on her.

“Hey!” Mike waved. “Hey, over here!” Baba Yaga stopped just short of Ratu’s pillar, her watery eyes focusing on Mike. “Anyone ever tell you that you look like a potato fucked a big bag of ugly?”

Mike expected a lot of reactions, but Baba Yaga ripping up a floorboard and hurling it at him like a javelin was not one of them. He moved away from the ledge and ran up a flight of stairs as Baba Yaga gripped the ledge, pulling herself into his reference frame.

“Oh shit.” Mike was at the top of the stairs, and it was a wall. With Baba Yaga closing in, he leaped off the side toward another platform below. The platform turned out to be the ceiling of another part of the room, and he ended up crashing into a pile of toppled lockers, the muscles in his back and neck tightening up.

“Mike!” Ratu was on the wall above him. “She’s right behind you!”

Moving quickly, Mike was barely on his feet when the witch crashed into the lockers, her meaty hands clenching and then opening, revealing dirty fingernails. The air was thick with the smell of stale tobacco. Running away from her, he saw a sideways door in the wall. Using a desk, he climbed into the doorframe and pushed open the door. As soon as he crossed the boundary, gravity shifted, and he fell onto the floor of the newest room, his stomach protesting.

“Urgh.” Covering his mouth, he stumbled forward, trying to regain his bearings. Baba Yaga’s ugly face appeared in the door, but a trash can fell from above her, knocking her to the ground.

“Keep moving!” Ratu cried out, and he heard the pattering of her feet and then the slamming of a door.

Passing through another door, he then ran up a twisting flight of stairs and ducked through a window. Baba Yaga