( Benedict Dearborn had ended up in the labyrinth.

as a man of orderliness and cleanliness, it seemed momentarily like a joke. absolute silent mayhem, a dumping ground for where all that was unwanted and disposable was left to rot away. meaning has always merited substantial significance to Ben, through much of his life — but as much as it stood as a cornerstone to much of his existence, he never fully lost perspective of it stood against the larger picture, like a storming sky of absolute truth. it is all, in fact, in the end, chaos.

so then the sense shifted: not a joke, but significant, this chaos around himself, this utter nonsense.

he can scarcely recall what he had been doing prior to all of...this. wobbling in his tentative steps over and around giant pieces of waste — shattered steel beams, fragments of cars, concrete rubble — Ben tries to remember. what is there to remember? was there anything noteworthy out of the weeks, months — years of meandering through academic offices, lines in airport terminals, gilded intermittently with the occasional intervention, or more infrequently, exorcism?

he swears the detritus is growing clearer the further he moves out of the...radio station, was his guess. he'd only ever seen them in films, and the recognition feels mostly instinctual, not by rote memory. still, the area is painfully dim, and winding through and through with turns and stretches that feel never-ending. the longer he goes, the more the darkness feels magnetic, buzzing in his skin, the open dead air heavy and sharp. like a blade, the longer it seeps into him, the closer it feels to threatening.

Ben reaches into his blazer to procure a small metal cigarette case — but what he pulls out is one of a multitude of pale feathers. pearl in color, it shines without light to play off of it; almost as if...light might be reflecting from within every little thread that builds its soft shape. impossible, right?

Ben is very acclimated to the impossible.

it barely glows as bright as a match, but it's something — a focus object if nothing else, but the meager glow it gives is from size alone, not a lacking of strength. warm and pure, otherworldly, held like a talisman to protect him.

because that is exactly what it is.

through the looming, tense silence rounded around the echoes of his movements, Ben hears — a breath... he thinks? or radio static? short, soft, could be anything. it has him stopped still, his own sounds blotted out in the muted atmosphere, as he looks around intently. years of subjection to horror movies trains a person to know what to do, and what not to do, in precarious situations. logic suggests to keep oneself hidden, silent, and safe. )

—Is someone there?

( unfortunately, human beings are incredible at choosing what is possibly the dumbest option on the table, like calling out down a long, dark corridor, unknowing if something predatory lurks around in the darkness nearby. as soon as Ben's voice ripples down the erratic veins of this labyrinth, his face winces in, self-realization striking like a blunt object, and he hisses to himself, ) Bugger me.

( the sun hangs low on the horizon, dim and haggard, unmoving. Ben finds it troubling — yes, yes, he knows this entire place is troubling — but there is something about it that he can't shake. it sits as if caught, left behind a sheer curtain, feeling more like a memory than a celestial body in the sky. he doesn't know how long it's been, now, because that damn sun never moves an inch, and his watch is currently working counter-clockwise. which is an improvement from having been at a full stop, before, on 9:17.

nines...nothing good ever happens with nines.

Ben knows what he needs — shelter. somewhere stable, which seems like a joke, at this point, given the upside-down architecture bending around his head over here. even something temporarily will do; Ben is a nest-builder at heart, and in this industrial fever-dream, he feels the visceral need to find somewhere that feels secure in some way. something, anything — the park bench he'd found along the way disintegrated under his touch, so he knows not to be greedy on this topic.

he strides into something enclosed, the doorway tilted 30 degrees off center, but the floor is mostly level. half of it feels like a lobby to a bank, or perhaps a hotel — once-polished tile floors and papered walls — and then it feels like something more private and lower down in the economy scale. a weathered and modest little kitchen table, an old recliner chair, a linoleum counter, a vanity...

with a mirror. Ben steps with a tired pace, not lumbering with weight, but striding softly. he looks across the warped pieces, some of them melded together — a desk with a children's bookcase that looks closer to a toy than furniture, for one — and feels he can't even squeeze out a thought in this moment. dazed, he simply looks around, blankly.

until hazel eyes fall upon a mirrored vanity, looking like something out of a Dali design, old-fashioned and impossible as it melts...upward, as if being stretched like a bit of taffy. what catches his attention is a dawning realization...

...that Ben confirms as he steps up to the mirror — no reflection. he squints, leaning in as if to inspect something much more minute. he sees an empty room, one that...could be a reflection of one he is in, or something else completely, it's impossible to say. it has Ben woefully looking down at himself — taking stock of his own hands first, which he then presses flat into his front against his button-up and tweed blazer. all seems to be accounted for, so why is it that he looks up, he sees—?

a shadow, of someone moving about the room, on the other side. Ben steps up close again, hands reaching for the twisted wood frame, trying to see around the surface of the glass. soundlessly from this other side — which appears to him, now, looks both dark and piercingly bright — someone might see this man peering in, mouth moving, saying something, unaware that he cannot he heard. )

( once clear of the labyrinth, Ben finds an open landscape of...absolute fantasy. he stares openly at the landscape of bizarre architecture, tilted buildings, twisted landmarks, roads that lift up and stop midair. he sees town halls crushed into farmhouses, a hospital split apart like paper in a shredder, church gargoyles spilling through the walls of a house as if its surface was water, an office building bending into a spiral that makes Ben think, oh damn, being here means he is most certainly going to miss that chiropractic appointment he had gone through such lengths to get rescheduled...

Ben finds the fragments of a public courtyard, possibly a piece of a large garden — a guess more than an impression, given that all of the plants are bare skeletons, bases and branches and nothing else, in ominous hues of grey, brown, black. the bricks under his feet are cracked but smooth, and the fountain in the center flows with not a drop of water to speak of.

and that's when he sees movement, for the most brief of moments. a shift in his periphery, a winking of black that has Ben snapping around suddenly.

it doesn't move fast. in fact, the shadowy figure saunters without much care, to a point that Ben is nearly affronted at the lack of stealth he really would have expected from something like this.

Ben appears, quite understandably, a bit horrified. defense is clear throughout the extent of his body language — his stance as he leans in the opposite direction of it, his movements as he steps slowly, with care not to make any sound.

which is why Ben speaks aloud to himself with his breath soft, rumbling in whisper, to no one in particular— ) All right, of all of the batty things I've seen thus far...I like this bit the least.

( in the end, it doesn't matter, as the shadow person stops and turns its attention in his direction anyway. Ben swallows, almost comically — can he be blamed?

the shadow creature lingers, as if dazed, it may not have eyes that can be seen back in kind, but Ben gets a crawly-feeling in his skin, that he trusts to tell him that he is, in fact, being watched. said softer than ever, and with feeling: ) ...Shit.