Time stands still. I feel elated, as if I am falling through clouds in the sky, and anytime I try to stop myself from falling, my fingers grasp the emptiness of the clouds. I want to go home. I want Mama, Papa, and Betty. I want to go back to when my life was the chaotic mess that it was, but it was a familiar mess. I want to go back to when Wicked was a simple boy who Papa brought home and who just needed a new home.

I know my life can never be that simple. I know that I’ll never have the kind of luxury that that can offer me. But I wish for it anyway.

I rest my head back against the hedge, long lost given up my fight to escape this never-ending maze. I’d die fighting as much as I’d die by sitting here. I’d rather die this way than give them the satisfaction of me trying to run.

“That it?” His voice shocks me, and my head whips up to a darkened corner to find him standing in a long black robe that covers the top of his head. If that isn’t bad enough, the bone mask that covers his face is. It has scratches over the top, but where the mark-off of five comes, it’s done in red. It only covers the top half of his face, leaving his jaw and lips wide open. “Gotta admit, kinda hoped you’d fight harder.”

“Fuck you.” I spit on the ground, leaning my head up to the sky, where a full moon beams back down at me. I like the moon more than the sun. The sun resembles happiness, warmth, everything humans fake. The moon symbolizes the cold, the people who like to hide in the shadows.

I’m cold.

So cold.

My teeth chatter, but I keep the hoodie clinging to my body. “Whatever it is you want from me, you’ll have to kill me to get it.”

He pushes from the hedge, and just when I think he’s not going to say anything, and when I’ve found myself lost on the steel tip of his boots, he lowers down to face me. “Trust me, that can be arranged, but for now—” He grabs me from around the collar, forcing me to my feet. “Find your way out of here.”

“Why!” I scream, balling my fists on the sides of my body. “Why should I do any-fucking-thing you say?” His mask is interesting. I’m annoyed at how often I find myself tracing the curve of his lips. “Why should I—” His hand is around the front of my throat, forcing me backward against the hedge.