Love is itself a labyrinth that can lead you many different ways. For some people, they take the perfect path with no obstacles whatsoever. For the rest of us, it isn’t easy to maintain, as beneficial as it might be to one’s health. This is the story of how I had fallen in love with the girl of my dreams.
I was about twenty at the time I met her. I had just gotten out of a relationship with this chick because it just wasn’t interesting anymore. I was driving home that night from her house when I hit the car in front of me. In my defense, my head was elsewhere, and I wasn’t paying attention. I got out of the car to talk to the driver in front of me. When the driver got out of the car, I was stunned, because in front of my eyes was the most beguiling woman I had ever seen.
She had long orange hair and hazel eyes that literally seemed to reflect the moonlight that fateful night. Her face was spotless and had a thin frame to it, but in a cute way. As for the rest of her body, she was quite curvy. I wouldn’t go as far as to say she was voluptuous, but still, she was curvy. The only thing that wasn’t right with the setting was a smell coming from her car, but I didn’t care. It was probably from the crash anyway.
“Are you alright? I wouldn’t want someone as pretty as you to be hurt,” I asked her.
It wasn’t until after I had said it that I realized what I said, and immediately I got embarrassed. Much to my surprise, she laughed.
“I’m fine,” she said, “but I’m more concerned about the person in front of me. You’re a little bruised.”
You see, I had just broken up with my girlfriend and she didn't take it too well. As a response, she started hitting me and scratching me. As I drove away, I could see her chasing after me screaming some profane language with a gun in her hand. Anyway, I gave her my phone number and driver information after I told her what had just happened to me. As it happened, her husband had died that day. I told her my name, and she told me hers, Julia. The next day, we started talking with each other. It was so easy to make her laugh. I loved the sound of it too, so in a way it was a bit like a drug. Call me an addict, I didn’t care. We had so much in common too.
After a little while, we started dating. Let me tell you, time seemed to fly whenever we were with each other. After a year of knowing her, I decided to pop the question. I bet you can guess what she said considering that she leapt into my arms crying. I’ll never forget how pretty she looked on the day of our wedding. The white of her dress seemed to bring out the beauty of her fiery hair. As soon as we both had said, “I do”, I didn’t even let the priest finish telling me to kiss the bride, and neither did she. As I kissed her, the world seemed to make perfect sense as the birds outside the pagoda chirped and the sun beamed down onto where we were standing. It was like a real life version of Snow White. The only things that were missing were seven dwarves. I’m not going to go into detail of our honeymoon because it goes without saying that it is quite 18+, but I will say it was fun. For two years, we were very happy.
We had a cozy home in the suburbs, nice neighbors, a steady income, and each other. It seemed like nothing could go wrong. Then one day, I woke up to find something odd. I wasn’t on my bed anymore, and Julia wasn’t next to me either. At first I thought it was a dream, but then as I started hitting myself, I felt pain. I was lost. When I stood up, I found myself in a darkly lit, stone brick room. The room was barren and crumbling, the only thing inhabiting it was a door with a note on it.
“Are you worthy of your wife? Prove it to me. Make it to the end of this Labyrinth alive and you will see her again,” is what it read.
I walked through the door and on the other side was a stone tunnel that seemed to be falling apart. It was just barely high enough for me to stand up straight in it. There were three different ways to go, so I decided to go right. I was walking for a bit and it started to get dark. I noticed that I had my phone in my pocket, so I took it out and tried turning it on. Of course, I forgot to charge it the night before. As I proceeded further into darkness, I started to notice that the floor was getting wetter. I was very curious as to what it was that made the floor like that. I then noticed that I had stepped onto something hard. I picked it up and found it was a lighter. I turned it on and I nearly dropped the lighter. It was blood that was masking the walls and the floor. It was fresh too. On the floor, there was a message that appeared to read:
“It's not worth it! You're better off dying right now!”
I scratched my head for a second, but I then heard a bloodcurdling scream coming from somewhere inside the cave. As I wandered further into the maze, I found more and more disturbing things, such as dead corpses, rotted animals, shit smothered on the walls, more screams, blood notes, and that was just a fraction of it. Don't even get me started on how putrid it smelled in there.
I was terrified. As I thought I was about to collapse, I found another door, so I walked through it. On the other side of the door was what looked like my living room. I thought it was finally over, but I was wrong. I heard a dark, booming voice overhead that shouted:
“Show me how strong your passion is to live!”
I started to cough, almost as if it paralleled what the voice said. I then noticed that the room was a little smoky. It was then that I noticed the room had gotten a lot warmer. I backed up and felt a flame start to lick my clothing. It was then I realized the room was blazing with fire. I panicked and headed towards the door to what I thought was the kitchen. Instead, I came out into the basement. The water boiler had burst open, and the scalding water had covered the floor. It was then that I noticed a very bad smell in the air. It didn’t smell good, so I ran as fast as I could to the cellar door. Keep in mind that there were pipes on the side of the way to the cellar, and those were covered with the water boiler’s water.
As I ran to the door, I kept on brushing my body against the pipes, each time a jolt of pain shot through my body. By the time I reached the door, my body was screaming in pain. Almost as soon as I opened the door, I heard a loud explosion behind. That smell was propane. Go figure. The explosion pushed me through the door and I was knocked out cold. When I woke up, I was pinned down by something heavy. I tried pushing myself up, but my body was still covered in second degree burns. I noticed that the room around me was shaking. I sensed the urgency and I tried again. Still no result. I gave up and accepted that I was probably going to die. It was then that I heard Julia’s voice.
“Don’t give up, you can do it. Do it for me. Prove to me that you love me.”
Her words injected a burst of power into me, and I freed myself from the cabinet that was pinning me down. I looked around, my eyesight hazy, and I managed to determine that I was in the kitchen. I looked for the bedroom door because I thought maybe Julia was in there. The way to the door was starting to come down. I reached the door, but it was locked. I tried jiggling it, but it was no good. The ceiling above me was starting to drop dust and plaster. I started ramming the door in a desperate attempt to make the chaos end. With each contact with the door, my body flared in pain. It was about after the third time that my arm seemed like it was being eaten by locusts. I charged the door one last time with all my strength and it broke down. When I stood up, I wasn’t in the bedroom; I was in a room of mirrors. The same voice boomed again.
“Look at yourself. You're so ugly! Do you really think a wretch like yourself deserves to live?!”
As I looked at myself, I realized that I looked like absolute shit. My left arm was bleeding, my limbs were all showing flesh, my shirt was tattered, my hair was singed, and I had a gash going across my face. Despite all that, I was determined to make it out. I don’t know about you, but I always hated those mazes at the carnival with a passion. It’s bad enough when it’s a glass maze, but a mirror maze? I tried going one way, but when I found it was a dead end, I turned around, but not before a jolt of electricity coursed through my body. A note floated down, and it read:
“Every time you go the wrong way, you get a fun jolt of electricity. See that bracelet on your arm? That’s what causes it. And don’t try to take it off unless you want to blow up ;).”
I looked in disgust as I read that note. What kind of fucking twisted psycho would do that? Still, I carried on. I hit four dead ends before I had it.
“Where are you?” I screamed in an outrage, “Get out here, you coward!”
When there was no response, infuriated, I started charging through the mirrors, desperate to find a way out and kill the bastard who put me in that Labyrinth. As I charged through each mirror, glass shards spliced their way into my skin. In addition to that, I kept on getting jolted every once in a while as I broke through the glass. I collapsed right after I found the door, probably having lost too much blood and too many nerves. When I awoke, I was in a bright room on a soft bed. I squinted and looked around, curious as to where I was. I was in our bedroom, and Julia was standing next to me, tending to my wounds.
“J… Julia? Is… t-that you?” I forced out.
“Ah, finally you’re awake! I wasn’t sure if you had died in there or not. I’m happy you’re alive,” she said with a smile.
“Who… who put me in that shithole?” I managed to sputter out.
“Me, silly! I wanted to see if you were worthy or not!” she bubbled out.
“Wait… what? Why would you-”
“Put you in that shithole? When I saw those bruises and scratches on your body, I was intrigued by you. I wanted to see how tough you were. I had to gain your trust first before I made my move. You’re funny; I’ll admit that, but the rest of you, I don’t care about. You aren’t the first one I’ve done this too. There are many more just like you. Remember that smell from when you crashed into me? That was my most recent husband, and he had died in the Labyrinth. I was actually taking him to the morgue. Of course, what he went through was different from what you went through, but it was still just as hard as what you did.”
“… Wow. I thought you loved me.”
“But I do. You’re actually my favorite right now out of all my other five-hundred husbands that survived.”
“Who… who are you really? And what the fuck are you?” I screamed at her, mortified by what I had just been told.
Without saying a word, she began to back away. Her fiery red hair began to float, almost as if the wind was pushing it up, and her eyes began to glow a dark shade of yellow. Soon, she was enveloped in a red light, and she turned into something I couldn’t believe. Before I knew it, it looked like actual fire made up her hair, and her eyes were yellow, with brown dots still in the middle. She had grown a long, purple tail with what looked to be a spade at the end. Sprouting from her back were two large purple bat wings, and protruding from her forehead were two curved horns. Her skin had turned purple, and she glared at me and gave me an intimidating smile.
“Now do you see what I am? I’m a succubus. I’ve been around for over two centuries now, seducing mortals such as yourself into falling in love with me and then testing their grit to see if they were worthy.” She said with a cold comfort.
What she looked like, but with orange hair.
“W-w-worthy of what?” I asked, horrified of what her answer would be.
“My army. I intend to invade the mortal world and destroy all the miserable beings that live on it. I’ve been looking for a powerful mortal, such as you, to lead that army. You would be granted powers stronger than everyone else in my current army combined. You would be feared, and everyone would tremble at your name. You are powerful, Lucas, and I want you to be my powerful husband and my right hand man. So tell me, Lucas, do you love me?” She asked me.
I thought over what she said to me. I thought it would be awesome if I was granted demonic powers, and I still had the sense that she loved me, despite what she had said to me. At the same time, I didn’t want to kill all my family and all my friends. I’m not going to lie, I probably would have been better off with my ex-girlfriend, but you know what? I’m spending the rest of my immortal life with the succubus that I love, feasting on souls, killing mortals, and laughing as they run in fear. This is my story of how I became who I am now.
See you soon!
-Lucifer