2 Chapter 2: The Good Trap

When my dad and I moved to Daybreak, we didn't tell my mom where we were going. Somehow she figured it out all on her own, and then she followed us. She moved into a house on the outskirts of town. Ever since then, she had a habit of appearing out of nowhere at the sound of her name. At first, she had to keep her distance because of a restraining order my dad had against her, so she acted like a phantom. It wasn't until after the restraining order was discontinued that she started to show herself without diapering the next moment. As I grew older, she performed her special trick less and less, or maybe I stopped noticing. Either way, I knew if for some reason I needed her, all I had to do was call for her, and she would be there. I was hesitant to ask my mother for help, but Wes was with me.

All I had to yell was, "mom, I need you," and in seconds, she was there.

She pulled the metal bars away.

Wes and I crawled out of the pipe like slugs before collapsing on the grass-covered ground at my mother's feet. Wes passed out almost immediately, but I looked up to see my mom's face before exhaustion finally made everything go black.

When I woke up, I felt an odd sensation tacking my fur I mistook for rain. As I peeked my eyes open, I quickly realized I was lying in a bathtub with a showerhead rinsing me clean. Standing up, I took note of the bathroom I found myself in. The lavish decor quickly notified me I was in my mother's house.

Clean clothes were waiting for me on the bathroom counter. After showering and getting dressed, I explored mom's house. I'd been there before, but so rarely that it still felt new. It was a three-story building, something like a townhouse, but there were no other homes in the area. There were so many paintings, furniture, and rugs. Every room might have felt cluttered if not for things being organized and themed. I had to wonder how much of that stuff was stolen. Mom never kept a conventional job, but she always had nice things. It annoyed me to think how hard my dad worked to keep us living in a modest home while Mom took what she wanted and rarely thought twice.

I heard voices coming from downstairs.

"Pitch never sings," Wes said.

"When he was younger, there was nothing I could do to stop him. He had such a wonderful voice like I knew he would," my mother said.

I followed the voices down steps until I reached the source. Wes was sitting on the couch while my mother was in the kitchen pouring herself a drink.

"There he is," she said, spotting me from across the room before I could even begin to think of a way out.

"What time is it?" I asked awkwardly.

"Midnight," Wes said as he further settled into his seat.

With his arms rested on the neck of the rounded cream-colored couch, he showed no intention of leaving.

"We should be getting home," I said.

"Don't be ridiculous, I've already told your father you'll be spending the night," my mother said as she joined us in the living room.

She stood behind Wesson's back, sipping her drink while I stood glancing at them and the door concocting an escape plan.

"Wes probably wants to go home, his mom will be worried," I debated with a fake grin.

"Dude, you know I don't have a curfew," he said.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Why don't you boys get ready for bed. Pitch your room is still upstairs," my mother suggested.

Wes was blissfully unaware of my wanting to leave despite my making it abundantly clear through body language. Mom wasn't about to let me go so easily.

"We really should be going," I reiterated in a last attempt to convince Wes, but it didn't get through.

Wes thought I was being rude, and it wasn't until we made it upstairs that I had an opportunity to make the situation clear.

"You didn't tell me your mom lived so close to town," Wes said as we entered my bedroom on the third floor.

I forgot how big my room at Mom's place was. Compared to my room at Dad's, it was an apartment. It was like a hotel room, and its lack of use made everything feel sterile and foreign. I didn't keep any of my things there, so everything was decorated with my mother's taste.

"I didn't want you to know," I said.

"You didn't tell me she was black either," he added to my surprise.

"Why would I tell you my mom is black?"

"You're a white rabbit, and your dad is white," he said as if that was enough of an answer, or better yet an obvious answer.

"Wes," I said his name not out of displeasure but confusion.

"What? I'd tell you if my dad was Chinese, or my mom was Russian," he joked.

I shut my bedroom door to give us privacy.

"We need to get going," I said with my back to the door as if to keep it from opening.

"It's the middle of the night," he said.

"Perfect time to see the stars," I joked.

He didn't laugh, so I went back to being serious.

"We need to go; it's not safe to be around my mom for too long."

"Doe's she have ultra bad luck like you?" He asked as he hopped into my bed and sprawled out, making himself comfortable.

"No, everything that happens around her, she makes happen herself," I stated.

I loved my mom, and she loved me, but I couldn't trust her. I might have treated her worse than necessary in an attempt to keep my distance, but my mother had a history that made it difficult to be tolerant. If she wanted to text me, fine. If she tried to call me, ok. But being within 10 yards of her was liable to get both me and Wes pulled into something we had no involvement. I already had enough to worry about with my luck being back to crud levels. My mother's drama was an unwelcome extra serving of chaos.

"Your mom saved us. I don't get why you're being weird," Wes said.

Looking out the window, I had to admit I would have been lost out there at such a time of night. I didn't visit Mom's house enough to know how to navigate back home from her place. I reluctantly walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. I had to admit defeat for the night and hope we wouldn't wake up to hell in the morning.

"If we stay the night, we have to leave as soon as the sun is up," I said as Wes sat up behind me.

"Sure," he said, wrapping his arms around me from behind and pulling me to lay beside him.

"I'm pretty sure my mom expected you to use the guest room next door," I said with a grin.

I waited for him to say something back, but he didn't. His arms continued to hold me, so even without pulling blankets over our bodies, we were warm. He fell to sleep first, and I followed soon after. It was a relatively long night.

"PITCH," Wes yelled, and I jumped out of my sleep.

When I said we should leave at sun up, I didn't think Wes would take me so literally. It was dawn. As I got out of bed, I noticed Wes was standing outside my bedroom. I joined him in the hallway and quickly realized what the matter was. The hall was elongated. It was infinite, with a countless number of doors.

"Fuck," I said, whipping the sleep from my eyes.

Turning back around, I noticed a sticky note on my bedroom door that read, "Back soon, don't go anywhere," clearly left by my mother.

We made the mistake of traversing the endless hallway. Along the way, we learned that it did, in fact, go on forever. We tried to walk back to my bedroom but couldn't find it anymore. My bedroom door was lost or maybe vanished. There must have been an infinite number of doors that stretched on into the unseen. There were no windows and a lack of actual lights, but the hallway was lit just enough to see ten doors down in either direction.

"Wes, I appreciate the effort, but you don't have to like my mom," I said.

"But you like my family, I want to like yours," he argued.

We tried to sit still for a while, but restlessness and the madness of being trapped made it impossible. We hoped to come across something different eventually, but it didn't seem likely. We had to keep our conversation going just to avoid going mad.

"Then we can hang out with my dad," I said.

"Your mom is your mom. If we're dating, don't you think I should be close to your family?" He asked while giving the answer he wanted.

"No... but you do, don't you?" I asked in response, knowing the answer.

"I do. I don't push my people's ways on anyone else, but if we're together, I want to share stuff with you."

"Aren't there other traditions or cultural norms we can try? Does it have to be getting to know my mom?"

"She saved us," Wes stated.

"And I love her...in my own way, but she's dangerous."

"Aside from the endless hallway, I haven't seen anything too, dad."

I doubt anything would ever be enough to strike Wes as too much. He had Russell as a cousin, after all.

"I hope we get out before you do," I said.

The never-ending void of purple carpet, white walls, and gold doors were almost hypnotic. We were moving as though our bodies were in a trance. Something pulled or propelled us to continue. Even as our legs grew tired, we couldn't stop. My footsteps became waves of repeating the motion, and Wes was an even harder figure to conceive.

"We can't walk forever. We have to be missing something," I said, realizing the hallway was toying with our minds.

"Maybe one of these doors can get us out," Wes suggested as he finally broke our rhythm and approached a door.

He gripped the handle, but I quickly stopped him from twisting it. Suddenly everything became clear.

"There could be anything behind any of these doors," I pleaded.

"All the more reason to try one," he said confidently.

"It could be a swimming pool or a pool of lava," I exclaimed as my hands held his wrist.

"Lava?" He questioned.

It was unlikely, and yet in my mother's house, it was possible, if not plausible.

"It's not safe," I repeated.

"Trust me," he said, twisting the knob and pulling the door open, disregarding my warning.

I wasn't physically strong enough to restrain him, so I stood back and prayed whatever was on the other side wouldn't try to kill us.

"It's a library," Wes said

I sighed with both relief and exhaustion. He wasn't wrong to break our cycle, but neither was I.

"Maybe we can find a window and climb out," he said as we walked inside.

"Sure, let's look for a window," I said with unintentional sarcasm.

It was a big library with bookshelves that touched the ceiling. Everything was marble and stone aside from the books themselves. I tried to read a few of them, but the languages were all but gibberish to me. They gave me an idea, though. If there was enchanted paper somewhere, I could have written a spell to get us out. Unfortunately, as I looked around, I had no such luck finding blank paper.

I'm sure some of those library books had to be spell books if all of them weren't, but none of them were bound, so using them wasn't an option. At least not without risk of making the situation a hundred times worse.

"Speaking of parents, your mom isn't going to be worried if you don't come home two days in a row?" I called out to Wes from across the room.

I lost sight of him, but I could still hear him moving around and going through things.

"I've stayed out longer than a couple of nights before, I'm sure she'll understand," he yelled back.

I walked around to join him, which took some time. The bookshelves made a sort of stone maze. Had I been without my superhuman hearing locating Wes might have taken longer.

"What about your dad?" I asked as I came around a bend and found him sitting on a desk.

"You know he works just as much as yours does, probably won't notice I'm gone until I get back," he said.

There were no windows or any sign of an exit. In fact, when we inevitably decided to walk back to where we came in, the door was missing too.

"Fuck," I said.

We got out of the hallway but stuck in a fucking library.

"Dude it's not that bad," Wes tried to calm me down, but I didn't realize until then that I was visibly upset.

"We're stuck in impossible rooms, how is this not bad?" I asked.

I didn't mean to chew his head off, but I was getting annoyed.

"My family does worse than this," he said.

"I doubt it."

He wrapped an arm around me and made me lean back against a wall with him.

"Russel once got into a fight with a sea beast, and he threw me in the water to get away."

"That's...," I stumbled.

"My grandparents invite me to a Christmas party every year, but it's really a creature orgy," he continued to say with little sign of embarrassment.

"Ok, I think I get it," I said before he cut me off.

"My dad doesn't wear parents around the house," he said.

I was confused, and as I raised an eyebrow he must have known.

"You don't wear pants anywhere," I said.

"Yea, but he's my dad, and he doesn't have the fur to naturally cover up down there like I do," he said.

He was joking, and it made me laugh, but I understood he was telling the truth too.

"Alright, so both our families are weird, but that's not gonna help us get out of here."

"Well, I didn't want to fuck up your mom's house, but I could probably punch a hole through the wall," he said so casually.

"You'd do that?"

"Sure," he said, standing up straight cracking his knuckles in preparation like a tough guy.

I'm not sure if it was romantic for Wes to literally punch through walls for me, considering he was the type to take the direct approach either way, but it was cool watching him go all out. Satyr weren't pacifists, but they were easier going than most. Seeing Wes go ballistic was like a house cat turning into a lion at mealtime.

It wasn't working.

As quickly as he chipped away at the stone wall, the faster it repaired itself.

"If there was enchanted paper, I could write a spell to get us out," I said, watching Wesson's blows slow.

He was determined if nothing else but to no avail.

"Just give me a minute I'm sure if I punch harder," he said through grunts and exasperated breath.

His knuckles were turning purple. He was at his limit.

"If you punch any harder you'll break your hand," I said, finally stepping in to stop his next motion.

We had to take a break to regroup. With no way to tell time, we might have been there for minutes or possibly hours. It was deathly silent. Even the sound of wind or air was absent, which made sense, but also made no sense at all. The room had to be sealed off and completely airtight, but we never struggled to breathe. If anything, our breathing was the loudest thing we could focus on.

"Why don't you 'Danger Rabbit' the room or something?" Wes asked.

We were silent for so long I almost forgot he was there like a statue blending into the corner of my eye.

"Why don't I what?"

"You know, use your bad luck to knock yourself through a wall," he said.

"I can't do that on cue," I said.

"Have you ever tried?" He suggested.

"How would I even," I started to say, but glancing over the look on his face told me he had an answer already.

"Maybe if you break a mirror, or walk under a ladder," he said.

"We don't have a mirror," I pointed out.

"But there are plenty of ladders," he said, gesturing to the bookshelf ladders.

I couldn't talk him out of it. Within minutes he had at least 5 or 6 ladders gathered and lined up to form a tunnel he intended me to run through. In theory, I had nothing to worry about. There was no evidence that I had power over my luck. On the other hand, testing it was risky.

"Wes, this is crazy," I said, standing before the first ladder afraid to take even a single step forward.

"I'm cool with waiting for your mom to get back, but if you still think we should leave," he teased, knowing how I felt well enough to motivate me past my fear.

I made a single stutter step that left me waiting under the shade of the first ladder. Wes came up behind me and gently pushed me to keep going. I passed under the first three ladders, and nothing happened. By the time I came out the other end, l was surprised the room didn't implode.

"I really thought that would work," Wes said.

We both laughed at the ridiculousness, but it was a breath of relief too soon. There was a sound, a very distinct sound that I couldn't name until I saw the source. All of those bookshelves were so tall looking up at them they seemed ready to topple over. As I took another glance, I could have sworn they were leaning. They were. Like dominoes, they fell over one by one till the stack approached Wes and I. There was nowhere to run to. We had to take the full force of the room crashing down over our heads.

Everything went black at the moment of impact, but I wasn't knocked out.

"Well, that worked," I said, standing in absolute darkness.

Those books should have killed us. But there was nothing around.

"Wes," I called out, unable to see my traveling partner much less my own hand in front of my face.

"I'm here," he said.

We both felt around in the dark until we connected with one another. The oddest thing was discovered at that moment. In exploring for Wes, I found what felt like a pair of pants, a jacket, and even a Tshirt hanging before my face.

"I think... I think we're in a closet," I stated unassuredly.

Sure enough, the next thing my hand found was a cord. I pulled it, and a light flicked on to reveal that we were standing in a closet. To be fair, it was a big closet. My closest. Finally able to see Wes again, I noticed that everything was not alright. We managed to get back to somewhere reasonable, but at what cost?

"Wes," I said, attempting to avoid eye contact with the anomaly atop his head.

"What?" He asked.

"Your horn," I said.

"My what?"

"Your horn," I repeated.

He felt the top of his head till his hands found one of his horns was missing. It must have snapped off when the bookshelves hit us. Then again, I never felt anything touch me, so he probably took the blow for both of us.

"Oh...fuck," he said with a grin and what seemed to be a laugh.

He laughed, but it had to be serious. It felt severe to me.

"Don't worry, it'll grow back," he said in an attempt to put me at ease.

"You're sure?"

"Might take a while, but it should," he joked.

As we started on our way out of my closet, I stepped on the fallen appendage. Picking up the snapped horn, I felt it had a heavier weight than expected. How did he walk around with two of those things on his head? I tried to hand it to Wes assuming he'd want it, but he wouldn't take it.

"You keep it," he said.

"What do I do with a horn?" I questioned as we stepped out of my closet and into my bedroom.

The sun hadn't moved. It was still dawn or close to it. We spent hours in the endless hallway and even longer in the library, but somehow time hadn't moved.

"I don't know? Souvenir," he said.

With a shrug of my shoulders, I slid the horn into my pocket.

"How did we get in your closet," Wes asked as he continued to feel the spot where his horn should have been.

I had to hope he wasn't lying about it growing back to save me from feeling bad. Even if it would grow back, I knew how important horns were to a satyr. They were symbolic of so many things. I had a hard time believing Wes could just shrug off having to start at square one again.

"I don't think we ever left my room," I said, looking out the window at the sun still rising over treetops.

Walking back over to my bedroom door, Wes and I both were hesitant to step out into the hallway. We open the door, and there was no endless hall, but that wasn't enough to convince us.

"I'm pretty sure if we go through the door, we'll get stuck in the hallway again," I said.

"So, we're waiting for your mom then?" Wes asked.

"After all that? No!" I exclaimed.

I opened my window.

"The window?" Wes asked.

"I've taken higher falls, but if you cant," I said.

"I can probably handle it," he said.

I was asking too much. His knuckles were bruised from punching walls for me. He broke a horn standing in front of an avalanche of books for me. Jumping out a three-story window was pushing his limit after all that. Wes had so much positive energy; he probably saw it all as another adventure. I wished I could see things that way.

He stepped up to jump first, but I stopped him.

"Hey, I'll try harder to get your traditions and stuff," I said.

If Wes was willing to do so much for me, then the least I could do was let him try to get closer to my family.

"So, we can wait for your mom?" He asked.

"Oh, no. We're definitely leaving, but if you still want our parents to meet, I'll have my mom and dad come to your place," I stated clearly.

He could get to know my mom after we left her house. I had about enough fun house antics for the day.

"Thanks, Pitch."

He hugged me, and then we jumped.