FicWad

Present time
Sarah Williams watched as her daughter scowled, running around her room to pack as many fantasy books and movies that she could, along with her paints, sketchbooks, notebooks, and whatever else she could to piss her father off. She couldn’t help the small smile as she realized that, if she were placed in the same situation, she’d probably be doing the same thing. And she realized that her daughter hadn’t even packed clothes yet, waiting until she had everything possible to piss her father off before she even started on clothing her father would definitely disapprove of.
“Mom…do I really have to do this?” She was pulled out of her thoughts to see her daughter staring at her with a look of such anger and disbelief that she crossed the room to hug her daughter, something she normally didn’t do because of how reserved she was.
“I’m so sorry Kimber…I really am, but, your father has joint custody and you know that he’ll do anything…” Her daughter sighed and pulled out of the embrace, shaking her head as her brown, curly hair fell around her shoulders, finally falling out of the haphazardly thrown up ponytail she had put it in. “I don’t want you to go to his house either. I want to spend most of this summer with you too Kimmy.”
She pulled out what was left of the ponytail and put her hair back into it, scowling again. “I know mom. I know you do. But, I had plans this summer! Chris, Vladimir, Kate, Jared, Tina, Crank, Wolfgang, Patrick and I were all going to go down to the lake, and then go to that concert! I know that he won’t let me do that. He’ll want to spend time with me and get me to spend time with his family…would you get mad if I snuck out to hang out with my friends? I mean, this is the first time Vladimir ever invited me to hang out. Everyone else is always asking.”
Sarah listened as Kimber monologued, something she must’ve picked up from her drama teacher (seriously, that woman was insane), and sighed. “If you sneak out from your father’s house, be careful and come back home immediately. That’ll be your last week there, right?” Kimber nodded and she smiled. “I don’t want my little girl to go either. I’ll make it up to you when you get back, I swear Kim.” Kimber nodded and went back to packing, the darkness lifted, if only by a little bit.
Kimber felt her mother’s presence leave and let out a sigh quietly. She really didn’t want to do this. She hated that monster. She never told her mother what he really did, but she was sure that her mother could imagine. Just as she was looking through what she thought was an empty desk, she stopped and stared down into the drawer. There, sitting in the drawer was a small red book with the words, The Labyrinth written on the cover. She looked around her room and back down at the book, sure she had never seen this one in her vast collection of books. She wondered if her mother had put it there as an apology present to her and she let a small smile show on her face. Her mother had nothing to be sorry about.
She picked it up slowly, feeling a tingle run through her arm and into her body as she looked at it. She flipped it open to the first page, sitting at her desk to read it.

Once, long ago, a princess came into the Underground to save her brother from the terrifying and powerful Goblin King. She beat the Goblin King at his own game, running the Labyrinth, making some new friends, and then facing off against the Goblin King himself at the end, before declaring her power and freeing her brother from his clutches. Both she and her brother left the Underground to go back to their own kingdom and left the Goblin King to deal with the repercussions of his involvement against the princess.
Years passed and both the princess and her brother grew up. The princess got married to a man she had never loved and bore a daughter of her own, a young and beautiful princess who was like her mother. The girl grew up, watching as her mother, now the queen, and her father, a king, fought all the time. The girl grew up closely guarded by her mother and her guards from her father’s wrath. Her father finally left her mother and her to fend for themselves in their small kingdom and the girl did not mind. She hated her father.
The girl watched as her father got remarried to an equally mean woman and gave birth to a young boy, who was brainwashed by her stepmother to hate her as well, and a young girl who was too young to understand. But, what the new princess didn’t know was that her younger brother would -

Kimber shut the book as her mother’s footsteps could be heard and she threw the book in her bag and turned to her closet, picking up the clothes she had already decided to take. The ones that her father hated the most. As she threw those in, she saw her mother standing in the doorway to her room holding out a present. “Um…mom?”
Sarah smiled at her daughter and continued to hold it out. Kimber walked over, the scowl now replaced with a curious expression and she took the present, unwrapping it and seeing a new book. The cover of the horror novel ‘The Diary’ stared back at her and she couldn’t help the smile. It didn’t matter what genre it was, she loved to read anything. She smiled at her mother and gave her a quick hug before throwing it into her bag like she did everything else, a habit her mother also had.
“Well…Kimmy, your father is waiting downstairs…he just came…you might want to -”
“Kimber! Hurry the fuck up! We don’t have all fucking day for you to be lolly-gagging!” Kimber’s small smile instantly vanished, replaced with an icy look of boredom and Sarah sighed. She really wished she didn’t have to do this, but the judge made her do this every summer. Sure, her father was a fiend, but, the judge couldn’t see that, especially considering the fact that Kimber had been considered too young to testify at the hearing.
“I’ll see you mom…love you.” Kimber left her bedroom and went downstairs where her father was scowling at a painting she had created and won an award for. His slicked back curly brown hair was something that she had inherited from him, but unlike hers, his was thin and easy to manage. He turned his almost black eyes onto her and put a smile on his face, a smile that she hated above all else.
“Hey there baby girl. How are you doing?” He looked out of place in this house in his dark blue suit and tailored shoes. He didn’t belong in this house. He had no creativity or imagination. Hell, his stocks were all well thought out and planned. He didn’t take chances. He went by statistics. He didn’t belong here. Not in this house or the life both her and her mother had carved out. And, his smile was the same one as before. Back when he…
“Hello, father. How do you like the picture I won an award for?” He looked at her, his smile on his face, then back at the painting that she could see he despised. Just like imagination, anything that brought it to life he hated. That’s why he didn’t read stories or watch movies. That’s why he was always working.
“It’s…nice sweetheart…what is it supposed to be?” She scoffed at him and got down the stairs.
“Isn’t it obvious? It’s a labyrinth. In the old Greek myths, the labyrinth was a grand structure built by the artificer Daedulus for the king of Crete, Minos. It was built at Knossos to house the minotaur where -”
“I get it. It’s a labyrinth.” She could tell that he was already aggravated and she shook her head. He’d never get it. “You could be doing something other than painting and all that other stuff that you do sweetheart. You could be working on math, or science or -”
“Are we going anytime soon?” She cut him off and he looked at her, anger growing in his eyes. He hated it when someone cut him off, which she did every chance she got. He just smiled a cold smile, one that she hated even more than anything and he nodded. She turned to look at her mother and smiled at her one last time before she turned to go face the pack of ravenous wolves at her father’s house.
Sarah watched them leave, a sense of trepidation growing inside of her. She knew that her daughter was provoking him. Just knew it. But, that wasn’t what worried her the most. She walked down the stairs and stopped in front of Kimber’s painting, staring at it. Recently in the past two years, her daughter had become obsessed with puzzles, mazes and anything that had to deal with anything similar to it. Especially the concept of the labyrinth. It was an obsession that she was steadily growing more wary of.
She remembered running through the Labyrinth as a girl, a little younger than Kimber was now. She remembered her friends that she hadn’t seen in years, of the adventure she had so craved and of the Goblin King himself. She ran her hand over the painting and was awestruck at the simple beauty of the airborne shot of this particular labyrinth. Yet, it seemed familiar somehow, but she didn’t know why. She sighed and pulled her hand away from the painting.
Under her watch, the likes of the Goblin King couldn’t touch Kimber. At her father’s however, she had no idea what would happen to her baby girl. “Lord…please keep her safe…”