The Lonely Corridors

I’d been stuck in that frigid, lonely maze forever, a puzzle with no solution. I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there and really didn’t know anything of a life before the labyrinth. In fact, it felt like a lifetime spent running the halls, though I never seemed any closer to a solution. It didn’t help that I didn’t know where the beginning or the end was, seemingly dropped without reference into the corridors and left to my own devices. Thankfully, I neither hungered nor tired, but the tediousness became overwhelming. Even so, there had to be a solution, so I persevered.

Then, on an otherwise arbitrary day, my guide appeared. Not really a person but still vaguely human, a silhouette made of chilled mist, he asked, “Jonathan?”

“You know my name?”

“I’m here to bring you out.”

“Out?” I wondered. “Is there an end?”

“Of course,” the wisp replied. “It’s taken me ages to find you, to sort through the obstacles and I’ve recorded each step from the beginning,” he explained and extended a ghostly hand. “Come with me.”

I followed the specter along the twisting corridors until we finally arrived at a bridge I’d never seen before. On the other side, a beacon shined with blinding brilliance. “What is this place?”

“The end.”

“What’s over there?” I wondered.

“Your life. You need only cross.” So, anxiously, in my desperation, I charged over. Suddenly, my memories came flooding back: my wife, my kids, our home…the accident.

My first new experience coming out of the coma was my wife praising the vaguely familiar scientist who’d developed the retrieval technology. “Doctor, you did it!” she exclaimed and I didn’t realize until she embraced me, how cold the maze had truly been.


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