Of Twisted Fate

         The road was checkered; not in the norm of light and dark tan stones, like many walkways are, but actually checkered; black and white, made out of a fine glass, a chess board stretching endlessly before me.  I looked left and right for a queen or maybe even a knight, but no bishops or rooks interrupted my gaze and I began to wonder if perhaps I was the pawn.
         To either side of my road was nothing but empty field, stretching on and on, further than my mind could even begin to comprehend; I imagine oceans give the same feeling to sailors who have been lost within the infinite water's clutches.  And yet it wasn’t the empty space that left me feeling bleak; more the fact that the grass was a dark gray and the sky a lighter shade of the bland color.
         It was as though all the life had been sucked out of the land, leaving only me, the checkered path, and this sad gray world.  There was a soft, cool wind to meet me as I walked, and walk I did.  I didn't know where I was going, only that I was moving forward (or backwards, depending where you were coming from) and that that seemed to be the only thing to do.
         Was this a dream?  Perhaps.  My subconscious had created stranger things, darker Hells and more divine Heavens; a gray world wasn’t beyond its power, though on the less creative side of its capability.  I pondered this without knowing the truth about the place, though really without caring; after all, it wasn’t as though this was a bad place, just not a favorite of mine.
         But if this wasn’t a dream, what was it then?  Had I fallen into my very own Wonderland?  That didn’t seem rational, but then, a world with no color and a checkerboard path didn’t seem very rational either.  I tried to recall where last I had been but couldn’t seem to remember.
         I looked over my shoulder then, just to see if I could see, if you understand me, but the road there seemed identical as the one before me.  I half pondered the thought whether I would end up at the same place if I turned around right now and walked the other way, if there was any place I was heading to.
         After all, could roads go on forever?
         My thoughts began to drift until I felt numb, my whole conscious being drifting out upon the breeze, leaving my mechanic body behind, watching as it did the only thing it knew how; move.  It was easy to forget about that lump of human essence behind as I twirled through the air with invisible dust particles, chatting about the weather that never changed and a society that didn’t exist.
         It was during this strange little interval of mine that I noticed, far in the distance of my stretched vision that there appeared to me a lump.
         Yes, a lump.  Perhaps not very exciting to you, but in a world where there was only me, a checkered walk, and a gray horizon a lump can be very enticing.
         As it was, the more I walked the closer we got to one another and the more my lump grew.  In fact, it really didn’t stop growing, enlarging until it loomed above me and I stood humbly before it, an ant before the maniacally grinning human.
         My lump, it seemed, was a castle.
         Like the rest of the world it was a dark, dark grey, though very huge; as I paused on the road before it, it seemed to continue to grow.  Or maybe breathe.  The windows were all black and no one seemed to be home.
         I stood there on the checkered path, then looked ahead of me.  The road continued on without ceasing, disappearing into a gray blur that shivered in a dull light, though it did break off and head to the castle and its great door.  Keep walking, or enter this strange lump of mine?
         The answer obvious, I turned and began toward the door of my breathing castle, watching as it grew even larger and more ominous, readying its great dark body to swallow me whole, and with no witnesses around to testify my disappearance.
         The mighty and nefarious looking doors, though very huge compared to little old me, were surprisingly easy to open.  A simple push and there they went, not even a creak to welcome this itinerant soul into the mighty depths.
         Moseying inside, I was met with quite a different sight.  Yes, all was still gray and varying degrees of, but a gentle white light filtered in through the otherwise black windows, giving everything within a soft glow.
         Not that there was really anything there to give a glow to; great halls stretched emptily, filled only with locked and barred doors that whispered of nothingness, and the light charcoal walls were painted with spider webs, not a single portrait filled with missing faces to smile grimly back (promising of course, if glanced upon, that they would one day cause the house to fall).  No strange people to stare and implore, to whisper and gossip.  Only myself, this dim gray castle, and these many locked doors.  Again, I was slightly disappointed; if indeed this was a dream, my imagination certainly needed a boost.
         Having nothing else to do and my body only knowing how to perform this one and simple act, my feet went back to moving and I found myself wandering down these prodigious and hollow tunnels that surely held no divine light at the end that led to some great other-world.
         Upon walking (there being no gentle breeze for my mind to drift out upon again) I began to hear voices; high, chattering voices that, if there were any, seemed to be able to wake the dead.  I stopped, looking left and right but with no avail.  Perhaps these were the voices of the dead and I had entered the castle of ghosts!
         “Oh dear,” said one with a tsk.
         “Not another one,” said another.
         “This one isn’t as good looking as the last.”
         “Looks have nothing to do with it dear.”
         “How stupid he is!  Watch his head swing about, clueless!”
         “Up here sweetheart!”
         Indeed, ridiculously, I arched my neck back to look upon the ceiling, only to realize then that is was not the voice of haunts I was hearing, but those of the inhabitants of the castle that were assuredly quite alive.
         “Most definitely, HE will have much fun with him!” giggled one, rubbing two hands together.
         “Such fun!” cried his companion with a wild laugh.
         They were Spiders, some with their legs crossed as they sat discussing politics or religion (two of the worst topics left only for the finest debaters), whilst others sipped tea from empty cups, all perched upon their webs on the stone heavens.
         “Hello,” I said, my face still tilted upwards.
         “Hello he says,” scoffed one, rolling her many eyes.
         “Try to be polite,” groaned her husband.
         “How did you wander in?” snapped a Spider with a shower cap perched upon its head, cleaning his legs.
         “Through the door, like a normal person,” I answered, my head growing dizzy from the angle.
         “A normal person!”
         “Did you hear him?”
         “Ha!”
         “A normal person would have had the manners to knock!”
         I bowed my head, more to steady the confused blood flow rather than in shame.  “Pardon me,” I apologized.  “I didn’t know anyone lived here.”
         “If you had knocked like a normal person you would have known!”  This sent many of them into hysteric giggles.
         “Yes, well.”  I almost preferred ghosts!  Uncomfortable, I attempted to change the subject to a less severe note.  “Since I’m here anyway, where should I go?”
         “Where should you go?” said one Spider, dropping his hand of cards.
         His playing partner shook his head.  “He is stupid…and by the by, I fold.  I see you have an ace just there.”  He pointed to the fallen cards, stuck on the web, with a polite leg.
         “It’s just that I’ve never been here before,” I explained, feeling more agitated by the moment.  Interesting what certain company will do to you.  “I was only wondering if there was by chance something I might want to see here.”
         “Never been here?”
         “Never been here!”
         “What a simple fool!”
         “You are currently stuck in the Web of Indecision boy (and this is certainly not your first time), since you have already walked down the Path of Uncaring and entered the Labyrinth of Insolence.”  This was said by an older Spider with a great white beard dangling from the ceiling.
         “What?” I asked, appalled.
         At once they all sighed and shook their heads.  Ah, their politeness!
         “Well, since you are here,” the youngest of the group said, dressing her pretty doll, “you might’n well go and visit THE KING.”
         “Yes, all guests end up their anyway,” added another with a grin.
         “The King?” inquired I.
         “How many times does she need to say it!”
         “Goodness, is he deaf as well?”
         “No, but I think he was on the Path too long; it made him dumb.”
         This made them all laugh again and my face grew heated.  “I will go and see the King then.  Which way is he?”
         They all pointed further down the hall.  “That way, to the other set of double doors.”  Another vindictive laugh.  “You can’t possibly miss him.”
         I certainly hoped not; the idea of coming back here to ask their help again was utterly unbearable.  I turned and left them, their shrill voices leaving deep scars inside my head as they continued their talk on politics with no real politicians and religions without Gods as though they had never been interrupted.
         They were, however uncouth and barefaced they were, correct in showing me the way to the double doors.  They shown quite black and were much taller than the ones entering the castle, peering like two empty sockets in the eyes of a grinning skull.  I pushed against them and like the others they opened with little effort, and silently I hoped the King was more decent than his Subjects.
         The room the doors led into was colossal.  White walls spotted with large empty windows led up seemingly forever into a magnificent domed roof, though here there was no spider webs.  Still, besides a very large and squeaking basket that stood two times greater than my own height, there was nothing else inside the room.  Forgetting myself, of course, and the King.
         The King was not a spider.  He was not like myself either, and upon seeing him I quickly realized why the room was made so big.  He was an impressive and imposing Serpent, body long and resilient, powerful muscles rippling under night-stained scales broader than my own chest.  Bright yellow eyes, the only color in this world, blazed brighter than that light and stood in place for the sun.  A whip of gray slick out of his mighty jaws, revealing frightening thunderbolts of pure white, looking almost of porcelin.  Upon his head rested the finest crown of pure gold, made of course, or so it seemed, to match his eyes.
         “So,” he boomed, his voice the very earthquake that rumbled beneath the ground, “you are my newest Guest?”
         Still stung by the Spider’s words, I bowed, determined to prove that I was not the rude one here.  “Yes your Highness.  I walked down a checkered path to get here, and…well, not to say ‘unfortunately‘, but regrettably I met with your subordinates and they pointed me here.”
         “Ah.  So, you walked down the Path and entered the Labyrinth, but they let you escape the Web.”  A crooked laugh escaped in a hiss and he grinned a twisted smile.  “They must truly have thought you a lost cause to let you go so easily.”
         Again, the discomfort.  “I suppose so,” said I, not quite knowing what else to say.
         Another hissing chuckle.  “Answer me this: When the mirror reflects the image it sees, what is the name you say as you greet it?”
         I blinked, slowly.  “Excuse me sir?
         “When the mirror reflects the image it sees, what is the name you say as you greet it?”
         My face grew heated again.  “I don’t know sir.”
         A sharp hiss and his vibrant eyes narrowed unforgiving.  “What?”
         I shifted uncomfortably, bowing my head (and this time in disgrace).  “I don’t know sir.”
         The King’s tail flicked in annoyance.  “You don’t even know your own name?  Too bad,” he replied.  The great tail dipped into the squeaking basket, breaking it into frantic screams.  I clasped my hands over my ears to hinder the dreadful sound, my eyes growing wide as he pulled out a writhing mouse.  Those mighty jaws of his opened wide, the very portal into Hell, and the poor creature was dropped in with a ringing snap! as the gates slammed shut.
         I found myself shivering, horrified.  Why ever had I decided to come here?  To think, I could still be walking safely on my checkered path!
         “Now then,” continued the King as he licked his lips.  “Answer me this: what stands on two legs but tries to walk on its hands, what has a brain too smart that it outsmarts itself, what tries so hard to make things easier it forgets how to try at all, what remains insignificant but remains at the top of the world?”
         At this I truly quacked, my lips trembling to answer as my brain raced with the question.  It was, however, no use.  “I do not know sir.”
         A snicker, and once again the tail dipped into the basket.  “Silly creature,” the Serpent said to me with a shake of his head.  “How can you not know the very thing that you are?”  The gates were opened again and another sacrifice to mine own stupidity was tossed in.
         I fell to my knees, petrified.  How desperately I wanted to be back out in the emptiness of the great gray world, left alone to let my mind drift along with the dust particles and continue unhindered in my meaningless trot.
         “Again boy,” the King demanded with a smack of his lips.  “Answer me this: what does a two legged creature such as yourself, wandering about with no meaning, want in their life?”
         This was no riddle but a straightforward question.  My tremors stopped and I stood quite still, my hand going to cup my chin as I thought, and think I did.  What did I want?  Want, as in money?  As in clothes?  As in career?  As in love?  Why, there are so many wants!  Which one could he possibly mean?
         “Why sir,” I said, looking up at him with great wondering eyes.  “Why…I just don’t know!”
         The death hand was dropped once more into the basket.  “You do not know what you want in this life boy?” the King asked with a look of disgust.  “If you do not know what you want, what good are you then?”
         This I pondered on as well.  Was I useless just because I had no meaning, no cause?  That seemed rather unfair.  I just couldn’t make up my mind yet, that’s all.
         The hissing snicker came again and the smirk of the Big Bad Wolf appeared on the King’s merciless face.  “It appears,” he said as he drew his tail up out of the basket, empty, “that you may not be very good for anything in life, but very good for eating.  I am out of mice and yet there so deliciously you stand before me.”  Another hiss.  “How lucky for you son!”
         Perhaps, then, that was my use after all.  Still, I myself have never been a fan of being eaten (though I must say I‘ve never indulged in the seeming less-than-pleasant experience before).  I hoped that this was just a dream after all (and I promised not to be cross with my imagination for thinking up such a horrid place if it was).
         In fact, as the Serpent’s jaws unhinged, revealing to me that empty pit of nothingness and eternity of decay, I’d almost prefer that this was a wonderland and just like Alice I’ll awake just in time before the Queen cuts off my head, and that this was not just some twisted fate I was meant to meet.