Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
She was captured three times.
The first capture—tackled and pinned, the monster gloating over his prize while she struggled uselessly beneath him. She escaped only because Helix's voice directed her toward a nearby portal-arch. She rolled through it mid-assault, teleporting away before he could finish what he started.
The second capture—caught and dragged toward a breeding chamber while she screamed and fought. She escaped by deliberately triggering a maze trap Helix warned her about. The collapsing wall separated her from her captor, crushed his reaching arm, gave her time to flee.
The third capture—restrained and violated while she went somewhere far away in her head. She escaped only because the monsters began fighting over who would get her next. Their violent dispute gave her the opening she needed to slip free and run.
Each escape showed her growing trust in Helix's guidance despite mounting trauma. Each capture stripped away another layer of resistance until she was raw and desperate and willing to accept any hand that offered help.
Lyra reached the center broken. Discovered the portal was a lie. Found Helix waiting to heal her, claim her, keep her forever.
The lesser evil.
But still captivity.
I wrote this story when I was eighteen years old. Freshman year of college, living in my cramped dorm room with a roommate who thought I was studying late when really I was pouring my darkest fantasies onto the page. I didn't know the rules back then. I didn't understand that certain things couldn't be written, that certain lines couldn't be crossed even in fiction.
I thought I could write anything.
The monsters in my maze didn't ask permission. They didn't negotiate. They took what they wanted because that was the point—the terror, the helplessness, the desperate relief when Helix's voice cut through the darkness and showed Lyra the way out. The contrast made him seem safe by comparison. The trauma bonded her to him more effectively than any kindness ever could.
I was so proud of that story. Forty-seven thousand words of pure psychological horror wrapped in erotic fantasy. It felt real in a way nothing I'd written before had felt real. It felt like I'd finally excavated something true about myself and put it on the page.
Just before I published it, I saw a post on DarkDesires. Someone had gotten their book banned from Amazon for non-consent content. The comments were full of warnings—dub-con will get you flagged, non-con will get you removed entirely, even fantasy rape in fantasy settings with fantasy creatures can trigger takedowns if it's too explicit.
I read that post three times, cold dread spreading through my chest.
Then I looked at what I'd written.
The Call of the Labyrinth wasn't dub-con. It wasn't even non-con with plausible deniability. It was three graphic assault scenes played for terror and titillation, a heroine who survived through dissociation and learned helplessness, a hero whose only virtue was that he hurt her less than the alternatives.
It was unpublishable.
It violated every standard, every guideline, every unspoken rule that made dark erotica acceptable. Even DarkDesires—a second-rate Literotica knockoff where anything supposedly went—would have banned me for posting it.
I never published The Call of the Labyrinth.
I buried it in a folder on my hard drive labeled "OLD DRAFTS - DO NOT OPEN" and tried to forget I'd ever written it. Tried to forget what it said about me that I'd spent weeks crafting those scenes, that I'd made myself wet writing Lyra's terror, that I'd come harder reading her third capture than I ever had in real life.
But the unmasked man has access to my computer.
He's been inside my hard drive for six months. He's read everything I've ever written—not just the stories I posted on DarkDesires, but the drafts, the abandoned projects, the shameful attempts I never showed anyone.
He found it.
He found the darkest thing I've ever created, the story I was too ashamed to share even anonymously, and he built a real-life version of it in the middle of a tropical jungle.
For me.
For Valentine's Day.
I'm going to be sick.
I lean against the tree and press my forehead to the rough bark, breathing through my nose in shallow gasps. The humid air feels like it's choking me. Sweat drips down my spine and pools at the small of my back where I'm still naked, still exposed, still vulnerable in ways I can't seem to escape no matter how many times I think I've adjusted.
Can I do this?
That's the question, isn't it? The only question that matters right now.
Can I walk into a maze knowing what waits for me inside? Can I let myself be hunted by the same men who touched me at the bathing station, who made me come without permission, who know exactly how my body responds to their hands? Can I be captured, and used, and violated the way I wrote Lyra being violated?
Can I trust his voice to guide me through?