A Darkness in My Soul

ready for the drop that awaited me… … Labyrinth…
        The walls were hung with cobwebs, and the floor was strewn with dirt and bones. The walls were multi-fluted, polished here, rugged here, but a uniform gray everywhere. Far down there, somewhere in the nova-like center of the mind was the Id. It gave out the same, nearly unbearable whine that all Ids do. And somewhere above, in the blackness and the perfect quietude, was the area where the conscious mind should have been. It was clear that the mind of a super-genius was strangely unhuman.
        Most minds think in disconnected pictures, flittering arrays of scenes and snatches of the past, but Child's mind created an entire world of its own, a realism within his mind, an analogue that I could explore like the actual terrain of some lost land.
        There was a clacking of hooves, and from the source of light at the end of the tunnel came the outline in smoke, then the form in flesh of a Minotaur, nut-brown skin and all textures of black hair, eyes gleaming, steam caught in the large ovals of the nostrils.
        "Get out!"
        I mean no harm.
        "Get out, Simeon."
        There was a blue field of sparks crackling above his head, and psychic energies shot thin sporadic flames from his nostrils, the steam to hang there afterwards.
        "Leave a monster his only privacy!"
        I too am a monster.
        "Look at your face, Monster. It is not wrinkled like a dried fig; it is not old beyond its years with seeing; it is not caked with the dust of unlived centuries. You pass for human in your world. You pass. At least, you pass."
        Child, listen to me. I amHe charged and grasped at me with hoof-hands. I fashioned a sword from my own fields of thought and smashed him broadside on the head.
        The sound rang in the stone corridors.
        My arm reverberated with the force of the blow.
        And he was gone, a vapor in the darkness, a phantom.
        Holding the green glow of the weapon, I advanced slowly down the twisting halls toward the inner part of him, where his theories would bubble, where thoughts would run in molten rivers. I came out, finally, on an earthen shelf above a yawning pit. Far below, eternities away, drifting and glowing, was a circular mass, and the heat it threw into my face was great.
        From here had come the Minotaur. From here came everything.
        I reached out and grasped for anything, a subcurrent, a cracked image, the shell of a daydream, and I caught a Hate River ebbing and flowing.
        HATE, HATE, HATE HATEHATEHATEHATE-HA-TE-HATEHATE
        HATE… Somewhere in the middle of it, a two-headed thing swam, cutting the foul waters with a viciously spined neck. I caught the "T" in HATE and traced it along the currents, searching. T leads ToThumb and a suckling mouTh… and The sucking mouTh suddenly To a brown nipple and a moTher's breasT… and again The T dominaTed… and I allowed The river To carry me ineviTably on Toward Theorem…
        Theory Through Tees… Through Thousand Times Tedious Tiring… Ten Times one Times Two To SubOughT-seven in drepshler Tubes now being used…
        The flood was too fast. I could see the theory, but I could not divert it fast enough toward the ocean in the distance where a waterspout whirled (taking the thoughts to the little bit of conscious mind he possessed). The thoughts that were now being spoken in dust whispers in a room far away-the thoughts being recorded by serious men with serious faces who listened, no doubt, quite seriously.
        Then the drug must have finally taken hold of him, or I would have been swallowed alive by a mind construct and destroyed in his cauldron of insanity. The two-headed beast had swum near without drawing my notice. It caught my eye, now, as it moved swiftly, its mouth gaping, a giant cave that drooled…
        I lifted my sword as it raised its huge head above me to strike. Then there was a sudden, jerky slip like an old movie reel that has been spliced, and everything went into slow motion. It was like an underwater ballet. At that rate, it would have taken an hour for the beast's jaws to reach me and snap me up, and I slew him as his red eyes glistened and as a strange THRIDDLE THRIDDLE came out of his throat. Or hers.
        Turning back toward the river, I directed thoughts toward the slow-moving waterspout until so much time had passed that I thought I had better get out before I lost