The General's Labyrinth

General Luciano Bravada was 35 years old when he commissioned the labyrinth to be built. The war he had fought since he was 20 had made him paranoid of the world around him. Constantly, he would look all around to find the assassin hidden in his periphery with a dagger, a murderer waiting to plunge into him and claim the war victory for himself. The trees themselves became lethal killers in disguise. Finally, when walking down the open beach, he formed an idea: if I am in the open, he said to himself, I am exposed; I shall, therefore, remove myself from the open to the closed.
Soon thereafter, the carpenters began work on the elaborate labyrinth which was to keep him hidden from the enemy and keep him safe for the rest of his days. They used the sketches Luciano himself had drawn as a design plan: they depicted several tiers hewn into a hillside, one entrance and one direct center which would be where he would spend his days, and an endless maze of dead ends, booby traps, trap doors, twists, and turns. So convoluted was the maze that the carpenters consistently had to ask to make sure they were holding the sketch correctly and building the labyrinth to the general's liking.
They worked fast, and soon, the labyrinth was well underway. About this time, some of the carpenters began to notice that the general had taken to staying the nights in the labyrinth. Confused, they questioned him -
- Why do you stay in the labyrinth?
- It shall be my home.
- What about food? Water?
- I have eaten enough. I have drunk my fill.
- How will you ever get out?
To this question, Luciano simply smiled and walked back to the center of his labyrinth. He had an ingenious plan to guide him through his maze, and he knew that the key to his labyrinth was keeping the secret of his guide to himself. Otherwise, the maze would become completely useless. After all, even this carpenter, as congenial as he is, could be a spy. And even if he isn't, everyone is a spy for the right price.
He would have to let the carpenters work another week before he could start his work on his map. They had to be far enough along that he would never catch up with them, so General Luciano stayed to himself in the center of the labyrinth as the carpenters continued the work around him, making his world more confusing with every cut of the knife, sealing him off more effectively with every portal opened. All the while, Luciano scratched notes into his notebooks and felt the growing warmth of complete safety.
A few days passed, and the general checked the carpenters' progress: they had three outward spirals and were starting the fourth. Luciano concluded that he could begin his guide safely without meeting any carpenters, so stealing a chisel and hammer, he went back to the center and began his work.
He turned to the wall on his left, placed the chisel at the top left corner, about an inch away from the ceiling, and striking it with the hammer twelve times carved, “I” into the wall. He stood back and observed it. It was sloppily done, the vertical did not meet the horizontals exactly right, and it was by no means straight up-and-down, but it was the beginning. The first word of his life, the word that occupied his every breath. “I” is the beginning of every good story, and so it was with the general.
His plan was to carve his life into the stone walls, starting at the center and spiraling out until it finished at the exit. He would cover every wall in scratches, showing every advance, every downfall, every merciless pain he had endured, along with every happiness. He had also developed a multitude of untruths to mislead anyone who tried to seek him out. The idea was simple and cunning at the same time: since the end would be at the door, some assassins would think that being a scholar of the war would be enough to get to the center of the maze and kill the general, but as they went deeper into the caverns, they would find themselves trying to piece together the general's childhood, even some things which only the general himself knew about. They would inevitably fail, either by giving up and trying to find their way back, or by making a wrong choice and finding themselves caught in a trap of some sort, and there to spend the rest of their miserable days.
Taking up the chisel once more, General Luciano began carving steadfastly, with burning determination. He pounded his childhood into the wall, the death of his mother, the abuse of his father, his desire for his sister. He continued, letting his life blood flow onto the walls in vivid color. Page by page, his life began to take its form. He covered wall after wall, floor to ceiling, with his burgeoning lust from his youth, his philosophies, his induction into the military, and at every wrong turn, he would carry into some falsehood, just true enough to lead someone who didn't know to their end.
Meanwhile, the carpenters continued to build outward, always a spiral or two ahead of the general, who soon became phenomenally quick in his work. The labyrinth became more and more confusing as it stretched further and further outward. Some of the carpenters even became lost while working on a section and were never seen again. This led many men to believe the maze to be cursed. They began to think that it was a plot by the general to watch even more innocent young men die in his service, at his command. So a group of them hatched a plan to seek out and kill General Luciano.
Setting out one night after everyone else had gone home, they delved into the dark stone corridors. After passing two outer spirals, they began hearing the incessant pounding of the general. Thinking it was a ghost, or the curse, they ran off in different directions. Only one was ever heard from again, and he was found nearly starved to death three days later. He had stumbled into a work area at midday and immediately collapsed to the ground. He muttered something about the curse of the labyrinth, about how the maze draws a person in and destroys him by changing pathways and misleading them. But his throat was parched, and his body was weak, so none of the men understood what he meant. They all thought it was the effect of having been so badly deprived. He was clearly in no state to reason.
So the carpenters kept building and finally finished the labyrinth and went home.
And General Luciano kept carving the words of his lifetime into the stone. He was now far into the war years, telling tales of deceit and clever strategy, cunning and strength. He told of the young boys he'd seen die around him, and the old men who looked at him with their blue, blue eyes as they whispered a last breath. Wall after wall, he told his story, stories of love and loss and dreams and crushed hopes, until he finally came to his paranoia, the enclosing and entrapped feeling of knowing that there is an assassin so close to you. There simply must be one, behind this tree or that wall, plotting, waiting for the right moment to pounce and destroy the man who had destroyed so much, the General Luciano.
He tapped his dull and well worn chisel through the inception of the labyrinth and the commission to build it,until his life and the maze became so entwined that he could not separate one from the other. He finally arrived at his current age, 67.
Chisel in hand, he carved his final sentence: The rest is the labyrinth, nothing more and nothing less.
Here he stopped, for the first time in nearly 30 years, and looked around to find himself not at the exit of the labyrinth, but within arm's length of the beginning of his story in the center of the labyrinth. That first crooked “I” glared down at him, harshly contrasted to his now nearly perfect handwriting.
Shocked, he took out his sketches and went over them. How had he gone wrong? He had paid close attention to every detail, at every turn making sure he had gone the right way. He followed the map looking closely once again to make sure he had followed every turn correctly, walking down the corridors, left then right, into the darkness and out again, upstairs then down. He followed the map straight through, double checking to make sure the carpenters had not somehow made the maze wrong. He could sense that he was getting into the outer-most spirals, and he was nearly to the exit. He looked up and saw the door and started sprinting to it, overjoyed to find the way out. But when he turned into the portal, he found only the center again, the end of the story to his right and the beginning to his left. The only thing left for General Luciano Bravada to do was wander his labyrinth and go back over his story to try to find where he went the wrong way.
According to legend, he is still doing just that.
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First Date at the Electro

God, she looks fantastic. Her hair is loose, her white sparkled dress is tight, her curves are emphasized, she just looks really great. And she’s smiling, and that helps so much. When she smiles, you can at least imagine that she’s having a good time. It makes the night go a lot easier.
I picked a dance club to take her too, that way there’s an absolute minimum of talking. I can’t hold a conversation with people I’ve known my entire life; I can’t imagine having anything to talk about with someone I just met, thought was attractive, and asked out, no matter how much she’s smiling, and how cute she looks. Even if I was being tortured and interrogated about what I did yesterday, my responses would be monosyllabic at best. So dance club, it is. You get her there, you move your body a little, and next thing you know she thinks you’re the best thing since toasted bread. And you’re in. No conversation required.
I pull her up to the bar and tell the mack, “two.” The eyes he gives her makes it clear he knows that I mean, “be a doll, and put a roofie in one.” She looks fantastic. The mack knows the score. Or he knows me and knows my score. He pours her a stout something-something and dilutes mine a little so I don’t make any stupid mistakes. The International Conspiracy of Men: This Hand Washes That Hand. Thanks, mack.
The music blares some hideous so-and-so with a backbeat. It’s so loud you can’t even really hear it, it’s just muddled vibrations through air and you can only pick out the slight treble here and there. Still she leans close with her drink in hand and says something completely inaudible. This is another reason to opt for the club on a first date: if she wants to talk, the only way is to get really close, licking your ear to get her point across.
I scream, “what?”
And she gets right in my ear saying something like, “I really like this song,” or “I’ve got a sexy thong.” Then she takes a coy drink and flits her eyelids at me. She puts down all the road signs: playing with the hem of her dress as it inches up her white thighs, drinking quickly and keeping eye contact as she puts it away. She even pulled down the front of her dress to expose her dragon tattoo on the leftmost of her exceptional cleavage. The mack paid her no mind, just let her do her thing, he’s done his part.
“You’ve got a lance?” she yells.
Yes, ma’am, I think. “What?”
“DANCE! Want to dance?” Dancing is a beautiful thing. It’s legitimate public eroticism. She bumps and grinds against you just like you would at home in the throes of a sexual revolution. The hormones rage harder than a middle school church camp. Strippers don’t do as much. Prostitutes barely do. It’s all about the contact and the emotion that goes with it. Strippers and prostitutes don’t really have a leg up in that field of contact and emotion.
So we go to the dance floor. And she’s fantastic. She wraps her arms around my neck and pushes her hips into me, smiling a little lecherously. She pulls my hair. She’s rough and I can tell she wants me. And I mean, I’m not one to complain. I mean, right now, I’m fighting my primal instincts off with a baseball bat in my brain. I am closer to violent rape than I’ve ever been before.
Then it happened: Scandal’s The Warrior started playing, and she did that squeal. The “Oh My God This Is My Favorite Song of All Time” Squeal. Her short blond hair became a flurry of motion as she shook her head with incredulity. There are so many things wrong with her excitement at this song.
Firstly, her excitement is what most people call “girlish.” It expresses an immaturity that usually accompanies 16 year olds.
Nextly, the song is a pop-feminist ballad. Patty Smyth yelling the battle-cry “I am the Warrior” and “I’m the heart you’ll win, if you survive.” It’s roughly more discouraging for the female gender than the women’s suffrage movement would have been if it had been lead by Rosie O’Donnell.
But most importantly (and disturbingly) was what she was going to do. The song had only just started, but already she was grabbing my tie and pulling me center-stage. I had no reason to know what was going to happen, but I knew as soon as I saw the reaction to the song. I knew she had a dance. I knew she had a plan.
The first verse played through without a hitch except for her idiotic jumping and headbanging, I forced a smile to conceal my disgust. But it was coming to the chorus. I dreaded the chorus with every fiber of my being because I knew exactly what she was going to do when those words came. Then, like a gunshot in an otherwise healthy evening, it came:
“Shootin’ at the walls of heartache,
Bang! Bang!
I am the Warrior!”
And she did it. She did exactly what you think she did.
“Bang! Bang!”
And she made the guns with her hands.
One for the left. One for the right.
Bang goes the one. Bang goes the other. And my forced smile melts like ice cubes on the sidewalk in Egypt. But she loved the song too much to notice that the evening had been utterly ruined by innanity.
I think the mack must’ve seen too, because as we left later that night, he gave me a look that said, “I’m sorry buddy, I thought she was a good one.” I responded with a sad, “I know” gaze. I walked her to my car, with her drunkenly shouting, “Bang! Bang!” intermittently. I drove her home, all the while with the radio on full-blast, trying to purge the foul sounds and sights from my mind. But there she was, making guns with her hands and Bang Banging left and right.
She said she had fun as I dropped her off. I told her I’d better not stay, what with church in the morning and all.
And as she walked to her door from my car, through the rolled down window I heard her shout, “I’m the heart you’ll win, if you survive.”
Slam it into drive and leave her behind. Sex is good, but not that good.
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