Inside the Labyrinth (Marissa's Memories)

Chapter XXIII: Inside the Labyrinth

The Cabana’s air felt even thinner after Claire’s session, the cold having moved inside their bones rather than lingering in the room. The candelabra’s blue flame sputtered, barely holding its shape, and for a long minute both women simply breathed, as if the silence was a comfort they weren’t ready to let go of.

It was Marissa who broke the hush. “I think it’s your turn to take notes,” she said, voice gentle, the humor so dry it almost withered the words on the way out.

Claire, still flushed from her own ordeal, managed a faint nod. She reached for her pen, but then paused, tilting her head at Marissa as if to ask: Are you sure you want to go through with this?

Marissa shrugged, a gesture equal parts defiant and fatalistic. “Let’s just get it over with, before I lose my nerve.” She rolled her shoulders, the tailored suit jacket bunching at the seam, then walked to the candelabra with the steady purpose of someone used to doing things that scared her.

She hovered her hand above the blue smoke, but didn’t touch it immediately. She closed her eyes, breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, the way she always told her patients to do. Then, with a deliberate movement, she swirled her palm through the cool vapor.

The chill was shocking, but Marissa had trained for this kind of jolt. She kept her hand in place, watched as the smoke thickened, and let the first memory unfurl:

A windowless office, everything in shades of soft sage and dove gray. The desk, heavy and antique, dominated the room, its sharp edge chamfered by years of elbows, **** hands, and stacks of confidential paperwork. New chairs, modern, ergonomic, yet uncomfortable in their **** posture, flanked the desk like sentinels. On the wall behind, two framed degrees hung above a slim glass shelf displaying an arrangement of healing stones, a subtle rebellion against clinical convention. Marissa’s own face, slightly younger, hair shellacked into a neater bun that made her look more severe than she remembered being, reflected in the black glass of her computer monitor. She watched herself in the memory, a silent observer beside Claire, as her younger self moved through the ritual of beginning a session: gentle smile, measured breath, hands folded in her lap, all as rehearsed as a ballet.

The patient was a man in his fifties, paunchy, his white dress shirt half-untucked and his tie a loose noose—sat across from her. He had a face that suggested he’d once been handsome but now wore every season of loss: his cheeks were flushed, his nose red from endless dabbing, eyes swollen like he’d slept in brine. As the memory replayed, Claire could see even without sound how the man’s jaw worked under the strain of containment. His fingers knotted and unknotted in his lap, performing cat’s cradle patterns. Claire thought the man looked sad.

Marissa, in the memory, leaned forward with the same steady, attentive posture she had perfected for her practice. She extended her hand, palm hovering for a second, then set it gently on the man’s shoulder, just enough pressure to be felt, not enough to suggest ownership of his pain. The man’s eyes met hers, and for a flicker, he looked like a boy again, hopeful and doomed in equal measure. Then the tears fell, silent and colossal, and he bent at the waist, shoulders convulsing. Memory-Marissa kept her hand in place, her own knuckles blanching as she fought the reflex to look away, or to share the burden aloud and corrupt the sacred silence of the moment.

Claire, watching from the liminal space beside the memory, scribbled something on her notepad, but did not speak.

The scene dissolved, the office regrew itself. Same dimensions, same palette, but this time emptied of life except for Marissa and a ghostly blue haze. Outside, night pressed against the windowless walls, making the fluorescent lights seem colder and more pitiless. Memory-Marissa sat at her desk, the exhaustion on her face explicit, the professional mask taken off for the evening. She scrolled, compulsively, through her email on the desktop screen, the blue light washing out all warmth from her cheeks. She opened a browser window and thumbed through news articles, not really reading, just filling silence with noise.

Until she froze. Every muscle in her memory-self’s body locked, hands hovering midair, eyes wide, lips parted in disbelief. The smoke swirled, emphasizing the glow of the monitor and the headline that burned in electric blue: “LOCAL MAN FOUND DEAD IN SUSPECTED SUICIDE.” The line below: “Leaves behind wife and two children.” Claire saw the photo, and though she’d never known the man, she felt the recognition like a cold slap.

Memory-Marissa’s chest fluttered as her breath grew shallow. She clicked the article, reading and rereading the sparse, clinical facts. There was no mention of therapy. No mention of the weeks they had spent together, the gargantuan effort to build hope out of old regrets and missed connections. Her hands went to her temples, massaging, then covering her entire face. She made a sound, half laugh, half scream, but the sound was devoured by the smoke, leaving only the image of her slumping forward, chin on her chest, elbows braced against the desk as if she could hold herself together by sheer pressure.

Time hiccuped, and the memory stuttered to a third scene: Marissa dressed not in her usual business attire, but in sweats and an oversized t-shirt, collapsed on a futon in a tiny apartment. Empty takeout containers, red and white, crowded the low table beside her. The TV flickered with a rerun of a nature documentary about wolves. Marissa’s eyes, puffy and rimmed red, stared at the screen but seemed to focus on something far beyond it. Her phone buzzed, a text notification, but she ignored it. Instead, she curled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her shins, and rocked gently until the scene faded out to gray.

The memory shifted: a conference hall, walls hung with banners, the air a soup of aftershave and anxiety. There she was: herself, standing on the makeshift stage, a water bottle at her feet, a remote in one hand, a laser pointer in the other. The black dress she wore was simple by design, but in her memory it felt like the ceremonial vestment of a gladiator. She had chosen it deliberately, rejecting the powder-blue pantsuit her friend had begged her to wear (“It’s more authoritative, Marissa, they’ll respect you.”) She’d known, even then, that respect was not on the menu. There was only one person in the audience she truly felt seen by, and that was her mentor, Dr. Petrov.

Behind her, a slide deck glowed in the darkness. The logo of her university, the title of her talk (“Rewiring Loss: Neuroplasticity and the Restoration of Hope”), then, in seventy-two-point font, the word NEUROPLASTICITY. The crowd (four hundred, maybe more) sat in shadowed rows, their faces a blur. She could see only the first two rows clearly: the men in expensive blazers, the women in expensive blazers, the grad students trying not to look bored or hungry or both.

She finished strong. Marissa remembered that, too. Even as she queued up her final slide, even as her hands went cold with the realization that the ending would have to carry the Q&A as well, she kept her smile in place and her voice steady. “The brain is not a prison,” she said, “but a garden. And gardens, as we know, require tending after storms.” She waited out the last, nervous ripple of laughter. Then she clicked off the microphone, and stepped back from the lectern.

Polite applause at first—a smattering, a courtesy—but then it grew, as though the room needed a second to calibrate their response, to decide if they were allowed to be impressed. It swelled, became genuine, and for a fleeting second, Marissa let herself feel the lift of it. Like a high diver, she let herself, just for a moment, believe she might have stuck the landing. She saw Dr. Petrov, smiling, clapping her hands. Proud.

Then the memory accelerated.

The lights were different—the conference hall’s main floor replaced with the hotel’s “hospitality suite,” a ballroom in miniature, hastily reconfigured for the after-party. A pair of servers in black polos circulated with trays of wine, bottles procured by the lowest bidder for the university. It was the color of cough syrup and tasted like cold medicine, but every glass was drained and returned for another.

A white tablecloth. Cheap stemware. Name tags: everybody wore them, but most had been handled by nervous fingers until the writing was smudged illegible. Marissa found herself at the focal point of a conversational vortex. People crowded around her, some with genuine curiosity, most with the hungry tension that came from wanting to be seen near the source of acclaim. The effect was dazzling and a little sickening, like opening your eyes mid-spin on a playground carousel.

She fielded the first volley: “You’re the neuroplasticity gal, right? Loved your data set! Where’d you get that sample size?” A compliment, almost, but phrased as a challenge. Marissa answered. She had anticipated the question, and for a moment, the man who posed it seemed satisfied. Then, as if to confirm he still held the upper hand, he turned aside and began explaining her own conclusions to a woman beside him. Marissa’s lips tightened, but she let it pass.

Another voice: “They didn’t tell us you’d be the pretty one.” A group of men, all with identical conference bags slung across their chests, burst out laughing. Marissa smiled, because not smiling would be interpreted as weakness or, worse, “not having a sense of humor.” She had practiced this exact smile in her bathroom mirror many times: tolerant, a little sheepish, but never so warm as to be interpreted as invitation.

Others joined in, each with their own flavor of condescension or backhanded praise: “You’re so young to be up there!” “How did you get on the bill, anyway?” “Are you a postdoc or…?” “With a figure like that, you could talk about the weather and we’d still listen.” And always: the glances. Not at her face, but at her chest, her hips, the length of her legs under the black dress she had chosen so carefully to walk the line between professional and forgettable. She could feel each stray gaze as a weight, a bead of mercury rolling over her skin, thickening as the night went on.

There, the moment she realized she was no longer part of the conversation, but the conversation itself. The men debated the implications of her research, the women asked polite questions about her “career trajectory,” but no one really heard her answers. Her ideas were the garnish, not the meal. Every word she spoke was a delivery device for something more primal: her confidence, her laughter, her body itself. Marissa remembered wondering if this was what hummingbirds felt when the world reduced them to just their frantic, colorful motion.

A hand (she couldn’t remember whose, but it had a wedding band) rested on her lower back as someone guided her toward the dessert table. The gesture was brief and almost gentle, but it burned. She spent the rest of the party standing with her arms crossed, eyeing the exits, smiling so her jaw ached. When she finally made her escape, she locked herself in the women’s bathroom for ten minutes, just breathing. She counted the seconds as if they were beads, strung together by silence and the faint whirr of an air vent. She didn’t cry, but if she had, she would have done it there, where no one could see.

The smoke swirled, then pulled away, leaving Marissa in the silence of the Cabana, her own breath gone shallow. She looked at Claire, dared her to comment.

Claire didn’t. She just uncapped her pen and wrote something else, then waited.

Marissa seemed surprised by the lack of judgment. “You’re not going to ask?” she said, a note of challenge in her voice.

Claire shook her head, but then wrote:

Why only show work stuff? Don’t you have other memories?

Marissa almost smiled, but it was a bitter edge. “I compartmentalize,” she said. “It’s safer. If you let work bleed into life, you can’t do either well.” She let the smoke settle, and for a second it seemed like she might stop there. But Claire just watched her, expectant, and in the end, the pressure of her gaze made Marissa laugh, low and uneasy.

“You want the real me,” Marissa said. “Not just the therapist.” She inhaled, steadying herself. “Fine. You get the real Marissa.”

She dipped her hand into the smoke again, but this time the images were smaller, more intimate, their edges blurred as if the memories themselves weren’t fully developed.

At first, the new set of memories felt like a trick of the vapor. There was no grand conference room, no battery of judgmental faces; just a backyard in suburban New Jersey, a postage-stamp plot ringed by chain-link fence and shaded in late afternoon gold. The grass was unshorn and lumpy, growing in sullen tufts that clung to the soles of bare feet. There, under a sky that promised summer storms, a much younger Marissa bolted in a zigzag across the dandelion-pocked lawn. She must have been ten, maybe eleven, with knees covered in large, rubbery Band-Aids and a swimsuit two sizes too big. She pumped her arms with wild abandon, howling in mock-terror, her voice hoarse from too much shrieking.

The chase was not the important part. It was the audience. At the far edge of the yard, a girl in a battered wheelchair watched with breathless anticipation—Sarah, her younger sister, hair flying in twin ungovernable pigtails. Her legs, thin as saplings, didn’t quite rest on the footrests, and her hands were in constant, ecstatic motion, alternately clapping and flapping and reaching for her sister as if the world might disappear the instant she stopped paying attention.

Marissa doubled back, skidded to a stop, and let herself be “caught,” allowing Sarah to wrap her in a hug. For a split-second, the world seemed to slow: Sarah’s laughter, high-pitched and trembling but pure, the sisters locked together in a tangle of arms and giggles.

The image burned and then collapsed, the memory shifting abruptly, violently, as if someone had turned the page too quickly.

The hospital room was so white it seemed to hum, the light eating all other colors. Marissa (older now, nineteen or twenty) sat at the edge of a plastic visitor’s chair, hands fidgeting in her lap, her face drawn raw from nights without sleep. The bed at the center of the room was lost in wires and hoses, the person in it so injured that, for a moment, Claire couldn’t tell if it was Sarah or not. But the doctor’s expression, grave yet gentle, made it clear: this was a memory of loss, or the threat of it.

Marissa listened as the doctor explained... what, exactly? Words drifted up in fragments: “infection in the blood,” “prognosis,” “making him feel no pain.” The details floated away, unimportant compared to the tension in Marissa’s jaw, the way she nodded with theatrical composure, refusing to give the doctor the satisfaction of seeing her break. When it was over, Marissa stood, thanked the doctor, and shuffled out into the corridor on legs that seemed to belong to someone else. In the hallway, where the air was less clinical but no warmer, she leaned against the wall, pressed her forehead to the cool tile, and allowed herself a single, silent sob. She pulled out her phone, typed a message, erased it, then started again, and the message went to Sarah. “You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay,” Marissa whispered, as if saying it enough times would make it true.

But the memory didn’t linger. It skipped ahead, as if afraid to dwell on pain for too long. The setting changed to a cramped galley kitchen, the countertops cluttered with pill bottles and uncapped markers and an inexplicable number of plastic dinosaurs. Sarah, now a teenager, had grown into her wheelchair as if it were an extension of herself. She wielded a wooden spoon like a conductor’s baton, banging it against the metal rim and declaring, “Supper, or I riot!” Marissa stood at the stove, one hand stirring a simmering pot, the other shading her eyes, but her exhaustion was undercut by a barely-contained smile. She set a plate in front of Sarah, who inspected it with the fanfare of a food critic and then beamed. “You look tired, Rissy,” Sarah said, not unkindly.

Marissa rolled her eyes, trying to play it cool, but she couldn’t quite hide her pride or her affection. “No one will date me if I’m not tired. That’s how you win at adulting,” she replied, and Sarah—older, sicker, but somehow undiminished—snorted so loudly she almost toppled her glass of milk. “You don’t even date,” Sarah said, snorting. Marissa’s smile dimmed. “I can’t. No one takes me seriously as it is.”

As Sarah dug into her food, she looked up, meeting Marissa’s eyes with a sudden, worried seriousness. “I mean it, Rissy. You should try it sometime. I can take care of myself. You’re allowed to be happy.”

Marissa’s smile faltered, and in the silence that followed, Claire could almost hear the tick of the wall clock, counting down the seconds until neither of them had to pretend anymore. The tension was unspoken but absolute. Marissa shrugged, gaze falling to her hands, always in motion, always searching for something to hold. “Maybe later,” she said.

The memory looped, then unraveled, the smoke swirling into a new configuration: Marissa, alone now, sitting in her car at the side of a deserted road, dashboard clock blinking 2:12 AM. Her hands gripped the steering wheel with such **** her knuckles went white. Her eyes were rimmed red, her cheeks damp, but she didn’t seem aware that she was crying. Instead, she stared straight ahead, lips moving in a steady litany: “Don’t let them see it. Don’t let them see it. Don’t let them see it.” It was unclear whether the “it” was her grief, her fear, or simply herself. She repeated it until her voice went hoarse, then punched the steering wheel once, twice, hard enough that the horn blared and the memory rewound to black.

Claire put down her notebook, reached out, and touched Marissa’s hand. It wasn’t a dramatic gesture, just the lightest press, but it was comforting. It was human.

Marissa was the one who broke the spell. She leaned back, wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, and barked out a laugh that was half-defiance, half-plea. “That enough for you?” she said, her voice ragged. “I told you, real Marissa has baggage. Cartloads of it. Happy?”

Claire shook her head. She wrote, quickly, on her pad: You took care of her. That’s not baggage. That’s love.

Marissa read it, mouth twisting as if she’d finally lost an argument she hadn’t known she was having. “Yeah,” she said after a long moment. “I did.”

She pressed her palms flat to the table, grounding herself, and for a second Claire saw the woman who’d survived the conference rooms and the hospital rooms and the endless parade of being underestimated. Not the therapist, not the performer, just Marissa, present and unadorned.

Claire wrote again:

Andy should see this part of you. Not just the part that fixes everyone else.

Marissa seemed to ponder that. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then, softly: “Maybe I do want to be seen. Maybe I’m tired of being the wall.”

Claire mimed a heart over her own chest, then pointed at Marissa.

Marissa let herself smile, for real this time. “Maybe that’s what I’ll show him,” she said, nodding at the candelabra. “Not the therapist, not the conference speaker. Just the person who keeps going, even when no one gives a shit.”

They sat in silence, two women in the hush of their own scars, the blue flame burning low between them.

“Thanks for the help,” Marissa said, voice steady. “I’m glad I didn’t have to do it alone.”

Claire smiled, small and true, then mimed zipping her lips and tossing the key away. Then she wrote:

Did you notice the loophole? When Arabella explained the bodypainting?

Marissa blinked, then smiled slightly, nodding. “I did. Will you use it?”

Claire nodded, then tilted her head quizzically, pointing at Marissa.

“No,” the curly-haired woman said, “I think I need to show myself. All of myself. As you said.”

They walked out of the Cabana side by side, into the last light of the afternoon.

The tide had shifted while Andy lost himself in the Cabana’s output, the thin line between sand and sea inching closer to the gazebo’s pillars. The late afternoon was all purple glow and gold vapor, and the only thing sharper than the light was the sound of laughter from the contesting pairs, drifting back across the water.

Andy stood at the railing, where he’d found himself so often since arriving, and watched the Memory Cabana in the distance. He’d seen Marissa and Claire emerge, side by side, heading towards the painting station. He tried to picture the challenge ahead, what those women would show him, what stories would be painted onto their skin. But the thought was a tangle of guilt, longing, and the kind of fear that didn’t have a name.

He braced his hands on the wood, knuckles white, and waited.

Arabella stood beside him. If Andy looked directly at her, she seemed sculpted from night and emerald and something not quite real. They watched the sea for a while, two creatures at the edge of a storm. Then Andy said, "Is it always this hard?" Andy said, not sure if he meant the question for her or the universe.

Arabella gave a small, amused hum. "Harder, some years," she said. "Sometimes the Master doesn't care at all, and the women never realize how high the stakes are. I find that much worse."

He nodded, then braced his forearms against the rail, fingers knotted together. "About the veto," he said. "How does it actually work? If I use it, does it save someone, really save them, or is it just buying time?"

Arabella tilted her head, her profile catching the sun. "It saves them," she said. "For this round. It cannot be used again."

Andy was silent. He tried to imagine who he might want to save, and when, and if he could live with himself for not using it at all. "What about the next time? What happens then?"

She looked out at the water. "The next elimination proceeds as normal. The lowest scorer is gone, and there's no more protection for anyone, not even your favorites. After you use it, you have no more power to intervene."

He felt a chill, as if the blue candle's cold had followed him out here. "How many eliminations are left?"

Arabella's fingers tapped her opposite arm, the barest sign of tension. "There are three more scheduled after tonight. Possibly more at the finale, depending on the final scores."

Andy wondered if anyone before him had ever refused to choose. "And if I never use the veto? What then?"

She shrugged, the motion elegant but final. "Then it expires. And you watch as the women leave, one by one, with no more say in the outcome."

He let that sink in. "What happens to them, really? When they leave?"

Arabella turned, her gaze so level it felt like a dare. "That depends. Some are given a new life. Some are… transformed, as you've seen." She paused. "If you care enough, you can keep them in your household, after the finale. They will still be part of your harem, only… in a lesser capacity."

Andy almost laughed at the word household. "So it's all on me, then. I can only save one, and maybe not even for good."

She nodded. "That is the burden of the Master. But also the privilege."

He looked at her, searching for any sign of malice or enjoyment in the system, but found only a kind of cold, resigned sympathy. "And you," he said. "What about your veto? Do you get one?"

Arabella smiled, so faint it was almost nothing. "Yes. Same as yours. But I will use it when I need to."

He thought of the day they'd first met, the way she'd seemed both omnipotent and haunted, and wondered what it would cost her to care about the outcome. Maybe more than it would cost him.

"If I use the veto, do I have to say who I save? Or does it just block the elimination?"

"You must declare," Arabella said. "It must be public, and final. The Audience expects a show, after all."

He closed his eyes, feeling the headache gathering just behind them. "Thank you," he said, finally. "For being honest."

Arabella inclined her head, as if he'd complimented her dress or her manners. "It's the least I can do," she said. "I promised, Andy. I do not lie to you."

For a long while, Andy said nothing. He watched the last of the sun slip behind a cloud, turning the world to liquid shadow. In the far-off yard, Emi and Dawn were practicing something, arms windmilling, faces lit up with the joy of a shared joke. Liesa stood alone at the edge of the garden, tracing patterns in the air with her finger. Erin and Sam walked the path side by side, arguing over something with all the subtlety of a pair of racing freight trains.

He didn’t want to choose. He didn’t want to play the goddamn game. But the rules were carved into the bones of the island, and Andy could feel them tightening around his heart.

Arabella let the silence grow fat between them. Then, softly: “If you do nothing, the world continues as it must. If you intervene, you take on the burden yourself.”

He laughed, but it was a humorless sound. “That’s my specialty.”

Arabella’s mouth quirked, but she didn’t dispute it.

He turned to her, searching her face for some sign, some permission to just walk away. “Why do you care what I do?” he asked. “If the outcome is already set?”

She met his gaze, unblinking. “The outcome is not set, Andy. Two women who would be eliminated, won’t be, because of your veto and mine. It is ours to decide who deserves that chance. And I care because this place is shaped by the will of its Master. Every choice you make creates ripples, Andy. Not just for the women. For all of us.” She looked back at the sea, fingers tapping again at her arm, almost a Morse code. “There have been other Masters who never used the veto. They thought it was weakness, or a trick. And others could not carry the burden, and broke. But you are not like them.”

He bristled. “How do you know?”

“Because you already carry the heaviest burden of all. Because you are already hurting for them,” she said. “Because you see them as more than pieces on a board, or toys for your amusement. And because only a man who has been broken can truly shoulder the pain of other broken people.”

He looked away, eyes on the horizon. The light was nearly gone now, the first stars smudging the blue-black.

Arabella’s voice softened. “The veto is yours. But the next round will be harder, not easier. The Audience will expect blood, and so will the rules.”

He shut his eyes. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Then wait,” she said. “Or don’t. But whatever you choose, own it.” She paused, the silence like a held breath. “Regret is the one thing this place will never take from you.”

They stood together, leaning on the white railing, the cold rising from the water to wrap their ankles.

Andy finally spoke: “Do you ever wish you could change the rules?”

Arabella’s voice was flat. “Every day. But I am what I am, Andy. I cannot step beyond the script.”

He nodded, understanding more than he wanted to.

A wind picked up, sending the smell of salt and flowers up from the shore. Andy watched the Memory Cabana, its lights just a distant pinprick now, and wondered how any of this would end. He wondered what he would be when it was over.

Beside him, Arabella turned, her profile silvered by moonlight. “We are close, now. When they are ready, you will see the fruit of their efforts. The Audience will vote. And so will you. If you wish to save someone, you should decide before then.”

He smiled, not unkind. “Ah shucks, you do care!”

She almost laughed. “I do my best.”

They watched the stars come out, one by one, and waited until the time came for Arabella to join the women. But Andy wondered if she was more prisoner than Host, and if, in another life, she would have wanted a veto of her own.