"Fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave." The Goblin King stared at the young girl beseechingly, his voice clipped, charming under ordinary circumstances.

"I can never remember that line…" She seems to have not heard him and looked off in the distance.

"Sarah…"

She stared at him as it came to her, "You have no power over me."

Sarah woke up with a gasp. For the past seven years, she had dreamed of the Labyrinth, and its keeper. Falling back onto her soft bed, she smiled and shook her head at childish fantasies.

Looking at her alarm clock, Sarah registered the time. It was almost time for her to be up anyway, so she struggled out of the grips of her blankets and stumbled for the bathroom.

"Morning Sunshine…" Amy sat at the breakfast buffet watching Looney Tunes and eating cereal. Sarah and Amy had been roommates since first year university, and were struggling together in the 'real world'.

"Meh…" Sarah had never really been a morning person. She struggled over to the counter and poured herself a cup of the coffee Amy had made.

Black, steaming, beautiful, coffee. "I love coffee… I want it to father my children." She breathed in the lovely smell and took a large sip. Eyes rolling into the back of her head with the pleasure of it, "Bliss."

Amy looked at her, mildly scared. "You know that your reliance on coffee frightens me, right?"

"Oh yeah."

"Fair enough."

They sat in companionable silence watching the rest of the cartoons. Amy looked at Sarah as she chewed through a large spoonful of Cocoa Puffs. "Hey, Sarah? You have weird dreams last night?"

"No, not really. Why?" She looked at her in surprise, and then went back to her beautiful drink.

"Oh, just heard you calling out, 'Oh Jareth! Fuck me!'" Amy smiled evilly as she mimicked Sarah in a high-pitched voice, "But other than that, no reason."

"What!? I did not!" Sarah winced. "I don't even know a Jareth, for your information." She nodded emphatically.

"Nice try Muffin. I definitely heard you say Jareth. I heard you even in my room. Could this be a new mystery man?" Amy leered in Sarah's direction, milk dribbling off her chin. Sarah turned slightly crimson, and gathered her long chocolate-brown hair into a high ponytail with a elastic she found on the counter.

Amy looked at her with a smirk, and then sighed jealously at Sarah's beautiful, thick hair. "Nothing to say, hmm? What a surprise."

Staring at Daffy, Sarah just shook her head, a signal for Amy to back off. Amy took another big mouthful of her cereal, and shook her head sadly in Sarah's general direction. "Too bad, might have been a funny story… Well, funny for me at least."

"Ok then, do we have bread?"

"No."

"Do we have milk?"

"No."

"Do we have eggs?"

"No."

"Do we have any more cereal?"

"No."

"Do we really have any food?"

"No."

"Huh." Sarah stared into her coffee for a moment. "Are you gonna go grocery shopping today?"

"Nope."

"Wow. Even together we do not make a responsible adult."

"I don't have a problem with it."

"Huh, me neither." Sarah giggled into her coffee before turning to go shower. "We will need chocolate later though."

"On it."

Walking into the publishing house where she worked as a junior editor, Sarah reflected on how happy she was compared to those dark days of the Labyrinth. She was twenty-two, she had a great apartment, she had a great job that she liked, she got on well with her family and friends… She really wanted for nothing. Why then, was she still dreaming of that place?

"Hi Sarah, there are a few phone messages that I put on your desk as well as a few manuscripts that James wanted your opinions on." Sarah's assistant Julia smiled up at her as she walked into her office.

"Thanks, how was your weekend?" She picked up the messages and rifled through them with a slight frown. There were a few of the minor writers that she looked after that she really didn't like talking to sometimes.

"Great, actually. You should have come to the pub with us all, it was fun." Julia smiled at her boss, who was in truth, more like a friend. Sarah was so charismatic, that people generally just gravitated to her.

"Wish I could have, but I had a date. No, it didn't go well, he stared at my boobs for most of the evening." Sarah made a face and wandered into her office as Julia laughed.

"Ok… don't want to call him… Don't want to call her… We owe him money… He's irritating…" Sarah organized her messages into categories of levels of frustration that she knew they would cause her, and decided that the callbacks could wait until after her lunch. She put her feet up on her desk, and started going through the manuscripts.

The publishing house she worked for specialized in children's literature, and she was generally the first one who read manuscripts from new writers. It could be frustrating, but sometimes she really found a few gems. It appeared it would not be that sort of day.

"Wow…" If she had to read another Harry Potter-wannabe, she would smack something. This one was based on a character called Sally Caughter, who just learned she could do magic and was trying to go to a special school for magic. "Brutal." She threw the manuscript into her rejected bin for Julia to file later.

"Ah good, another Eragon… huh, Baby-Sitter's club… Lord of the Rings… Wow, really no original thought left is there." She tossed manuscript after manuscript to the side, and rubbed her forehead absently, and admired her new shoes for a minute.

Julia leaned her head in, "I have a few more if you're finished with those. Ooh, nice shoes."

"Send them in…" Sarah smiled up at her. "They can't be any worse than these."

"Oh, I don't know about that." Julia laughed and put them on Sarah's desk. "Let me know when you would like some lunch."

"Thanks."

Sarah had been wrong… They were worse. She finally got to the last one, and sighed. Hopefully there was something new and exciting about that one, which would have to wait until after she ate."

As she reclined in the chair across from Julia in her office, eating a big hamburger, she sighed, and relaxed. "Mmm, grease."

"So tell me about the guy." Julia fixed her with a look, as she ate her non-greasy salad. Damn Sarah and her metabolism.

"Nope, he's not even a footnote of a footnote." She wiped her mouth, and took a big gulp of the milkshake.

"Why do you have such a hard time with men? You have so many friends, you're pretty, you have a nice body. Are you swinging for the other side?" Julia smiled as she took another big bite of lettuce. She grimaced and stared at Sarah's fries, brightening up when her friend offered her the container.

"Why Julia, you're really not my type…" Sarah laughed. "Honestly I have no idea. There's always something wrong… Maybe my standards are too high?"

Julia looked thoughtful as she stuffed a few more of the delightful deep-fried potato into her mouth. "Maybe… You usually have a good reason for not going out with any of them though. Perhaps you're just meeting the wrong sort of men."

"Probably." Sarah smiled. "What about you? How are the wedding plans going? Are you letting Rick have any say?"

"Of course not, what do men know about weddings after all?"

"Nothing." They both laughed as Julia rattled off seating issues. Sarah sat back smiling.

"And you Sarah," The Goblin King put a hand on the wall above the girl's head, and leaned down to her, smiling in a feral way, "how are you enjoying my Labyrinth?"

"It's a piece of cake." She raised her head to glare at him defiantly.

"Really, the how about upping the stakes, hmm" He smiled at her raising a hand to point at a large ornate clock that had appeared behind him. The dial started turning quickly, running down her time.

"That's not fair!" The girl exclaimed.

"You say that so often," He turns back to face her, "I wonder what your basis for comparison is," as he walks past her.

The Goblin King turns to face her once more, "So the Labyrinth is a piece of cake is it? Well let us see how you deal with this little slice…"

Sarah sat up in bed, and sighed. This was getting old. Her heart was racing, and sweat was beaded on her forehead. As always, she was shocked at the affect on her body that these dreams had sometimes. She lay back in her bed, and slowly pulled up the large t-shirt she wore as a nighty.

Sometimes, she just couldn't help herself after these dreams. The antagonist of them seemed to turn her on in the most extreme way. Sarah ran a hand under her lacy panties, and found herself wet.

As her back arched off the bed and she moaned to herself, she thought of the man who inspired such lust, and if he was even real. Sometimes she wondered if everything that had happened in the Labyrinth was part of her 15 year-old self. Her world spun as she gasped into the night air.

"Jareth…"

Sarah sat down at her desk, and rearranged her knee-length pencil skirt across her knees. A new day, new manuscripts. She grabbed the first one, and grimaced as she realized this was the last one from yesterday, the one she had not gotten a chance to read as other things had popped up. As soon as she picked it up, she felt a flash of electricity run up her arm, and she dropped the package with a loud gasp, her hand tingling.

"What the hell…" She massaged it with her other hand, feeling the after-affects of something akin to static. The manuscript, lying on the floor where it had been dropped, appeared innocent, and with bemusement Sarah reached down to pick it up, expecting to be shocked again, and mildly surprised when nothing happened. "How odd."

"By J. Smith. What a superb name to try to advertise with…" Sarah rolled her eyes. Surprisingly enough, however, J. Smith was actually the most ordinary name she had encountered from writers who commonly thought up eccentric and strange pen names. "Working title, The Beginning."

Sarah had a checklist that she went through every time she read a manuscript, that helped her rate the feasibility, and generally the title was the first thing she looked at, as it was one of the first things that the prospective readers saw. It had also been proven that the name helped determine who would read a book, as well as why. This name ranked a two out of ten. A mark was made on her list, and she moved on.

The manuscript was quite good, though a little rough in places. It centred around a small boy in the faery courts of Tir Na'Nog, who was a prince of the court, haughty, and yet sympathetic, and his trials at the hands of a man who wished to control the courts. While fantasy was currently en vogue, this story had the feel of longevity. Sarah began to be excited, this might be a gem.

Sarah could almost visualize this main character, who was not named (something that would have to be remedied to provide a more sympathetic protagonist). He had wild, bright blonde hair, and enthralling eyes, one blue, one bright green. Sarah had a strange feeling in the back of her mind that he was familiar to her, and yet she could not place him.

She loved the chapter of this rather long (something that might have to be fixed to appeal more strongly to the child demographic that they would aim at) that dealt with a gypsy telling the boy's future to him, as he sat arrogantly before her, and yet enthralled. Sarah spoke the worlds out loud to herself, "The way forward, is sometimes the way back. Quite often, it seems like we're not getting anywhere, when in fact we are."

These words struck a chord with her, like she had heard them somewhere before, and yet, again, she couldn't quite place it.

She was jolted out of her reading by the persistent ring of her telephone. Her private line, and it looked to be from her family. Smiling, she picked up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Sarah? Hi, it's Karen." Sarah smiled at the sound of her step-mother's voice. They had not gotten along in her teenage years, with Sarah still feeling the loss of her mother, and the jealousy over no longer having the full attention of her father. Since she was about sixteen, Karen, however, had become a very good friend to Sarah.

"Hi Karen! I haven't spoken to you in awhile. How's Dad and the boys? How are things for you at work?" Sarah reclined in her chair, settling in for a nice chat.

"Oh, everyone's the same. Toby has decided he hates school, but I'm sure that will pass as soon as they move on from this current spelling quiz. Aaron should say his first words any day. Your Dad is great, he's thinking about retirement, but I doubt it will ever happen. Work is fine, can't complain. How are you doing honey? Amy treating you well? How about work? Read anything interesting?"

They chatted for awhile longer before Karen mentioned to Sarah that they had found a box of her old things from when she was younger, and that Karen would bring it to her apartment next time she was in the city.

"Thanks Karen, give me a shout, and we'll go shopping and for lunch."

"Sounds wonderful, get away from all of these men that I live with. We still miss you, Toby always says you tell the best bedtime stories. I would feel insulted, but I think I agree." Karen said with a laugh in her voice.

"Why thank you. I'll let you go, as I probably should get back to work here. Like I said, give me a call. Bye Karen." Sarah hung up, and smiled at the contact with her family.

Her mother had been in and out of her life, but she was more like a big kid than anything. Sarah didn't begrudge her anymore for leaving. Her mother was not incredibly cut out to be a mother, as she was more of a dreamer. Karen had been the one to be there for when she was sick, when she struggled with school, her first crush, everything. Sarah also doted on her little brothers, especially Toby who she had a special affinity with.

She decided it was time for lunch, and forgot about the manuscript she had been reading so avidly just moments before.

The girl found herself in a dream-like masquerade of exquisitely-dressed other-worldy dancers, looking for something… someone. And then she saw him, the Goblin King. Just as quickly, he disappeared from her sight. He watched though, as she stumbled around, being silently mocked by the dancers.

She spotted him, dancing with beautiful women, who he left to come and lead her in a dance.

"As the world falls down… As the world falls down…"

Sarah woke up as the clock chimed, both in her dream, and in the apartment's hallway. She did not even bother to sit up this time, as these dreams seemed to be happening more and more, and instead rolled over to scream softly into her pillow at the frustration of it.