Labyrinth belongs to (c) Jim Henson

Chapter 1: Beep

Toby sat there, eyes wide, watching the black monitor with the white numbers, multi-colored lines tracking across the screen.

Beep.

He cringed at the familiar metallic sound, watching his mother as she stood looking somewhat discouraged in the back corner, using false plastic nails to punch in numbers on her cell phone.

His father was pacing, squeezing his hands behind his back. The doctor would have good news, right? There wouldn't be any worries, right? Once the tests came back… once the tests came back everything would be okay.

Beep.

Yet Toby didn't let his eyes fall off of his sister, who was laying in the bed, her arms placed over her chest in a way that wasn't natural in sleep. Her face was drawn, pale, and tubes of all sorts and sizes came out of her mouth, her arms, her side… Toby didn't want to think about it too much, but his eyes hurt from his refusal to blink.

"Who do you want me to call now?" Toby's mother asked his father, who paused in his steps to rub his nose.

Beep.

"I should call Linda," he muttered, drawing his eyes up to his second wife, knowing that he would have to.

"Why? Just because she's her mother, doesn't mean she'll care about the situation. She walked out on you Robert, and she left her with you, she won't care."

Toby and Sarah's father sighed, and he looked up at Irene. "Give me the phone, wouldn't you like to know if Toby was in a car accident even if you hated me?"

Beep.

Her lips pursed and she shoved the phone in his open palm before huffing and leaving the room, claiming a need to visit the lady's room.

"You'll be okay Toby?" his father asked, dark circles forming under his eyes as he spoke.

Beep.

"Yeah," he muttered as his father left to make the call.

When both were gone, Toby made his way to the white bed, taking his sister's bare hand in his. He could feel scrapes on her palm from where she must have griped the steering wheel… or maybe when she fell on the ground amidst shards of glass she cut herself…

Beep.

He didn't want to think about it. Making sure no one was listening, he whispered to her, "Sarah… don't die, please." Tears threatened to spill over, and he quickly wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeve.

"Please Sarah, what can I-" Toby was interrupted by the doctor who came in with his father behind him.

Beep.

"It's not looking good… she's got important disks that have been fractured and broken in her neck, based on the MRI I don't think I can tell if she has brain damage yet."

"Will she wake up?" her father asked, his voice dead.

Beep.

"Perhaps, but she won't be the same. If she has a brain injury, she'll either be paralyzed in places or lose a part of her senses. Once the brain wave test can be accomplished, we'll determine if she will be able to recognize you or even regain consciousness. I'm sorry sir, but it's the best we can do."

"It wasn't even her fault…" he whispered.

Beep.

"The driver who hit her is dead, if that gives you any consolation. He had a 0.23% BAC." The doctor with his blank eyes looked at Toby. "Is that your sister?"

Toby nodded weakly.

"Don't drink and drive, kid," was his only response before he left them alone.

"I-I'm going to try Linda again," Sarah's father left the room after one glance at his daughter and closed the door with a light click.

Beep.

Toby let some of his tears go and he wiped them up quickly with his sweatshirt sleeves. It was in the middle of winter, January 2nd when his sister was hit, due to some crazy drunk on New Years day in New York… an unfortunately typical story.

"But why Sarah?" Toby had to ask, his eyes filling with tears again. "She's not even out of her twenties."

Beep.

With a sudden frustration, Toby stood up and let her hand fall gracefully back onto the sheet before slamming his fist into the wall. "It's not fair! It's just not fair!" His mother came in at the noise and gasped.

"Toby what the heck do you think you're doing!" She came over and checked his hand for any bruises and focused a frown at him. "That is no way to let go of your frustration. I know it's not fair, Sarah is a good girl and she didn't deserve this. Why don't you go back home with Dad and think things out, I'll stay here for a while."

Beep.

"Okay," he whispered, taking a second glance at his pale and bloody sister before forcing himself out of the deadly white room.

On the way home, both men said nothing. Toby was at the ripe age of seventeen, and he knew anything he'd say to his father right now wouldn't help either of them. That was Irene's job.

His father backed into the house and told Toby he was going to try and call Linda again. It seemed she wasn't answering her cell phone, and he had hoped that it was just a signal problem in the hospital.

Toby walked upstairs and found himself walking into Sarah's childhood room.

Sarah had pretty much left her room exactly how she did at eighteen, with a completely stuffed bookcase, some childhood toys about, and her canopied bed with white sheets. Most of her toys that he remembered her having at fifteen were thrown in a box and packed one day for a reason he didn't exactly understand.

He found his way to her bed and sat on it, hearing the familiar mattress squeak with the addition of his weight. Every time he thought about Sarah, he just kept thinking, it isn't fair.

When he looked up from his knees, her bookcase was right across from him, almost comically unorganized, with print-outs of plays and poems sticking out in random spots. Most of the books were somewhat organized, but the titles were very worn and most were hardbound. Her paperbacks were more or less destroyed, dog-eared pages and ripped covers showing rather than destruction the love that his sister had given each one of them.

Yet, a small, red, leather-bound book caught his eye, which was resting behind a few papers on the bottom shelf. The Labyrinth, curiously enough, had no author's name. He opened it and found his sister's name written on the top right corner of the first page, as was her mark on each of her books.

He smiled seeing it, and let his finger trace over the indents the blue pen had made. She was much younger when she had written this, her handwriting had improved since then.

He flipped through a few pages and decided to stop on the one dog-eared page in the book. "I wish the goblins would come and take you away. Right now." It was the underlined passage in red.

Toby cocked his head, he hadn't ever heard his sister repeat this line. It was very frequent of her to waltz around the house, reciting poetry and favorite passages from the favorites in her bursting collection of stories and plays.

But goblins taking someone away? There had to be some sort of literary reason for her to underline it, but he couldn't figure it out. Perhaps saying it aloud… "I wish the goblins would come and take you away. Right now."

Nothing of consequence happened, so Toby merely shrugged and was about to put the small book down again when he heard a sudden pecking at the window.

Toby looked up to see the eery white face of a barn owl, its black eyes piercing through the frosty glass. It pecked again, a little more fiercely and Toby went over to look at it. "An owl… what does it want?"

The owl pointedly pointed its beak towards the window's hatch, as if it knew how to get in, and then fiercely poked again.

Forever curious, Toby opened the window and the owl flew in with an almost etherial grace, landing perfectly atop Sarah's mattress. In an instant, the owl suddenly seemed to explode in glitter and a black suited man leaned on the edge of Toby's sister's bed.

Jareth the Goblin King opened his mismatched eyes and grinned. "Who would you like me to take away, Toby? You seemed to have left that little detail out." Smirking wickedly, he sat up and loomed over Toby, still grinning. "You seem a bit older since I've last seen you… huh? I had thought a couple of earth years had passed."

"W- wha- what do you mean?" Toby demanded in a stutter, taking a few steps backward in fear.

"Huh, it must be Sarah's mother who gave her all that spunk." He looked around her room a bit and smiled. "She didn't cower when she first saw me." He raised his eyebrow above his blue eye and smiled. "So tell me Toby, how old are you now?"

Toby gulped and suddenly found himself surprised. "You know my name?"

"I know the names of every child I ever lay hands on Toby."

"What the? Wh- who are you?" Sudden features of the man, such as a certain smell and his nightmarish tone were starting to become familiar the more he sat there.

"Ah, it seems some of us do forget. I am Jareth, the Goblin King," he announced with a dip of his gloved hand. "I'm sure your sister remembers me, she was fifteen when she wished you away." A glint of excitement flashed in his eyes. "Are you here to revenge her for doing such a thing to you Toby?" He walked towards him, smirking as he circled the boy's lanky frame.

"She wished you away, now you have the power to wish her away, should you wish…"

"I- I don't know."

"What has she done to upset you Toby? I can tell she's made you somewhat angry? Frustrated for some reason?" The Goblin King probed, taking a good look at Toby and realizing he had been apart from the Aboveworld for too long.

"What makes you think that?" Toby asked, stepping back and regaining some of his courage. "And my sister wouldn't have wished me away, why would she have done that?"

The Goblin King laughed, "ah, so she has left my name out of her stories, huh? Well Toby, imagine that you are young and her father has decided to go on a date with her step-mother who she absolutely despises," his tongue seemed to drip acid as he said the word. "So she's left here with a crying baby brother to take care of all night, and she just doesn't think its very fair." Toby gulped at the word. "So she carelessly wishes her brother away to me."

It seemed very possible to Toby, and it unsettled his stomach to hear such words dancing around the room. "So she was careless? I mean, if you claim she was fifteen… I'm almost seventeen now. Obviously she was just frustrated. And you gave me right back, right?" Toby felt absolutely ridiculous saying this out loud, was he believing what he was saying?

"Ha!" the Goblin King sniggered. "No, Toby, she had to set up a deal with me to get you back…" A crystal materialized before Toby's eyes in the man's gloved hand. "Would you like to make a similar deal?"

"Not on my life Goblin King," he asserted with a glare in his eyes.

"Ah, but you see, you spoke the words…" The Goblin King let his glove glide over the wood bed frame and then turned to glare mischievously at Toby. "Lets see where your sister is now, why don't we?"

"Please-" but already the Goblin King had grasped the youth's hand and in a blink, he was already back in the hospital "-don't." He whispered, opening his eyes to see his sister, pale and broken in the white bed before them.

Beep.