Disclaimer: Labyrinth is not mine.
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Forever Upon A Time
by Rayac
Prologue
Sarah Williams' twentieth birthday never came.
Her last day as a teenager had started normally enough. She had knocked her unsounded alarm clock off the nightstand at precisely 7:08 A.M., charred her cinnamon toast to match her hair, and watched her 7:35 bus to campus tear off down the road seconds before she reached the stop. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Perhaps it should be explained that Sarah William's definition of 'normal' was a bit skewed.
It hadn't always been that way; Sarah had for some time lived an average life. She had a roof over her head, hot meals on the table, and a family that abused her just enough to prove that they were the authority figures in the household.
Like many girls her age, Sarah had created an escape; a passion for the fantastical which she desperately clung to when she had no place else to go. It really should have come as no surprise to her father and stepmother if they had cared to consider the need. One great thing about the mythical was that you could never be judged or ignored by creations of your own imagination.
And so she let the obsession grow, eventually leading her to act out the fairytales in the shelter of park trees and a bedroom lined with childish trinkets without consequence.
Until one stormy autumn night some four years ago.
Sarah, in a flash of petulance, had done the unthinkable; wish away her stepbrother to an entirely different world. Although she had crossed bogs, dodged reckless goblins, and kept her head on straight to save him from the villainous Goblin King, she had lost something else in the process; any chance that her life would ever be normal again. For when one has the ability to summon magical friends through a vanity mirror, who has time for schoolwork?
Time was such a precious thing. Sarah learned that lesson the hard way.
It began slowly, almost so slow that she shrugged it off as exhaustion. The morning after the Incident, (as she called it in her mind), time started playing tricks on the brunette. Clocks would repeat the same minute once or twice, or skip five minutes altogether. Once, Sarah listened in half-horror as her grandfather clock chimed thirty-six times during a family lunch at what should have been noon.
The worst part was that none of them seemed to notice. Nobody did, in fact. Certainly nobody in her world.
She knew enough to blame the problem on Underground magic.
She'd talked with her Labyrinth companions practically every week since the shifts started, but gathered little helpful information on her dilemma. Ludo, hulking and simple, had fawned over 'Sawah…time' as the period he was able to visit his raven-haired savior. Sir Didymus was more understandable, but his suggestion to attack the vile timepieces hadn't produced favorable results. She wasn't sure she'd ever attempt his other, primarily quest based, offers anytime soon. Hoggle was the most knowledgeable. Intently listening to Sarah backtrack through her entire journey, he couldn't help but grin during a few familiar recollections. But Sarah had noticed two frowns as well; one near her run in with the cleaners and the other during the final confrontation.
When she had pressed him about the queasy look he'd fronted, he tried to shake her off.
"'S probably nothing, missy. That rat Jareth just pulled some nasty tricks outta his sleeves…some I'd never ever seen before or since".
That was all she had to go on. Jareth.
Since she'd gladly choose hell or high-water over calling the conniving monarch, Sarah slipped into Time's charm, stubbornly determined to solve the problem on her own.
She had of course tried the direct approach; winding clocks herself when they skipped or turning them off altogether. Per Didymus' aforementioned suggestion, she had smashed all of the clocks in her English building during a particularly tiring third hour of her Victorian Lit seminar last semester. The college deans rewarded her accordingly. Time unfortunately continued its obstreperous leaps.
It was a distressing experience to say the least. When time leapt, her entire world leapt with it. Sarah couldn't begin the count the number of conversations she'd repeated in a ten minute span when those same ten minutes replayed over and over again.
Furthermore, time had a childish habit of repeating the moments she'd despised most, awkward fumbles of boys she had no interest in or the rants of her stepmother, and skipping over those she'd pined for. She couldn't remember most of her high school graduation even though she knew she'd lived through it. Her father's mantle photos were constant mocking reminders.
Sarah's life was, presumably, quite frustrating.
Over the years, the phenomenon only worsened. To Sarah's rising distress, repeat or skipped minutes became an hour, and an hour became two until she had trouble keeping up with where and when she was. To combat this, she had started carrying around pads of paper, jotting down blurts of time which fell out of place. In this manner, Sarah had attempted to keep her life in sync.
The notes didn't help enough.
Sarah's school friends quickly noticed something was up. Although they were impervious to Time's charm, they had been spelled early on by Sarah's zealous fantasies and dramatic flair. When she started to lose track of when she was, keeping the fantastic persona became more trying.
Even that afternoon, her co-worker and good friend had attempted to reignite the dreamer's spark.
"Come on Sarah, I know you've got to be excited. It's your twentieth tomorrow!" James Allen had goaded, "Aren't you a little bit curious about our grand plan?"
Sarah had given the boy a wan smile and a half-hearted nod of her head, letting him lead her on with hints and humoring him with wild guesses.
She already knew the plans.
Jumping back and forth through time had its small advantages; just not enough to lure Sarah into praising the phenomenon. She had never wanted psychic powers.
Considering all this, making it to an eight o'clock class on her last morning as a teenager, already an impressive task, would have been a superhuman feat for the dreamer. As Sarah was neither superhuman nor lucky, she had slipped into class a full twenty minutes late and spent the entire day struggling to catch up; including the afternoon and partial evening she worked in the campus coffee shop alongside James serving hot beverages to impatient students.
And so Sarah found herself characteristically exhausted during her last evening as a teenager. She had unlocked her apartment door, shaking her umbrella angrily while shucking her rain boots into the hall closet. After setting the umbrella open to dry, she grabbed a black bound journal from a hallway table, and thumbed it dejectedly.
Per recent count, she had been running over twelve hours repeat a day. The marathons were one of the reasons she had begged James to get her a job at the coffee shop. Caffeine was a constant, but expensive, necessity.
After microwaving some leftover pasta, the girl had eaten alone in her room while she studied the significant patterns in her time keeping book for the current year.
January 1st, 1990: 8 hours
January 2nd, 1990: 8 hours, 4 minutes
January 3rd, 1990: 8 hours, 3 minutes
January 4th, 1990: 8 hours, 6 minutes.
January 5th, 1990: 8 hours, 7 minutes.
She had stopped there, aware of the rest of the numbers. It had become her nightly routine to stare at the tallies, in hope that the lead would fly off the page and she'd wake up from this never-ending hell.
Flipping to the last page of white paper, Sarah had focused on the whole hours.
January 1st, 1990: 8 hours
February 24th, 1990: 9 hours
March 11th, 1990: 10 hours
March 20th, 1990: 11 hours
March 26th, 1990: 12 hours
She penciled in the latest increase.
March 29th, 1990: 13 hours
She wished time would stop shifting so quickly. The tally was hurriedly increasing; just three days since she'd last marked.
Tossing the book unceremoniously to the floor, Sarah had doused her bedside lamp at eleven thirty-two, and eyed the glowing numbers on her alarm clock.
Only twenty-eight minutes until I'm twenty…The thought was a small relief.
Unfortunately, Sarah Williams never made it to her twentieth birthday.
At precisely 11:59 that evening, time stopped.
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A/N: I am devoting most of my time to finishing The Game, but wanted to post this short prologue on my second planned story (before I get too deep into writing it) to get some feedback. Worth continuing?