The Labyrinth: Turn Back Before It's Too Late

Author's Note: I've always loved to write and I've always loved The Labyrinth so it just made sense to write a fanfiction so I googled 'Labyrinth fanfiction' and found this amazing website and you all :) ... As I'm new please don't judge my writing too harshly but I wanted to give it my best go. I've read a couple of your stories so far and I look forward to reading more. And whilst I'm here I have to say... R.I.P David Bowie. You will be missed.

Disclaimer: I do not own The Labyrinth or any of the characters that appear from it in this tale. This is for non-profit fan day dreaming only!

Chapter 1: New Start

Sarah Williams lay wide awake despite it being the early hours of the morning. She thought she had heard the clock strike two though she couldn't be sure; her mind was too preoccupied with the nightmares that filled her head. Restless, she sat up looking around the shadows that shaped her new bedroom. She thought moving out would help her move on with her life but she knew she couldn't escape feeling like an outsider. She had always been a loner, even as a child she would prefer to play make believe than spend time with real people. As she grew older she used the theatre and acting as her form of escape. She had been labelled as dramatic, and by some as crazy. She was starting to wonder whether they were right. The nightmares came every night and they felt very real to Sarah. She once believed, and wished she still could believe, that she had been to a place called The Labyrinth.

When Sarah was fifteen years of age, she had read a play called The Labyrinth which she had fell in love with. At the time she had a strong attachment to it because she could fantasise about breaking free of the responsibility that she had to care for her half-brother Toby, which at the time she hadn't felt ready to do. Too often her father and stepmother had left her to look after him, something that deep down had scared her a little. She had wished that, like in the play, the Goblin King would take the child and return her freedom. She remembered the night she'd had enough and said the lines aloud where the protagonist of the play calls upon the Goblin King. Only she hadn't expected anything to happen, least of all for the King to appear and herself having to solve the Labyrinth, fighting through the maze, to save Toby.

Nevertheless, everyone told her that these events that were clear as day in her memory had never actually happened. She couldn't escape how real they felt, except after having spent time researching the Labyrinth and trying to find any sign of its being, she had begun to believe that everyone she spoke to was right. She had just dreamt it all. The only reference to that world was the play.

"It is your obsession with that play," her Dad had said to her when she was fifteen. "It's not natural to get that transfixed." Back then she had ignored her father's accusations and swore she had been to that magical place. Now at the age of twenty three her memory of that particular conversation with her father had faded, as had most of her memories, except that of the Labyrinth when it came back to haunt her in her sleep. Therefore she started to question her own sanity.

Frustrated for failing to make a new start for herself once again, she shouted out in rage as she threw her pillow across her room. It knocked a photograph off of her dresser, the glass smashing as it hit the floor.

Sarah could feel tears begin to roll down her cheeks. Many an attempt she had made before to stop the nightmares. She had really felt like moving out of her childhood home would make the ghosts disappear, however it seemed she was out of luck.

"Sarah? Are you okay?"

Suddenly aware of the hall light being switched on and Toby's face peering around the edge of her door, she quickly wiped the tears away before her brother could see.

"Yes, sorry Toby for waking you. I'm okay," she whispered. "Come here."

Sarah held her arms open and Toby shuffled across the room in the dim light and wrapped himself in her embrace. Although he was now almost ten, Sarah still saw him as the small, innocent boy he had been those eight years ago. She enjoyed taking care of him now. The Labyrinth, be it real or imaginary, had brought them closer together. She had asked if she could have him stay for her first night in her new apartment. Having not lived on her own before she was a little apprehensive.

"Was it those nightmares?" Toby asked curiously. "I've heard you talking in your sleep before. About a Goblin King."

Slightly taken aback by her brothers awareness, Sarah sat silent for a moment. She had never told him of The Labyrinth. Firstly because her parents had made her promise not to. More importantly it was because she didn't want to stir up any bad dreams for Toby; he deserved peaceful sleep. Wondering what to do she sat there stroking his head gently just like her father had done to her when she was small.

"Yes," she answered wanting to add more but stopping herself before she potentially opened a can of worms that she had avoided for so long.

"I remember his eyes," Toby yawned, snuggling into his sisters embrace even more. "They didn't match."

"What?" Sarah remarked, astonished. "You remember?"

However, there was no reply and Sarah became aware of Toby's breath deepening and becoming regular, he was asleep. Desperately she wanted to ask him about the King because it was those eyes which haunted her too. Sighing she let Toby's unconscious spell continue but vowed to herself that this was proof enough that it did happen, and that she would one day find her way back to The Labyrinth.