Darkness. That was all Finn could see. Panic fluttered around inside of his chest and his poor, weak heart drummed up against his ribs like a caged bird. Why is everything dark? Did he somehow go blind? Did the sun abandon him in his time of need!? But he needed to be strong…he'd come too far, endured too much to just give up now!
This sudden and astonishing conviction broke open Finn's heart-of-hearts and a waterfall of courage poured into him. He had never felt this way before in his entire eighteen years of existence and he loved it. He loved it so much in fact, he even forgot why he had been scared. So, with a new and intoxicatingly-optimistic outlook on his mysterious situation, Finn strode forward into the darkness ahead. He kept on walking forwards at a very brisk pace, which was very unusual for him and would have made his parents faint if they had been around to see it. Especially his mother, who had tried to get Finn to walk faster than a turtle-like crawl for years. Finn was so proud of himself.
But all of this changed when, out of nowhere, something cold and hard slapped up against the front of his delicate calves. This caused his graceful stride to come to an unceremoniously abrupt halt. However, his upper torso didn't get the memo and it tried to continue on, which made Finn double over whatever it was he had walked into. His face became smushed up against something leathery and old-smelling. A thin wail streamed through his nose, as he was irritated that his confident stride had just been so rudely interrupted (and also because the old-smell made him think of his Grandparents, whom he disliked since they refused to stay in their graves). He attempted to push himself upright and off what he'd fallen on, however his body was still under the strengthening effects of super-confidence so he pushed off too hard and accidentally flung himself backwards a good eight feet.
He landed without any beauty whatsoever, with his long legs sprawled at crazy angles and his hair a shadow of the hairstyle it once was. He was awarded 25 points for distance and 10 points for enthusiasm but gained nothing in all other categories. The silken towel wrapped around his waist sadly remained as unrevealing as ever, even when Finn regained enough sense to bring his wayward limbs back to some kind of order and sit upright.
"Ouch…that was right painful…Who knew the floor could hurt so bad?" Finn whimpered. His head throbbed where it'd smacked the floor and his eyes began to water again. Wait…his eyes…
"Jesus Christ," came a snide voice from somewhere in the back of Finn's head, "I know you have memory issues, but…really, Finn?"
"Ah-!" Finn said in surprise. "You again! The voice..."
"Yeah, it's me. What's up?"
"W-what's up? Uh…" Finn started to sweat; he hated pop quizzes. "I, uh, I don't know…what's up…I—"
"Well," The Voice said, its tone very slithery, "why don't you OPEN YOUR EYES and find out, huh?"
And Finn did just that. He opened his eyes. They had been closed the whole time since he'd entered into the castle. He'd just forgotten that he'd closed them.
Finn's weepy orbs twitched around in his head as he scanned the room he had blindly entered, looking for what was up. As his eyes moved to the ceiling, a huge smile burst onto his face and he extended one willow-like arm towards it, pointing.
"OH! OH! A whirly-thing! That's what's up!" He said, his tone frothing over with joy (and slight hysteria) at solving The Voice's puzzle.
"A what?" The Voice asked, too disturbed by Finn's sudden mood change to be sardonic.
"You know…" Finn mumbled, a lost-puppy look squirming across his face which combined with his hysteric smile to form a profoundly unsettling image, "a whirly-thing…like what helicopters use as hats."
"…Uh, yeah, sure…" The Voice responded after a few moments of quiet terror. "Uh…anyways, Finn…how about you get up from the floor and actually, like, check out this place? Because it feels like it's been about a year and 40 days since you've accomplished any progress in finding out where you are…"
Blank confusion thankfully wiped Finn's harrowing expression from his face. "What? I've been here for a year? How come I haven't di—"
"NO!" The Voice forcefully shouted before Finn could ask another question, making Finn's ears itch slightly. "I am NOT playing 20 Questions with you again. You've wasted enough time messing about already. Now GET UP."
In fear of being yelled at again, Finn obeyed The Voice and wildly scrambled to his feet. Looking around, he saw that he was in what looked like a medieval hotel room. In front of him was a low, dark-wooded cabinet. On it sat two lonesome looking urns (the larger one filled with wilting vines) and an old-fashioned television. He reached out to touch the TV but The Voice made an unpleasant growling noise so he stopped.
When he turned away from the cabinet his attention was immediately drawn to a huge leather armchair, which he approached slowly and with the caution of someone who can't easily distinguish inanimate and animate objects very well.
"Wow, this's the largest chair I've ever seen!" He said in a voice inappropriately loud for someone who had presumably been kidnapped and was now inside what was very likely his captor's house. The Voice muttered something that sounded rude but Finn just shrugged it off, thinking that The Voice might be jealous because it couldn't sit in chairs like Finn could. In reality, The Voice had merely pointed out that the chair was probably what Finn had tumbled into before, since all other pieces of furniture around him were neatly tucked against the room's walls.
Two minutes later, Finn was still staring at the chair.
Seething with impatience, The Voice snapped, "Oh, for God's sakes, It's just a bloody chair, not a piece of art! Look, there's a whole other section to this room you haven't even SEEN yet, just over there to your right, and it looks 100 times more interesting than where you are now. Know why? Because there's a DOOR. What do doors mean? PROGRESS."
Flashbacks to the previous chapter at the mention of "door" made Finn sweat a bit, rousing him from his chair-trance. He swivelled his head to the right, squinting, looking very much like a deer again.
"Oh…yeah," he whispered, then he said louder: "Should I go through it? Like how I did with the other one?"
"Yes," The Voice darkly breathed with a pained tone, "but not with your eyes closed this time."
Finn took several deep, gasping breaths as if he'd been running for miles in preparation for more walking and he felt The Voice cringe inside his head (Finn still didn't understand if The Voice was actually IN his head or in his brain).
"Wow, every second is a new, exciting adventure, isn't it?" The Voice hissed. "Why do you have to drive me to the edge of a heart attack every time you do ANYTHING, Finn? No—Never mind. Just go. One foot in front of the other. March."
Finn let go of the air he'd been sucking into his lungs in a slow whoosh, but moved himself across the room without further interruption. A small set of stairs (!) divided the two halves of the room. Finn paused, the mere image of the stairs causing his to seize up, but he gritted his teeth as best he could and galloped up them. He took a moment to breathe after his feet touched the landing, sweat dripping off his forehead and his hair softly frizzing from the heat that now radiated from his bare skin. He gazed about, taking in his surroundings. A tall grandfather clock stood directly to his left. He couldn't tell what time it was, but he could hear its ticking clearly. Just beyond it, a large painting of an old woman was hung on the wall. Finn thought about looking at it more closely, then thought better of it; The Voice really wanted him to go to the new door, and he doubted it'd like him admiring art at this time. He made an effort to ignore everything except the new door (which was really, really hard since a huge four-poster bed was in this side of the room too and Finn felt close to death from exhaustion), padded to it, and reached for the handle…
…But something made him freeze. No, he hadn't forgotten how to open a door again. He didn't have another abstract thought. He had just…heard something. Something behind him. Something in the room with him. Fearfully, he spun to face it. A short gasp escaped his mouth when he laid eyes on the source of the noise.
A dead, monotone voice broke the silence of the room and sent icy shards through Finn's heart.
"I've gathered some clothes for you…"
