The platforms leveled out to become a black path that sloped downwards, illuminated by the now bright cube room light above. Sarah, however, could not stop rolling, and she maintained her downward momentum until she finally banged into a purple-painted wooden door, which swung inward upon impact. With all her rolling, she was never able to figure out what manner of room she had rolled into, but when she was finally able to come to her senses, she was in some kind of bedroom.
A bedroom she recognized to be her new apartment bedroom.
One of the reasons she had chosen the apartment to begin with was because of the bedroom, which reminded her a lot of the bedroom she had when she lived with Toby, her father, and her stepmother. The bed she had gotten for the room was an old-fashioned one, bought off eBay. It was a fourposter bed with marble fairy statuettes on each post, with silken sheets and a fluffy pillow.
All over this version of the room, however, were boxes, which she recognized to be the many boxes she had hauled in with her when she initially moved in…but the odd thing was that there were more boxes here than she remembered bringing, and they were stacked at the outer edges of the room, with a strange, throne-like arrangement of six boxes upon the bed.
She curiously walked over to the vanity mirror…but she gasped aloud at what she saw.
She saw herself, but her outfit was different.
It was a Scullery Maid's dress.
Stepping away, and then looking down at herself, she saw that she was now wearing the dress.
It was then that the topmost box on the bed began to rumble and shake, as if something inside it was trying to get out.
Taking two slow, cautious steps toward it, the box suddenly stopped shaking, and went quiet.
She then turned behind to look upon the wall behind her, hoping to see the door she burst through.
But it was gone.
And then, from behind her…
"SPOILED PRINCESS!"
Sarah's eyes widened. The scolding old voice sounded exactly like the old crone, Miss Caine, who ran the neighborhood library. The woman who had wished her back into this new labyrinth.
Sarah spun around…and a piece of soft white cloth struck her right in the face.
Looking down, she saw that she had been struck in the face by what looked like a white cloth bonnet.
But when she looked back up to the bed, and the box arrangement, she saw that the short, ugly old crone with the mottled skin and the gnarled nose wasn't Miss Caine at all.
It was a goblin.
And once again, this goblin spoke in Miss Caine's exact voice as she fired a long, taloned finger down upon the bonnet on the floor. "Put…that…on!"
Sarah looked down upon the bonnet, feeling compelled to pick it up.
And in the next moment, she did…but then, she looked back up to the goblin.
"No." she calmly replied.
"SPOILED PRINCESS!" The goblin harshly repeated. "Clean up my domain at once! This room is FILTHY! You have FAR TOO MANY BOXES here, Princess, and not a glass slipper in any one of them!"
Sarah looked around her general area, and then nodded. "You're right. I do have far too many boxes." She then looked back to the goblin. "How do I know which ones are really mine?"
"Hmph! They're ALL yours, blockhead!" The goblin scolded.
"You're really Miss Caine, aren't you?" Sarah deduced. "I've had goblins around me the whole time…Jareth set me up, didn't he?"
"PUT THAT BONNET ON AND CLEAN THESE BOXES!" The goblin again demanded.
"Or else…? What?" Sarah challenged.
The goblin leaned threateningly towards Sarah. "Or I will banish you from my kingdom entirely! I'll leave you to grow…fat…and…ugly!"
Sarah thought she'd feel a little different again at this condemnation, but aside from the dress change, her figure remained. Still…the threat stung, and she knew it might not be an idle one. Sarah also remembered one part of that statement, having heard it from Miss Caine in the library.
I will banish you from my kingdom entirely.
It seemed even more likely now that Sarah had been set up. That Miss Caine was actually a goblin in disguise, waiting for the right moment to condemn the champion who had defeated her King.
"You're already looking far too plain to be a Princess, impudent one!" The goblin then scolded, gesturing towards the mirror of the vanity with a gnarled cane.
Sarah had to look…and sure enough, she saw that every last bit of makeup she had on her face was gone. She did indeed look and feel plain now. Unkempt. Ugly.
But she knew it was all a mind game, and she wasn't about to fall for it. She frowned back up to the goblin.
"Now PUT THAT BONNET ON AND CLEAN THESE BOXES!" The goblin crone once again asserted, now pointing her cane to Sarah. "You're awful big on laziness, brat!"
With a defiant face, Sarah noticed that one corner of the room had a thicker array of boxes, and she moved to this set of boxes to begin pulling them all away in frustration. "I'd sooner bury myself in these boxes!" She cried out.
"What th…! Hey! You're making a mess!" The goblin then protested. "Those are your precious things!"
Sure enough, with every box cast aside from this area, Sarah's most closely-held and most important articles spilled out of these boxes as she threw them away from the corner. Sarah did not, however, cast her eyes towards them. She just kept removing boxes large and small.
Her suspicions were right on target. When enough of the boxes were pulled away, a spiral staircase leading downward was revealed. Sarah immediately planted her bare feet at the top stair and began stepping downward as fast as she could. The area below looked dark.
Candles around the room, however, came alive as Sarah entered the room below. The only things in this particular room were what looked to be a wooden toy chest, and a stone wall with several small square impressions upon it. There was no other way out of the room. The only other option was back up, but that meant confronting the goblin again, and that, clearly, was not an option.
The only possible option that remained, therefore, was to open the toy chest.
Looking inside, she saw that it was empty, save for a group of colored wooden blocks, very much like those a child would play with. Pulling one of the blocks, she saw that there were no letters of the alphabet on these blocks.
There were numbers.
When she looked back up at the wall, she saw that some of the impressions now had similar number blocks in them. There were nine impressions running across, and nine running down.
It was the first row, however, that had block installments. Looking close at the blocks revealed that they had numbers…and when she went back to the toy chest and opened it to look at the other blocks, she saw that she had the remaining blocks necessary to fill the row. Examining the numbers, she saw that the blocks on the wall, and the blocks in the toy chest, could form an arrangement of numbers from 1 to 9.
As she had grown older, she had developed a spare-time fascination with the puzzle that now presented itself to her, here, in the labyrinth.
It was a Sudoku puzzle.
She knew how this worked. Arrange the numbers from 1 to 9 in a row, filling the empty spaces with the unused numbers in the toy chest. She also noticed, upon opening the toy chest, that the blocks were placed upon a wide silken lavender cloth. Pulling this cloth revealed that it was actually a bag. No doubt to hold the blocks.
Placing the blocks in the bag, Sarah heard the harsh voice of the goblin in the room above.
"Oh! Silly me! I completely forgot I had a basement! We'll just toss your useless past down there and lock you in! And no supper for you tonight!"
Boxes were now being tossed down the spiral staircase, practically spilling down and rolling into the room as Sarah began working on the Wall of Numbers. She needed to go back and forth upon the damp, musty floor of the room…in bare feet…and reopen the toy chest to grab a new set of numbers. Nothing on the wall showed any indication that she was right or wrong. It just seemed entirely logical that the Sudoku method would get her through this.
More boxes spilled down, some of the boxes breaking open to reveal clothes, plush toys, books, pulled posters from her old room, jewelry, costumes, clothes...it was all beginning to fill the room as she worked back and forth between the immovable toy chest and the Wall of Numbers.
She found herself having to shove boxes aside as she made her way to the last row of numbers, after having rearranged several blocks to make sure they corresponded to the rules of the Sudoku game. As it seemed like the multitude of boxes were about to swallow her whole, the last block had been placed on a perfect Sudoku arrangement, and the entire wall caved in. The blocks of the black brick wall formed the beginning of a road as Sarah collapsed forward from being pressed against the wall by all those boxes.
One of the boxes that had fallen near Sarah…one which she remembered she had placed all her footwear…had split open. All but one pair of shoes looked broken and unusable.
And this pair of shoes were silver in color.
Sarah remembered these shoes. After having read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for the first time, she had asked her father for a pair of silver-colored shoes of her own so she could envision herself as Dorothy Gale. Her father complied with that request on Christmas Day of that year.
But she was only eleven years old at the time. She never imagined these shoes could fit her now.
But they did.
Sarah rose to her feet, after putting the shoes on, and began walking along the black brick road. After a few minutes of walking, a sun rose in the distance, and revealed a countryside. The black bricks, in the light, were also revealed to be yellow in color.
She expected to see munchkins come out of bushes, but she was all alone.
At least, for the moment.
With no other option, she began to follow along the road of yellow bricks, straightening out her Scullery Maid's dress, which she began to hate.
But there was no denying the fact that the Goblin King was in control this time.
He still had power over her, and he was clearly flaunting it.