The Hedge Maze

As spring had come again, with the warmer weather, came flowers and the first flush of life. In a certain region, it was the custom to gather young women - usually drunk at bars and clubs, but not always. Sometimes one was taken from an ill-lit street, on the way home from a library, a bookstore, a cafe, a hookah lounge, or any other place open late and after dark. What happened to these women was never spoken of, but they were always found later, drugged and sleeping, near the place where they’d last been seen.

One such girl, a college student of mousey brown hair and glasses found herself, bound and kneeling, surrounded by shadowy figures standing in a semicircle behind her. Fog rolled in obscuring everything, even with their torches otherwise illuminating the night. Each figure held a cattle prod, and as the central figure stepped forward to cut her bonds, the prods flared to life with a threatening crackle of electricity. When she was up on her feet, the central figure returned to its place, only to close in again with the circle of others driving her back into the fog. She turned and ran the way they seemed to be driving her, only to stumble forward through the swirling mist and through the archway of a hedge wall positively covered with roses of every shade and color. The air was thick with the heavy scent of the flowers. She glanced back at the circle of figures and saw that they were not following her through the archway. It was only when she tried to return the way she came that their prods whirred to life.

With a soft sigh, she decided that she’d better go onward through the maze, for a maze it was. Once she was past the first corner, and away from the coweled figures, she patted herself down to see what she had on her, which wasn’t much. In fact, she was wearing a white wrap dress - with a robe-like belt, no undergarments or shoes, and nothing else. Only her glasses remained to her. Even her hair, normally braided back was loose over her shoulders. From elsewhere in the maze she could hear the sounds of running, screams, and cries of pleasure. She was not alone.