The verb "to give" was considered obscene,

and was scrawled on lavatory walls. The verb

"to love" connoted nothing but desire.

-- A.C.H. Smith, Labyrinth

The chill night air hit Sarah in the face as she stepped out onto the sidewalk. She pulled her coat tighter around herself and started down the street with her head tucked down against the wind. Winter in Manhattan was like living in a Christmas snow globe.

She didn't know where she was going when she left her apartment, not that it really mattered; she just had to get out, go somewhere, anywhere that provided some form of human contact, no matter how remote. The thought of sitting alone in her little two bedroom apartment, watching T.V. with the lights off and not really aware of it when the programs changed because she hadn't actually been watching it at all, made her want to slit her wrists. Sarah couldn't even remember the last time she had finished a book, or listened to a song all the way through, or dropped a quarter in the cup of the beggar on the corner. She knew that she did these things, but there were void places in her mind where these mundane memories should have been.

She had just hung up the phone not twenty minutes before. It was Friday, and every Friday she received Toby's weekly obligatory phone call. He was eleven now, and eleven year old boys were interested in things like bicycles and skateboards and how many live worms they could fit into a single pocket. Sarah understood this, but what she could not understand was why she could spend fifteen minutes on the phone with her little brother and never hear about any of these things. She did not know the name of a single one of his friends, or what he liked to do on the weekend, or how many times he had been sent to the principal's office. She knew that he had a dog, and that the dog's name was Jake only because she had once heard her stepmother in the background yelling at the animal for barking.

Toby did not exist for her anymore. He was not part her life, not really, just as she supposed she was no longer part of his life. If she ever had been at all. Her stepmother was responsible, Sarah knew that without being told, and the woman probably had her reasons, but that didn't make it right.

It wasn't fair, not one bit, but that's the way it was.

She walked into the corner grocery. She knew the boy behind the counter, so she smiled at him.

"Hey, Miss Williams," he said, sounding bored.

"Hello, Sam," She said. "Have you got your essay done for Monday?"

She could see him consider lying about it and felt like laughing. She was pleasantly surprised when he told her the truth. "Not yet."

Sarah just nodded and turned down the isle near the coolers to get milk.

She taught English at the local high school to mostly stupid children with no desire to learn. Sometimes, rarely, she would encounter a student with above average intelligence and a deep desire to know things. Samuel Windham was one of the intelligent ones; his only problem was that he firmly believed that he already knew everything. In Sarah's opinion, that put him right down there with the lowest of whining, puling idiots.

She hated her job, but so did more than seventy-five percent of the human population, and besides, it paid the bills.

Sarah's true passion was story telling. She loved to write, and had published several short stories in fantasy magazines under the pseudonym Anna Williams, including one about a girl lost in a maze trying to reach a castle and save her baby brother from wicked goblins. She had extended that one into a novel of some two hundred pages, but had so far been unable to sell it to a publisher. It was 'too dark', It didn't make sense. Sarah's favorite one was 'it lacks a sympathetic protagonist.' She'd sat down and had a good hard laugh when she read that, then put the refusal slip in a drawer with every intention of having it framed.

"I don't know why this book is such a big deal, Sarah," Laura, her friend and editor had commented after the manuscript had been turned down for the fifty-eighth time. "Adults won't read it, and it would give kids nightmares. Just do what every other author does; put it away somewhere and forget it. Start something new."

Sarah had put it in a new envelope that very day and mailed it off again. Somebody would take it eventually. How many times had the Wizard of Oz been refused before L. Frank Baum finally found a publisher? And now it was part of American pop culture. Every kid over five knew the words to We're off to see the Wizard. Not that Sarah's story about the Labyrinth would ever compete with The Wizard of Oz. She knew it wouldn't, but it was things like that that kept aspiring writers going after the fifty-eighth refusal slip.

Laura was right about one thing though. It was ten years later and Sarah was still having nightmares. Nightmares where she was lost in the very depths of the Labyrinth, or falling down a dark tunnel where unseen hands grabbed her, and pinched her, and laughed when she screamed. But the worst dreams were the ones where she could feel the Goblin King lurking just beyond the shadows, and knew that he watched her, that he always had. She woke from those dreams shaking, drenched in sweat, and feeling violated.

Sarah had just picked up two cans of cat food and turned to go to the register when two men came into the store carrying guns.

"Nobody fucking move!" the first one, a small untidy looking man with a Glock shouted. He pointed the gun at Sam as the second man entered the store behind him. "Nobody move, and nobody has to get hurt."

The second man, much taller than the first with a dim, semi-retarded grin on his face, promptly made him a liar by shooting a young man in a leather coat who had dropped his six-pack of beer.

"Shit!" screamed the first robber. "God fucking dammit Alan!"

"Sorry, Len," the large man said. He did not sound sorry.

Sam had gone very still with Len's gun pointed at his chest. His eyes flicked to Sarah, then nervously back to the gunman. What the hell did he expect her to do about it? Being a teacher made her an authority figure, she knew that, but if these two whack-jobs had been answerable to figures of authority, they wouldn't have been robbing a Quick Mart at gun point, now would they?

"Look man," Sam said, his voice shaking, "Take whatever you want, alright? Take everything. Just don't—"

"Shut up," Len snarled, jabbing the gun at him. "Put the money in a bag."

"Wh—What?"

"Put the fucking money in a bag!"

Sam opened the register and started emptying the cash into a paper sack as quickly as he could, with his hands shaking like they were going to rip free and run away all on their own.

Breaking out of her paralysis, Sarah crouched down in the isle and looked around for a place to hide. There was a chip rack a couple of isles down, but it didn't look like it would make much of a hiding place, even if the gunmen were as dim as cockroaches.

"Hurry the fuck up!" Len yelled at Sam, who yelped and looked like he was going to faint. "Fine, fine, give me the goddamn bag already. Jesus."

"Hey Len," Alan said.

Sarah froze, her heart going so fast it felt like her chest was going to explode. Alan was looking at her intently. Apparently he had thought that the kid with the leather jacket was the only customer in the store. Sarah didn't know what had alerted him to her presence, but she fervently prayed to whatever gods were listening that he would turn around and forget about her.

Instead, he raised his gun and pointed it at her. He fired, and Sarah gave a startled cry when the milk she had still been holding leaped out of her hand and smacked into the glass doors of the coolers, spraying milk from a bullet hole.

"For Christ's sake, Alan, what?" Len yelled.

"There's a lady."

"That's great. Come on, I got the money. Let's get the fuck outta here."

"Let me take just one more shot," Alan said, sounding morbidly like a kid at a carnival shooting at plastic ducks with an air rifle.

Sarah tried to make herself move, but she couldn't. She was staring directly into Alan's small blue eyes, and there was nothing there for her to relate to.

"No, man, come on, lets get outta here before the cops come." Len grabbed the paper bag with the money and started for the door.

Then Alan took his shot and Sarah slowly fell back against an isle of candy. Distantly, she heard the chime of the bells over the door and knew that they were gone. Somewhere Sam was saying "Oh man, oh man," over and over in a small childlike voice. Sarah was surprised that it didn't hurt. She'd always thought that being shot would hurt, but she couldn't really feel anything, except something wet soaking into her clothes.

She looked down and saw blood coming out of a hole in her stomach in little pulsing gushes. Her jeans were a deep maroon color, which was strange because Sarah would never wear something as tacky as maroon jeans, and the floor around her was turning red as well, a bright garish color under the florescent lights.

"Miss Williams?" Sam called. "Are you okay?"

"I think I'm dying," she said serenely, but Sam didn't hear her. He called again, but she wasn't listening anymore.

She sighed and touched the bloody fabric of her sweater and rubbed it between her fingers. It was true what all the novels said, blood did smell like pennies, at least, when there was this much of it, it did.

"Jareth," She whispered, for no reason that she could think of except in that moment, she desperately wanted to see him. "Jareth," she said again, in a whisper this time, then slid to lay down on the cold tiles and go to sleep.

Just before she lost consciousness, she could swear she smelled burned sugar and heard the thrumming vibration of music.