a place that feels eerily familiar to you, like you knew it in a dream + price !! 🫶
congrats on so many sillies following you!!!
1k game here
this one was kinda hard to think of something for but i hope you like it! also thank you ily <3 i love my sillies
2.2k of john price x single mom reader. this is kinda labyrinth inspired, except i've never see labyrinth so we're going on vibes alone. no smut! this is another one with very little of the character requested, but im gonna get better about not doing that i promise <3
You're gobsmacked as you stare at the scene in front of you.
The walls are painted almost aggressively bright, with rainbows crisscrossing over each other in every direction, random bursts of white you think are meant to be clouds. The colors make you squint a little, you didn't even know paint could be that bright.
It's almost painful to look at. It's also... familiar. You're not sure why, but it is.
You shake off the odd sense of déjà vu, refocusing on your goal.
"Alice?" You call out again, cupping your hands around your mouth and shouting as loudly as you can. "Alice, baby, where are you? Can you hear me?"
Nothing.
It's hard not to fall to your knees and just give up. The only thing keeping you standing is the memory of your sweet baby girl in that man's arms. Her little cherubic face tucked into his neck, tiny body dwarfed by his massive form...
You force a full breath into your lungs, then another, then another. You won't be able to help Alice if you can't keep your head.
"Alright, think," you whisper to yourself, taking another moment to scan the room. "If I were a piece of shit baby-stealer, where would I keep a perfect angel?"
Nothing responds.
The room is definitely meant for a child, but scaled up to your size. The door you'd come in through has disappeared, leaving you stuck in this weird rainbow nightmare.
There's a bed against one wall - not really a bed so much as a stack of no less than six mattress one on top of the other, all with the same purple bedsheets. They nearly reach the ceiling, and on the very top your sure you can see several stuffed animals.
There are bookshelves against one wall, floating shelves styled after unicorns where the books rest along their backs and the unicorns themselves stick out from the wall. It's horrendously impractical - all you can think about is how much dusting they would need, how dangerous they could be if they fell on top of someone.
The floor is a nice hardwood with a large plush rug in the center, stylized to look like a white cat curled up in a little ball.
The room is spotless. Nothing is out of place, there's not a spec of dust anywhere to be seen, and nothing is stained. You wish your own daughter's room was this clean, but three year old's are a very messy species.
This room is clearly meant for a kid, but you can tell it's never been used. No child could keep a white rug so clean.
You sit on the floor in front of the purple bed and try to collect your thoughts, eying the room around you.
The man - John Price, he'd said around a cigar - had been clear about your task. Find your way out of the labyrinth in twenty-four hours, and you'll be reunited with your baby.
Of course the jackass had neglected to mention it's a magical labyrinth. Of course he hadn't told you that the maze would literally reconstruct itself right in front of your eyes.
This room had appeared practically out of thin air too, which is why you suspect that no one's ever been here but you. The whole place has an air of cleanliness that leaves your skin crawling.
The walls though... there's something so familiar about them.
It hits you a few moments later.
You'd had a coloring book as a little girl that was rainbow themed - each page featured a rainbow in a different setting, or a different shape, or an animal with rainbow patterns, things of that nature. Your favorite page had been the one without any design but rainbows, arches crisscrossing over each other in every direction. You spent hours painstakingly coloring it properly, despite the fact that it was nearly impossible to tell where the top of the rainbow was in certain places.
You'd begged your mother to paint your room like that, promised her that you'd help, that you'd never complain about your chores again, all typical little kid stuff. Your mother had refused, and you'd forgotten all about it by breakfast the next day.
That pattern from the coloring book is the same one decorating the walls, complete with the incorrect colors in certain places. That's where you remember it from.
And... and that bed. Mattress stacked on top of one another, purple bedsheets. It's just like an old copy of The Princess and the Pea your father brought home one day. You had been so entranced with the idea of a bed so tall that you'd never even cared about the end of the story. You vividly remember begging for a tall bed like the princess had, and you'd gotten it - you slept in a loft bed for most of your teen years.
It's clear from there what's going on. The unicorn shelves are plucked from your memory too, originating from a years long obsession with the mythical creatures. The rug, now that you think about it, matches one your kindergarten teacher had. The whole room is filled with things that you thought would be great in a bedroom as a little girl.
So.... how do you get out?
There's no door, no windows, no attic, nothing. Just a sealed rainbow box.
You skim your memory as quickly as possible, trying to imagine any sort of escape route you might've wanted. When you were little, you'd gone through a phase of wanting to live in a tower like Rapunzel, but that had a window. You also tried to run away once, becoming very enamored with the idea of living in a tent. You'd wanted to live in a treehouse for a bit, and that....
Oh. That's it.
You'd wanted to live in a treehouse, and your father jokes that you would roll right out of the hatch when you were asleep. You'd proudly said nuh-uh and told him how you'd drag the mattress over the hatch every night.
You glance over your shoulders at the six mattress stacked on top of each other and sigh.
-------------------------
It takes a while, but you finally manage to shove the last mattress away from it's spot.
Not only is there a trapdoor beneath it, there's one singular pea.
You'd laugh if you were any less exhausted.
You leave the rainbow room all but destroyed - the stuffed animals had gone flying and knocked off the books, and the floor is almost completely covered by mattress - but you're far too excited about your small win to worry about cleaning up.
You climb down the ladder in a tiny, enclosed space, breathing slowly to keep yourself from hyperventilating. It's almost pitch-black and you can't fight off the image of the walls shifting around you, deciding you're not supposed to be here and.....
You breathe a sigh of relief when your feet hit the floor.
Your first instinct is to call out for your daughter again, hope that she hears and cries out for you, but this room - dark and undecorated - is dead silent. The kind of silent that feels wrong to break. So you inch forward towards the only door you can make out along the wall.
Your hand shakes as you push it open, tense as you reveal....
A nursery.
A nursery with your baby in it, your little girl all curled up in a crib that she's a bit too old for. She's wearing something different than what you had her in, but she's real and she's safe.
You step froward on instinct, standing at the side of the crib. Just as you're reaching in to grab her and run, a voice speaks up from behind you.
"What are you doing?"
You jolt, spinning around and pressing your back in front of where your baby sleeps.
It's the man again. He can barely fit through the doorway (literally ducks) and he's broad enough to nearly block it. He's almost cartoonishly large, with tree trunk thighs and arms, a soft padding around his body that makes him look both terrifying and nice to hug.
His beard twitches as he frowns at you, thick eyebrows dipping low over his eyes.
"You're not supposed to be here."
You shake your head a little, getting your racing heart under control. "You said if I could find Alice in twenty-four hours I could go home."
He shakes his head slowly, stepping further into the room. The door disappears behind him. "No, I said find your way out of the labyrinth and you could keep her."
Against your own will, you feel tears start to sting in your eyes. "But..."
"How did you get here?" He asks again, shifting back a bit. His face softens just slightly, but that isn't saying much.
"I found a door," you say. "Under the mattresses."
He hums. "You remembered, then."
Now it's your turn to look confused. "Of course I did. It was my dream as a child."
His head tilts to the side as he takes a few steps forward. "You would be shocked how many parents have forgotten their own dreams. It's pathetic," he spits.
You try to push a little further back as he comes within reaching distance, but you have nowhere else to go.
"Pathetic?"
"Yes. How are you supposed to fulfil your child's dreams if you can't remember your own?"
"But... but not all dreams are meant to come true."
He scowls at you, leaning a little further forward. "Really? You don't remember how devastated you were when you didn't get that treehouse? Or the rainbow walls? You cried for hours, I saw it in your memories. Why would you want to put your daughter through that?"
That's... invasive, but you try to move past it. "But my dreams weren't always good for me. I couldn't sleep in the treehouse, what if something went wrong? There could've been a storm, or someone in the woods, or I could've gotten too scared to go inside - any number of things. And I would've been bored of the walls by the weekend, of course my mother didn't spend days painting them just for me to be over it before I even said thank you."
He hums a bit, bringing a hand up to stroke his chin. "You would deny your daughter's dreams because you don't want to create them, then?"
You scowl at that, holding yourself back from poking a finger into his chest. "Are you calling me lazy? How dare you! You know, I work two jobs to take care of that little girl all by myself since her daddy's a deadbeat, I work myself to the bone making sure she can eat, and you call me lazy for not painting the walls the colors she wants?"
He latches onto the wrong part of the sentence. "Her father's not in the picture?"
You glare at him. "That's what you got from that?"
He seems to be stuck in deep contemplation, taking another step forward so your chests nearly brush and you're forced to stare up at him.
"So, it's not for a lack of love, then?"
"What? Of course not. If I could, I'd give Alice everything she could ever want and more. But that's not how the real world works."
"It's how the labyrinth works."
"Excuse me?"
He gestures broadly to the nursery. "The labyrinth is kind to her inhabitants. She gives them everything they desire, because it's easy for her."
You've never been more confused in your life. "Okay? Good for her, then."
You get the feeling he's reached a conclusion that you can't even see in the distance as he nods to himself, leaning to the side a bit to glance at Alice. You fight down the urge to leap over the crib and cover her body with yours.
"Then you will stay here."
That jerks you back to reality. "Wait- what?"
"You will stay in the labyrinth, where she can provide for... what did you call her? Alice? Yes, Alice. You and Alice will be taken care of here."
"But-" you splutter. "But I found her! You said I had to find her!"
He shoots you a slightly exasperated look. "No, as I said before, you had to find your way out. You didn't. And look at that, time's up." A timer appears in the air in front of him, ticking down to zero. "Now you and little Alice are mine. It's been a little empty around here recently, it won't be the worst thing to have company for a bit."
You feel heat rush to your face. "No! Let us go, you can't keep me here on a technicality!"
He smiles - a real smile, brightening up his eyes - and surprises you by cupping your cheek with one big paw.
"Oh my dear, it's my labyrinth, I can do whatever I want in it. And it's not a technicality, though I could keep you based on several of those too."
You fume as you glare up at him, hands curled into fists. "I'll find my way out. You can't keep us here."
He chuckles, patting your cheek once before stepping away. "Oh, yes, I think you'll be fun to keep around for a while, darling. Try your best to escape, if you'd like. I don't think I'll mind finding you lost a few more times."
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