Young Writers Society

Maggie's hands faltered on her work. "Don't let it see you then," they said dismissively.

Having them here felt like danger. They were intruders in a secret space. If they stayed much longer, everything could break.

Kazimir was getting bored, and confused. Maggie was talking about a golem? And the golem was making the mist, and if they wanted to escape, they couldn't let the golem see them. But he didn't see any golem. All he saw was a really bland workspace, Maggie, and a curtain.

Somebody had to do something, and since he didn't know how to leave this weird vision, he decided to explore. Or perhaps, make Maggie like him even less.

On quiet feet, he walked over and ducked behind the curtain.

Kazimir paused as the curtain closed behind him, trying to figure out what he was looking at.

Behind the curtain were a bunch of statues in a garden, and they were all of people.

Kazimir curiously stepped forward to the nearest one. It was a heavy-set man, and as Kazimir leaned in close, he was amazed at the level of detail the statue had. It looked really realistic and believable, and it took him a moment to realize it was probably Maggie who'd made them. That would make sense of all the chipping away at rocks and "being busy working." Apparently, Maggie made statues for a living... except, it must have been a very niche market because all of the statues were just people.

Kazimir started weaving through the statues, looking them over. He noticed that the people were of all shapes and sizes, but they were all adults.

He couldn't help but notice, though, that every single stone statue looked terrified.

A strange memory crawled back to him from a children's book he barely remembered. It was a book he'd read to Bo, something about kids in a magic closet that went to another world, and there was an evil snow witch who turned people to stone.

Kazimir squinted at one of the statues, looking into the horror-filled eyes of a stone woman, and he couldn't help but feel like he was looking at someone frozen in time.

Were the statues real people?

He glanced back over at the curtain and quietly hid behind the statue of a large man, wondering if his disappearance had been noticed yet.

Hades hesitated. After going through illusions for everyone else in the group, he was sure that this studio housed Maggie's. Going directly to the golem wasn't going to solve this. If the cycle repeated once they helped Maggie through their challenge, Hades might have been more open to skipping the illusion and going straight to its apparent source.

Maggie didn't want them to be there. That was obvious. He glanced at the others in the group—convincing Maggie would be easier if he wasn't the only one with that train of thought-

He stared.

"...Where's Kaz?" he asked. He looked over at the curtain, already guessing that he knew the answer. Unless Kaz had decided to follow Maggie's suggestion, he had gone behind it.

Annabeth glanced around, but there was no sign of the familiar Russian. Knowing Kaz, he wouldn't just leave the illusion. She noticed the curtain behind them.

"He probably went behind the curtain," she said.

Maggie froze.

Outwardly, they kept up a calm facade. With a sigh, they motioned for everyone else to stay while they went behind the curtain.

They looked around, the creeping feeling of eyes on their back following them as they searched for the missing Russian.

Elias had spaced out, wondering what in the world a golem even was and it's significance to it all. It seemed that every person went through their own scene, and Maggie was last to go. This all felt too ordinary in comparison, though.

He snapped back to reality when the others asked where Kaz was. Maggie dipped back behind the curtain to look for him, and after exchanging glances between Hades and Annabeth, Elias hopped off the couch and followed after.

"Let's go!" he said over his shoulder with a curious smile and a gesture forward, dipping behind the curtain as well.

Kazimir poked his head out from the statue when he heard Elias come through.

"These statues are creepy," he announced loudly, revealing his hiding spot as he looked at Maggie. "Did you make them?"

Rage boiled quietly in Maggie's chest.

With surprising strength, they grabbed Elias by the arm and dragged him back toward the curtain. They shoved Kaz out and tossed Elias onto the floor after him.

They stepped out of the curtain, face hardened in quiet fury. "I made one request," they said, disappointment drowning out their anger, "What is with you people? Do you have no respect for privacy?"

“Woah! Woah,” Kazimir said as he got back to his feet, offering Elias a hand to help him up, but not waiting for Elias to reply. He dragged Elias up to his feet.

“I don’t care how pissed you are. Hands off the kid. And don’t act like you didn’t wander off in half of our messed up visions too. I’m just trying to get this dream overwith. It’s obvious you’re the last one. I’m not just going to sit around here watching you mope and pretend to work when obviously something bad’s about to happen eventually. You seem like the type to want to go in alone, but I think that’s stupid. You’re smart. You probably know what’s coming aleady and are just too proud to tell us, huh.”

Maggie grit their teeth. "You do not get to invade my privacy and turn it around on me, got it?" They didn't wait for an answer, stalking across the room and gesturing to the door. This was over. "Get out. All of you. Get the f-"

Before they could finish, a loud CRACK split the air, echoing from behind the curtain. The sound of stone scraping stone got closer, multiplying as similar cracks, like boulders breaking in two, rang out, one after the other, through the wide open space.

Confusion appeared and melted from Maggie's face between the first ear-splitting sound and the second.

iThis wasn't supposed to happen. It hadn't happened before. Mother said-

Grey, corpselike fingers gripped the edge of the curtain. Bunches began to appear in the fabric like a hundred hands were grappling fistfuls of it from the other side.

"Close your eyes," Maggie said coldly, urgency only just seeping through in their voice.

When the first crack sounded, Annabeth nearly jumped out of her skin. It sounded like rocks splitting apart. And then, she saw the fingers gripping the curtain.

Annabeth's mouth opened, but her voice left her. So she did what Maggie said, and she shut her eyes tightly.

Her mind was whirring. If they couldn't see what was behind the corpse-like fingers, it could be a Medusa-like monster.

But this isn't your world, she reminded herself. The mechanics of here are different.

Annabeth stood still and waited for whatever came next.

Like hell, he was going to close his eyes.

Kazimir stood his guard beside Elias, watching as the thing started to move behind the curtain.

Hades had only caught a glimpse of what was behind the curtain.

He had wanted to step in when Maggie shoved Elias to the floor and Kaz berated them for it, but he kept thinking of the statues he had seen in the few moments where the curtain was pushed out of the way. Those statues had been works of art. There had nothing strange about that.

But they had looked so realistic and so afraid.

It made Hades's heart skip a beat. The stories humans told weren't always true, but he tried his best to know them all. There was only one thing—one person—that he could think of when he saw those statues. And it terrified him to think that anyone here could be turned into stone like that. He couldn't remember if there was some way to make Medusa's victims living again, and he didn't have the kind of magic that could heal.

...But it was Maggie's workshop. Wouldn't they have been the one to turn those people to stone, then? The stories weren't perfect, so maybe Maggie could control it-

A crack filled the room.

Something moved behind the curtain. Maggie told them to close their eyes. Hades, who knew that his godly magic could heal him and had regularly seen some of Hecate's stranger magical creations, kept looking.

"Maggie," he said, "I don't know what's about to happen, but you can get through this. We can get through this."

Elias barely had time to react when he was shoved and pushed away by Maggie, but then yanked back to his feet by Kaz, who was defending him. Elias didn't mean to upset Maggie so much. Didn't Maggie want to show them around? Wasn't this their world or whatever?

Elias stood confused, flicking his eyes between the two of them bicker, but then grimaced when he heard the ear-splitting sound of rocks grinding against each other. He didn't know what was going on anymore, but he hardly ever did. He placed his hands over his ears and scrunched his face in discomfort, vaguely hearing Maggie suddenly announce that they should close their eyes.

Elias followed their directions, placing his hands over his eyes... but curiosity got to the best of him, and he peeked through his fingers towards whatever awaited them behind the curtain.