My name is Albert Lamplight, loyal servant to the people of Arcadia.
In here, I’m not.
Instead, I’m just a pitiful mouse with an aching pit in my stomach. For as lost and confused I am in this hopeless surrounding, I’m far too hungry to stay in one place.
And from a distance, I can see a glow – an illumination.
As a mouse, the light can only mean one thing – there must be an enormous, delectable piece of cheese on the other side!
A piece of cheese that could only be for a true champion or, at the very least, a special prize for the one that can get through this ominous puzzle box that I’m trapped inside of.
As a mouse, I don’t fear the concept of being trapped; I fear stagnancy.
I fear that if I decide not to travel forward into this liminal space, something else will.
And if something else does, they get the cheese at the end!
As a perpetually famished little rodent, this was a preposterous conclusion. I may be just a mouse, but there’s a reason why I’m in this puzzle box.
Something, someone put me here for the sake of one thing.
To be the first to get out.
The first to the cheese.
I kept my beady little eyes forward, and started to prance through what felt like a claustrophobic spiral – treacherously winding, with walls that grew thicker than the space between.
And then… there was the panicked breathing behind me.
And then a howl unlike anything I’ve ever heard before in here or out there.
And then the thump, thumpthumpthumpthump of many footsteps.
There was something else here – behind me. I don’t know what it was, but I did know one thing.
It wanted that cheese just as bad, and was willing to do whatever it took to make sure that he got there before anything else did.
Before me.
For as mortified as I was, I just couldn’t take my mind off of one valuable thing.
I was still hungry!
So, with my heart like a single-engine propeller, I made a dash towards the light that called for me.
I veered to the right, hopping over the remains of other starved mice.
I veered into the winding left – its tentacles grazing against my tail, hissing at me to stop for just a second so that it can have its breakfast and its lunch.
Until whatever it was started to veer away from me. As I continued my mad rush around this strange labyrinth, focusing purely on the light that grew brighter and brighter in front of me –
The mysterious beast fell off my trail – left hungry, overwhelmed by my desire to escape and satiate, and was left with an empty stomach for his efforts.
It never had a chance.
Because there’s nobody hungrier than I am.
And absolutely no one – and nothing – is going to keep me from filling my belly.
Nothing.