If it wasn't for Glen's information, you'd have absolutely no sense of time and it seems to be another form of malice from the house. Some times, you don't see him for a week, but he insists he visited only yesterday and one time was apologising for not coming for a long time when he injured his leg, even though you had only slept one night. As usual, your friend maintained his normal skepticism when you mentioned this, and as usual you were willing to forgive him for it. In fact, the only time you weren't willing to placate him while talking was when he sidled up to the topic of going inside. You were so dead set against his entry that you even tidied up the eerie playroom that you destroyed in exchange for a key to the front door. You were so on guard against the innumerable ways that the house could lure Glen inside, that you didn't think that Glen would find a way to force his own way in.
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For Glen, it'd been close to a full year since he wandered through those gates and into the life of the apparently imprisoned little girl. It had stopped being a cute novelty to kill time on a day off and had started to genuinely weighing on his mind, something he only realised when he fractured his knee and couldn't make the trip out. It was affecting him so much that his doctor had prescribed him sleeping tablets to try and bring his insomnia under control.
It was when he was about to take his pill for the evening that something major occurred to him, and he put the tablet on his nightstand and picked up the box instead. He frantically searched for age restrictions, finding they said: WARNING! DO NOT GIVE TO MINORS! FOR AGES 14 AND UP, BREAK A SINGLE TABLET IN HALF AND DISSOLVE IN WATER...
He ignored the remaining instructions as he settled down to struggle with the morality of what he was about to attempt. The young girl genuinely believed that she was trapped in a magical, malicious, time-bending mansion that transformed her from a normal 20-something to a 5 year old living gothic lolita doll, kept in a state of constant, immortal mental torment. If she was telling the truth, drugging her and investigating the house while she was unconscious might be the only way to set her free but if it was the wild, vivid imagination of a lonely child he could very much endanger or even kill her. Eventually, his mental stalemate was broken when he accepted the selfish reasons for doing it. He just wanted to sleep properly again and this was the only way he could think of to settle the issue. Maybe it was time he considered a therapist, as well...
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It'd been 3 days since you last saw Glen, but you'd used that time to figure out where to put a couple of wicker chairs that Glen had found in the forest a couple of visits ago (which had caused a constant panic attack for most of that visit but had seemed to be benign in the end). You had just about settled on having your chair jammed up against the front door and Glen's just in front of you when you heard footsteps. Turning you saw him, your anchor to sanity. If you weren't so happy just to see him, you might have noticed something being off in his expression, maybe even noticed his nervous body language. You didn't even notice the bottle of water he handed you trembling in his grip. The perpetual summer sun overhead made you grateful for the ice cold water, even if it was opened previously. It wasn't until you got the aftertaste in the back of your throat that you complained, by which point, you'd already downed almost the whole bottle due in no small part to the heavy black fabric you wore head to toe making you feel approximately 1000 degrees Celsius,
"Bleh! Must have been sta..le..." You pouted and before you even heard his response, you yawned and then collapsed unceremoniously into the dirt. As you freefell towards sleep you heard one last "Oh crap!" from Glen.
It was bright outside when you woke up from your dreamless sleep. It took a long time for the bleariness to fade but when it did, you noticed a figure sat on the far end of the too large bed,
"I can see the hedge maze now..." came an undeniably female voice.