We clambered back down the tooth and out of the zoo and followed the deafening bellow. As we were running into the back area of the cave, where the bellow had come from, I heard Weasel murmuring something like, “’bout time I came back to this part of the cave.” As we sped back through the rapidly darkening cave, I tripped over a rock and went tumbling forward.
I expected just to fall on the ground, brush it off and keep running, but instead of a hard stony ground, I fell onto a damp, squishy surface. As I tried to pull myself up I realized it was sticky and actually coming up with me and then popping off. In my attempt to pull myself off the surface, the sticky ground made a “pop” noise as one of its suctions released on me and a pair of huge glowing eyes appeared in the dark.
The eyes blinked themselves open as if they had just awakened from a long nap and an unseen mouth made a grunting noise. Using the small amount of light from the eyes, I looked down. The surface I was on wasn’t a surface at all but a floppy mound of spongy tentacles. I realized with horror what was happening. I flung myself off of the mound and flew face first into a mound of grimy rocks and mud.
I stood up and ran in a random direction as fast as I could, dodging boulders and stalagmites as I ran through the dingy corridors of the cave. When I stopped to rest I heard Weasel’s voice echoing through the cavern: “Where are ye?” I attempted to answer but was too exhausted. In a couple of minutes, I fell asleep.
I dreamed for some strange reason, that there was a minotaur pinata above me, and I was tied up, and the Military Exus Leader was brandishing a baseball bat and threatening to smash the pinata. He did, and suddenly a herd of hairless feral cats jumped out of the pinata and attempted to devour me. I woke up with a start.
A Minotaur pinata and a herd of hairless feral cats? Well, dreams can be strange. I stood up and brushed off the mud and wet sand and attempted to find a way out of the labyrinthian maze of corridors. I called for my friends and heard a distant echoing of their voices and tried to follow it through the maze. After hours of wandering I came upon a long passageway with several doors in the wall. I looked into them. Most of them were dark, but there were a couple filled with piles of rocks and sticks and at the very end of the corridor was a brightly lit room full of offerings.
I grabbed some food offerings from the offering room and nibbled on them while I walked along the dismal corridors towards the rapidly brightening haze around the corner at the end of the corridor. I turned and I didn’t see my friends- they must have been looking for me- but the room wasn’t totally empty. Bewilderingly, there were carcasses of small animals like rabbits and cats.
I scanned my surroundings but didn’t see anything aside from small animal carcasses. I sat down on a large rock and thought about the situation. It wasn’t really much of a situation, I just needed to wait until they got back. So I waited. . . for about an hour, and they weren’t there. They didn’t come back. Just when I was about to stand up and actually start looking for them I saw a shadow slinking around the corner. Was it them? I couldn’t make it out in the dark. Before I could call out to the form around the corner, it turned its shadowy head and I saw two huge glowing eyes just like I had seen before.
I started slinking backwards to the mouth of the cave. I was going to climb down the ladder and make an escape across the desert when I realized something: this cave didn’t have a ladder. I was ready just to accept my fate and be devoured by a giant monster when out of the darkness came. . . . a Goostopus?
“I’m Dave,” it said.