Now would be a good time to stop drinking I thought. Was this my home?
I knew the door and the path that led to it but what lay on the other side was no more
my house than a cave. That’s what my eyes had shown me. A cave that descended
deep into the earth with calcite formations some 100 feet high that looked like upside-
down candles dripping wax that never reached the ground but suspended its waxen
droplets in midair. There was a small fire burning in the distance, and I wondered who or
what had started it. I turned back around in panic, but my front door was gone. The
sheer terror of looking for an exit in this subterranean chamber was too much to even
imagine. Then there was a noise, the slow and slugging drag of something heavy sliding
across the sand of the cavern floor. It came closer out of the darkness, a large white,
hairless creature, that stood 7 feet with webbed feet and a thick tail dragging behind,
deflated breasts, and large black eyes, absent of the sclera, only black, dark, and void. I
stood still, pins and needles radiating all over my body into an instant hot flush, my heart
no longer beating at a human rhythm but slow and hypnotic. The creature sat at the fire,
stoking its flames with its tail end.
Then it spoke.
“You took longer to come back this time.”
“Ha – Haa, have I been away?” I say.
My toes and hands are aching, a feeling of being stretched and pulled like a rubber
band that knows no end. The skin on my hand stretched into webbed fingers, my
clothes falling away from my body, the color draining from my skin and leaving me pale
and white.
It began to speak
“It’s my turn. You’ve played with them long enough.”
Iamthemonsterthatlivesinthecave
