tegerio

"Who goes there?"

Added 2023-09-15 02:30:19 +0000 UTC

I challenged nervously. "If you've survived here then you are certainly to be commended."

The words were barely out of my mouth when I realized that anyone who could survive the Plague of Battles would have to be as bloodthirsty and deranged as Burnside. To have continued to survive in this festering deathscape for this long ... what horrible thing must this person have done? It had been YEARS since the battle!

I realized with dismay that I was probably a lot fresher and more tasty than whatever this person had been eating.

There was an ominous silence as the echoes of my challenge died away in the darkness.

"Yyessss, Mister Calaveras, I heard it too," a voice whispered.

Was there more than one of them??

"That's who it sounded like," the whisperer continued, apparently responding to something I hadn't heard. "Except not screaming. That's a change. And he's never appeared in the light before. That wouldn't be fair now, would it?"

"W-w-who," I croaked almost inaudibly.

"I agree, Mister Calaveras, it might be an owl," the whisperer responded. "That would be nice. I hope it's an owl. Oh, would you? My eyes aren't very good in the light."

I heard a slithering, stumbling step, and a pale shape loomed forward out of the darkness.

It was a floating skull! I could just barely make it out in the gloom, but its pale skullishness was unmistakable.

I stood transfixed with terror as the skull stared at me. After a few seconds it ... vanished? or maybe it receded back into the shadows.

"Oh, it IS him?" the whisperer sighed. "That's not very nice. He screams back there, and they scream out there, but this is our little quiet spot in between. Oh, I agree, Mister Calaveras. This is an intrusion. We mustn't put up with it. A taste of his own medicine, you say? Well, I'll try."

Before I could say or do anything else, the passageway was suddenly filled with an ear-splitting shriek.

"ADLER YOUNG!" the voice howled like a hundred banshees. "FAILURE! TRAITOR! DESERTER! HOW DOES IT FEEL? NOT SO NICE IS IT? JERK! LOSER! NO GOODNIK! TRY LISTENING TO THIS EVERY MINUTE FOREVER!!"