In case anyone is wondering, I don't want anyone at work to see this, so I reposted under an alias.
Enjoy, or maybe look away in disgust.
I discovered Barsoom by accident while driving home.
There was a cave-in.
I work in the underground office caves in north Kansas City as a prepress technician for a small printing company. The pay is okay, but you can't get radio or cell phone reception until you get outside.
I was dressed for work when the rocks came falling down. Black slacks, white shirt, tie.
Before the collapse, construction crews were working on the mouth of the cavern complex. The way it looked, it would take hours for them to get done. Mind you, this isn't why the cavern collapsed, this was why I made my very foolish mistake.
The moment my shift ended, I started up the Corolla, attempting to drive out the main entry tunnel, but I saw the line of cars, and the backhoe, so I decided to be clever and search for a detour within the paved maze of yellow parking pillars and offices for lease.
Obviously. I was new to the job. Only been there about a month or so, so I didn't bother with petty details such as researching alternate routes through the cave system. I'm sure there were some emergency exits in there somewhere, but I wasn't lucky enough to find any.
Near the entrance, the place looked like your average parking garage. Someone shaved all the stalactites off the ceiling, smoothed the walls, flattened the floors, and put in offices with glass front windows, the glass specially cut to fit the shape of existing rock formations.
It got darker and rougher as you went further in, where the businesses petered out. The lights weren't maintained as much, the stalactites came in, and speed bump sized stalagmites made an appearance.
My car rolled over one of these as I searched for the alternate exit.
At first, since I continued to see pavement, I ignored it, boldly driving forward, but then the pavement roughened, and the `mites' became more prevalent.
I decided a little too late to turn around. The moment I twisted the steering wheel, I heard a loud crunch as the front end of my car dropped below the cavern floor.
I was understandably upset, and cursed a blue streak as I shifted into reverse.
Doing so proved to be a mistake, for then the floor collapsed under the rear end as well, and I was sitting completely under the floor, hoping and praying that it wouldn't drop any further.
Well, something worse happened.
As I was climbing out of the car, digging out my cell phone before remembering that I had no reception, a mammoth pillar, naturally formed, broke off from the ceiling, toppling my way.
I jumped out of its path just seconds before it crashed down, totaling the front of my vehicle.
Deciding enough was enough, I hurried away from there, eyes searching left and right for signs of another dangerous collapse.
I only made it a couple yards before a heavy shower of massive rock came thundering down ahead of me, bringing with it thousands of smaller rocks, gravel, and a blinding dust cloud.
As I watched this happening, I flinched as another mountain of debris rained down a few yards behind me.
For the next ten minutes, I stayed ut, watching nervously as the cavern collapsed around me. I could have tried to make an escape, I suppose, but I probably would have died in the process. As it stands, I had to keep watching the ceiling and duck out of the way as random rocks fell down from above.
I made use of the time the best I could, digging survival supplies out of the car, flashlight, blankets, gloves, leftovers from lunch, a tire iron, my water bottle, and a bag full of over the counter medications. I loaded these supplies into trash bags and grocery bags from the trunk.
An umbrella didn't make sense, but I decided I could at least use it to protect myself from gravel or a couple pieces of falling debris, so I kept it open above my head. It's a cave, not a house, so it isn't bad luck.
The office caves don't have a lot of bats, but they do occasionally get a few. As I waited for the rockfall to end, a scrawny little bat, not much bigger than a mouse, all of a sudden swooped out of hiding, perching on my shoulder, beneath my umbrella.
I kept myself perfectly still, hoping it would fly away, but it didn't.
I brushed it aside with the umbrella, but it just fluttered around behind me, grabbed the back of my shoulder, and climbed back up, baring its fangs in a way that would have been cute had I not worried about rabies.
Deciding it maybe would go away once the dust cleared, I sat down on the floor, frowning at my lunch.
It wasn't my best cooking. I suppose I might eat it out of desperation, if I got stuck in the cave for any length of time, but I couldn't bring myself to eat it at the moment.
The bat seemed to find something attractive about the Gladware container, for it jumped off my shoulder and buried its fangs into the plastic lid.
Laughing, I pulled the thing free, tossed the lid, and let the creature have my rice tuna casserole, backing away to a safe distance.
After gulping down several mouthfuls, the bat started making gagging sounds. That was pretty much my opinion, but you can't always afford to eat lasagna and barbecue every day.
The rockfall slowed to a stop. I switched on my flashlight, searching the mound of boulders for a way out.
There wasn't one.
From wall to wall, the section of garage that led out could not be reached, on account of the mountain of rubble standing in the way.
As a matter of fact, there wasn't much of anywhere to go. This section hadn't been developed for offices yet, so I saw no pockets of civilization to crawl through. It seemed I was doomed to a life of crawling around naked and eating bats, like the creepy gnome guy in The Hobbit.
The only option available to me appeared to be a narrow tunnel leading off into the dark.
I wrapped the blanket over my face to shield me from the dust (though it smelled like antifreeze), and set off down the tunnel.
I felt like I had stumbled away from the tour group at Fantastic Caverns, wandering aimlessly from tunnel to tunnel. I moved slow, watching my feet in case of a sudden drop into the abyss, wishing I could just go home.
I heard another rumble.
Before I could properly hide or protect myself, (I'd put the umbrella away), the rocks came pouring down again.
I watched with horror as the section of tunnel I had just left collapsed behind me.
A small leather winged object squeaked across the beam of my flashlight. That was the last thing I remembered before a large rock struck me in the skull.
When I awoke, I discovered myself sprawled on top of a human skeleton, centuries old. Parts of it crumbled as I sat up, brushing myself off.
Hearing a metallic clank, I swept the beam of my flashlight around for the source of the noise.
I found it in the skeleton's recently shattered rib cage.
It was a necklace, and a fancy gold one at that.
It had an asymmetrical swirling shape, carved with symbols in a language I couldn't read or even identify.
It has always been my belief that corpses are too dead to care about their things, so I took it, intent on taking it to a museum or selling it to a pawn shop for a couple dollars (knowing my luck, that would be exactly how much they'd give me, too).
My flying companion, for reasons unknown to me, had chosen to use my shoulder as a perch again. I decided not to bother it, and kept waiting for it to go away.
The collapsed had forced me further inward. Still hopeful that I'd eventually pass a hole near the surface, I continued down the tunnel.
I missed a gap. My foot slipped on a slick rock, and I went sliding down a muddy grade.
I rammed into a stalactite, dropped off the side of a rock shelf, and landed painfully on my shoulder, in a small dingy cave. I was sure I broke something
Groaning in pain, I staggered to my feet, searching the floor for my flashlight.
Instead of finding it, my hands encountered a strange monument set flush against the cavern wall.
Every inch of it had been carved with incomprehensible swirling symbols, but it was too dark to make anything out.
I nearly tripped on the flashlight before I noticed it. It still worked, so I shined it on the monument to see if I could make more sense of it. Armchair archaeologist, that's me.
I can't read Arabic, Hebrew, Greek or Russian, but I knew what those alphabets looked like, and this wasn't any of them. Not Asian either. I wasn't a professor of languages, so I couldn't say what else it could be.
What I could understand was that a socket in the middle of this thing looked identical to the shape of the necklace I'd found. Although I figured it would do nothing, unlike all those ridiculous Indiana Jones type stories I'd seen, I thought t might at least be interesting to know whether or not the necklace actually fit the socket at all.
The pendant fit.
It wasn't as great an idea as I originally thought.
The moment it touched the socket, I felt like I had grabbed a high tension power line.
My whole body stiffened, I saw stars, and my heart stopped.
When I awoke, I briefly wondered if I were in heaven, but I thought it funny that heaven had a desert.
All around me, I could see only dry parched soil and scrubby plants, seemingly without end in every direction.
I attempted to sit up, but the moment I moved my head, I heard a loud squeak and a pair of leathery wings beat against my face.
A second later, I heard the sound of pounding hooves, and a herd of eight legged buffalo-like creatures came stampeding by in a great cloud of dust.
Definitely not heaven.
The stampede passed, and I was alone again.
I sat up, and instantly felt light headed, as if sick.
I felt weirder when I stood up, like I were riding the monkey barrel at a theme park.
I took a step and revised my opinion. It felt like I were on the moon.
I strolled back and forth across the patch of desert, pretending I was Buzz Aldrin or someone. The bat was hovering around me, and when I say hovering, I mean this literally. Its ability to stay airborne without flapping its wings for such long periods of time seemed unbelievable, even for a bat.
Low gravity fun aside, it was hot, and I didn't know where I was. I didn't even see my trash bag full of supplies anywhere. No flashlight or umbrella either. It seemed all I had were my clothes.
I decided, if I wanted to live, I'd need to get going, find water, maybe shelter.
So I moonwalked like an astronaut across the dusty plain.
The sounds of screaming and shouting caused me to freeze in my tracks.
Looking up ahead, I saw a cluster of dark green figures, two of them big and male looking, one slender, more feminine.
They stood between a pair of eight legged buffalo things, growling at each other in some language I couldn't understand.
My bat flew over to one of the buffaloes, perching on its head.
Stupid bat, I thought. I really didn't care if it got killed. I still believed it had rabies.
I approached the fight because I was confused about what I was looking at.
Each `person' was not only green, they had tusks on the sides of their faces, and each had an extra set of arms.
One leopard spotted male, wrapped in a leather harness and animal skins, was punching the other male in the face, forcefully pulling the female away from it. The other male, splotchy skinned, with turtle-like shoulder pads, harness and a leather cape, was tugging on the female's harness, trying to wrest her from the other's clutches.
Alien. Definitely alien.
I had been thinking I might have entered hell, but these creatures didn't look like demons to me. That only left one possibility.
Somehow I had been transported into space.
The splotchy guy hit Spots in the face, and Splotch retaliated.
At this point, the female got upset and struck him, running to Spot's side.
Splotch angrily backhanded her, knocking her into the dirt.
And then the guy starts beating on her, yelling something or another.
Spots tried to stop him, but Splotch only needed to strike him once to knock him backwards.
He struck the female again.
That was enough for me.
"Hey!" I shouted, stomping up to him. "Hey! That's no way to treat a lady...regardless of what she looks like!"
Splotch looked up at me, growled incomprehensibly, then beat the female some more.
Outraged, I ran up and kicked him in the head.
The male went flying backwards across the dirt with such surprising force that I briefly contemplated trying out for the NFL.
Spots, seeing what had just happened, drew a curved dagger, charging at me with a scream.
I raised my hands in surrender, but he didn't seem to care. He didn't put the knife away.
Before he could get to me, the female rose up, pulled out her own dagger, and blocked the attack, just inches from my throat.
The male used a free hand to bash the female across the head.
"Hey!" I shouted. "Manners!"
And I punched him in the face.
My fist sent him sailing across the dirt a couple yards away from the other one.
The two groaned, staggering to their feet as they rubbed their injuries, growling at me like a pair of beaten dogs.
I must have impressed them, for the next moment I saw each male climbing up on a buffalo creature, coaxing it to gallop away from me, leaving large clouds of dust in their wake.
I stared at the female in puzzlement, and she I.
Her face was rather flat. She had no nose to speak of, just a small bump, and her eyes were too widely spaced apart for me to look directly into both at the same time.
She was definitely exotic. Although not what I'd consider beautiful by human standards, I did find her very interesting to look at.
As the dust cleared, I asked this female, "Are you okay?"
She responded by grabbing me with all four arms, shoving my face between her tusks and kissing me.
