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Pic: William and dire rat
“I mean, how did you land up here?” asked Manvreet.
“Well, I thought I’d just drop in for a splash,” said William. He waited for at least a snigger, but in vain. “Seriously now, as I’ve just mentioned, I am a speleologist; that is, I explore caves. It’s a sort of sport mixed with scholarly enterprise. In other words, we study rock formations, subterranean life, map out the geography and so forth, all while having a hang of a time.” William waited. Yet again his punning failed to amuse. “Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes. The National Speleological Society of which I am a member provided the funds for four of us to come on an expedition to be the first, um… humans to enter and survey these caves. Only recently, after an aeroplane crashed into the area somewhere above us, was the entrance to this place uncovered. Obviously, there was a worldwide scramble for first choice, since uncharted frontiers are rare these days. But, we won the bid and came here without a notion of what to expect.
David, Leticia, Maggie and I began our journey four days ago. Everything was going smoothly until this morning, when I woke up to discover that my colleagues were gone, and what was more, all our gear was gone too. All that remained... a bloodied piece of David’s shirt and one of Leticia’s boots in shreds. I didn’t know what to make of it. I was alone. I tried my whistle, but nothing. Being a veteran, I knew that panicking was useless, but I did it anyway. Frantically, I searched about for my team, all without a thought to where I was going. That was a stupid thing to do because by the time I recovered my mind, I’d lost my bearings. I decided to retrace my steps to get back to where I started, but somewhere along the way, I clambered into a small crawl space, where I encountered a pungent odour—a rotten, nauseating smell of decaying meat. I tried to ignore the smell and keep going, but then I heard a deep squeaking. Startled, I glanced behind me, and my headlamp shone on a huge rodent the size of a man—an impossible size for a rodent. It couldn’t be biologically feasible. I figured it couldn’t be real; I had to be suffering some sort of delirium from prolonged confinement in a dark cramped space. So, I continued crawling as calmly as I could, ignoring the imaginary creature. Next thing, there was nip at my heels and the ground crumbled beneath me. I remember falling, getting wet, receiving a knock to my head, and then waking up here.”
Just as William spoke his last sentence, a dire rat scurried in. Doris deftly caught it, broke its neck and placed the lifeless body on the flat rock in front of William.
“Is this what you saw?” she asked.
“Oh wow, so it was really real,” said William.
