Mission: Implausible
by Krystyn Poe
Mission: Implausible Part Two: The Secret of Morely's Cave
Seifer, thinking quickly, took out two of his juggling daggers and stabbed them into the chasm's side, allowing the friction they were creating to slow him down enough to have a nice, soft landing on the mossy bottom. He tried to pull his daggers out of the wall, but they were so firmly ingrained that after a moment he gave up and just decided to bill Dani for them later.
He took out a fire poi and lit it, causing the bottom of the chasm seemed to come alive with dancing shadows on dank, dreary stone walls, speckled with moss and striped with running water. It wasn't exactly the greatest thing to look at, but hey, it was home...just not to Seifer.
Seifer continued to walk forward into the darkness, noticing how with each step forward he took the more frequently chills went up the back of his spine. He definitely felt like someone was dancing to polka music on top of his grave. And so, as if to complete the cold and spooky scene that was being set, a frigid wind blew out his torch. Rolling his eyes at the predictability of his situation, he lit the torch again and put a hand in front of it to keep the wind from vindictively blowing it out again. The wind, which was feeling a bit playful at the time, promptly went around his hand and scattered the molecules of the fire to oblivion once again. Seifer glared into the darkness.
"Excuse me, but do you think you could let me have a little light here? It's kind of hard to see in the dark." He said
"Only if you answer this riddle correctly, young Seifer."
"Hey, how do you know my name?"
"I'm the spooky voice in the dark, I know everyone's name. Surely you've watched enough horror films to know that!"
"Well, of course, but this isn't a horror film...heck, it's not even a movie!"
"Does that really matter?"
"No, but could you ask me the riddle already? This conversation is going nowhere."
"Alright, alright already. Sheesh, you'd think with time main characters would become a little more patient. Okay, here it goes: What's black and blue and red all over?"
"A crash victim." Seifer turned to where the audience would be if there was one. "Remember kids, buckle up! Seatbelts are there for a reason, you know."
"Amen. Well, you answered my riddle, so you can light your torch, but I'm not sure you want to." The spooky voice said before disappearing into the dark for the remainder of this twisted tale.
Seifer lit the torch, and found himself standing in the middle of a room filled with game equipment. There were tables filled with board games, like chess, checkers, risk, strageto, chutes and ladders, and candy land, everywhere. There was a pool table off in one corner with some arcade machines and an air hockey table to offset it. There were a few computer desks set up where people could link to some sort of network and play multiplayer Doom, and in the center of all this fan fair was a card table with a deck of 52 flat bicycles and a set of poker chips on it. Seifer took a couple of steps back and looked up at the bright neon sign that clearly said "Morely's Cave: The Gaming Paradise" on it and wondered how he had missed it before. Figuring it was another plot loop, he took a step back in and found a switch that turned on the overhead lights to reveal something he wasn't expecting: everyone in the room has sort of a wispy-glowing erethral quality to them. Ghosts.
And while they all acted happy, there was sort of an aura of sadness about them that Seifer could detect immediately. However, he wasn't allowed to ponder this fact for long before a cigarette smoking ghost stepped into the room. Everything went dead silent (pardon the pun) as the ghost floated up to Seifer.
"Excuse me, but I'm looking for the Sacred Golden Finger Ring of the Old Nameless Insane Asylum, and the singing bunny told me it was here, so do you think you could point me in the right direction?" Seifer asked the cigarette smoking ghost
"Nope. At least not until you best me in a game of poker. But I must warn you, if you loose, you're going to end up like all of the rest of these fine fellows here." The smoking ghost said as the rest of them waved. "Still want the rights to that ring?"
Seifer was about to respond, when his cell phone rang, startling everyone in the room. Game pieces flew everywhere and the ghosts flew about 20 feet into the air above where they had been floating in reaction to it. They all glared at Seifer who just shrugged at them and answered it.
"Dani, if you're about to tell me that I need to brush up on my poker skills, don't bother, I already know."
"I'm sorry, but I'm not Dani. This is Vanessa from the international telemarketer's corporation and we've discovered that you have an avid interest in - "
Seifer shut off the phone and put it back in his pocket. "Darn telemarketers, isn't there any place where they can't find you?"
All the ghosts in the room exchanged looks of understanding and went back to their games while the cigarette smoking ghost put on a poker visor and started dealing the cards. "Let's get started!"
"That's it, I give up. I have never been so humiliated in my entire life after death." the cigarette smoking ghost complained as Seifer laid his fifth winning hand in a row down on the card table.
"Now, where can I find the Sacred Golden Finger Ring?" Seifer asked
"Well, it used to be in the Old Nameless Insane Asylum, but that was burned down a few millennia ago because I kept forgetting to put out my cigarettes before I slept. Nasty habit, you know, it's what killed me in the first place. But, yeah, back to the ring thingie, last I heard some dude made it into a head ornament for his truck, and then sold it. Sorry."
Seifer sighed. "Somehow this doesn't surprise me. How do I get out of here?"
"Oh, that's the easy part. Yo, Bob! Show this guy to the elevator!"
As Bob floated over to the table, Seifer noticed that the aura of sadness around the ghosts was gone. He wondered vaguely if it had anything to do with his winning the poker games and being the first living creature who wandered in here to stay living in a long time, but then he stopped speculating and mentally shrugged. If he had helped them out, all the better. He then turned his attention back to the smoking ghost and gave him a strange look.
"Why do you have an elevator?" he asked
The ghost shrugged and took another puff of his cigarette. "Plot loop."
And so Seifer was brought back to civilization by the elevator and all he had to show for it was the loss of two juggling daggers, two matches, and a crazy story no one but the Mulders would ever possibly believe. Not exactly sure what to do next, Seifer followed the road he was taken to, hoping to end up in a place with an airport so he could fly home and get back to his typewriter.
Just then, the phone rang.
"Hello?" Seifer responded in a tired voice.
"Seifer! Look out behind you! There's a big - " Dani's frantic voice was cut off by the ten ton eighteen wheeler truck that blew it's horn as it swerved to avoid Seifer, who, startled, dropped the cell phone in the path of the wheels and was rewarded by the sight of it being smashed into itty bitty pieces of shrapnel. Seifer's attention then went back to the truck, which had run off the road and flipped over on its side. The driver was shouting profanities at him, but he didn't care. There was something about that cerulean blue paint truck that was begging him to come closer. So he did.
And, much to his surprise, he found that on the head of this truck was a bent and dented golden finger ring. Hoping that it was the one he was looking for (then again, how many golden finger rings to you find attached to the hoods of motor vehicles every day?), he tried to pull it off, but alas, it was no use. It was stuck.
Thinking quickly, Seifer dug out his lockpick kit and started using the picks as a hammer a chisel to chop the ring off. He then took the ring and sat down by the side of the road to watch the sun set and the truck explode as he examined it. It had caused him to go on some crazy adventure that had gotten him absolutely nowhere, but had proven that he could put his many skills to some sort of use. As he looked it over, he didn't notice anything special about it, so he started wondering: Why this ring and not some other sacred ring of something or other? Why is it this ring that can defeat the cursed mouse that's living on a steady diet of mimes and bowling balls...the mouse! I almost forgot about him!
Realizing that he still had a little bit of work left to do on his quest, he packed up his things and went looking for the nearest gas station, hoping there would be a working phone at it.
"Seifer! Are you alright? I was worried after that truck thing that you didn't get out of the way in time." Dani exclaimed
"Well, it's not so much that I jumped out of the way, it's more like fate made the truck jump out of my way."
"Whatever, did you get the ring?"
"Yeah, I have it right here...."
"Great! Now, put it on and concentrate your thoughts on either me or the mutant mouse."
Seifer put on a puzzled expression. "Why you or the mouse?"
"Well, me if you want some sort of explanation and/or funky equipment before you go off on a suicide mission to defeat the mouse, or the mouse itself if you just want to get this over with."
"I think I'll stick with the mouse. I don't trust this so-called 'funky equipment' of yours."
He could see Dani shrugging again. "Have it your way. All you have to do is get the ring on one of the mouse's fingers and that should reverse the curse."
"And you're sure about this?" Seifer asked
"As sure as I can be. I'm not exactly an expert at this sort of thing, you know."
"That makes me feel so much better." He said sardonically. "See you on the flip side." He added before putting on the ring and disappearing in a spatial wormhole that gave the illusion of instantaneous transportation to wherever you wanted to go, when in fact it actually took a couple of seconds.
Oh no! Is Seifer transporting to his doom? Will the ring work and the mouse be defeated or will bowling balls forever be a scarce commodity? Or will he even be able to transport to the right spot? And do we really want to know what this "funky equipment" Dani was talking about was? Stay tuned for the anti-climatic conclusion to Mission: Implausible!