Caves

Caves.

They're a fact of life.

For a lot of people, caves can be an unpleasant experience--they're dark, a bit creepy, and they're often associated with claustrophobia, bats, and showing up drunk at family reunions to reveal embarrassing and nearly buried memories about cousins. But whatever you want to say about them, I like to think I've enjoyed them for the most part (caves, not cousins).

Our family sometimes went to the Garden of the Gods to admire the Kissing Camels and make our way to a shallow cave just past a grove of gray prickly bushes. We would climb the staggering seven feet to the cave and pretend we were tall and adventurous cave people. I seem to remember there had also been some folklore or rumors about the cave related as well, something about bats or a bear, or maybe a cave troll (don't get me started on cave trolls). Either way, we probably made it up anyways. Since we were children and having fun, these instances usually lasted no more than twenty minutes before our parents took us away and beat us savagely.

I suppose the only real real cave I've ever been in is the Cave of the Winds. It's called the Cave of the Winds because the whistling bottle-noise it makes from the breeze sucked into the open pockets leading to the surface. Also, it was the battleground the infamous fisticuffs between the Wind god Arzureus and William Shatner, which would decide the future of both their acting careers (Shatner lost, obviously, and Arzureus went on to star in several delightful romantic comedies).

We went there just today actually. It was a walk down nostalgia road while I ran my hand down the scorched walls and found a chip of Shatner-tooth still lodged in a stalagmite (not to be confused with a stalactite, since you might trip over it oh ho ho ho ho ho ho). My first time in Cave of the Winds had been in maybe elementary school. I say maybe because it's hard to keep track of time when you're immortal.

Anyways, I remember it being an overall pleasant experience. The school field trip had allowed us to visit private sections of the cave. We were even allowed to crawl into small holes and feel what it was like to be a miner lost in the dark, his fingers scrambling against rock and dirt, his thoughts skittering between the lamp he had accidentally broke the day before and how long he would last like this, his voice hoarse from screaming quiet now because the echoes started to sound less like him and more like a wounded animal his wife and child still at home how long would he be missed I don't want to die this way dear god dear god why me not like this not like this.

It was great fun, and this was back in the day when crawling in a hole was still mandatory and not another thing to protect your child from.

Since I was manly even then, I wiggled into the hole and pushed down my fears. Sure, there was claustrophobia, but that was easily outweighed by the annoyance for this girl in front of me, who stopped midway to cry. I mean, geez, it's only a small space with layers and layers of earth above and below you. And you choose halfway to give up? Look, all you do is keep wiggling forward until your head hits something, then you twist your spine like so and crawl up the tighter earthen shaft until you can heave yourself the opposite way into the tunnel above us.

Needless to say, the girl died and I crawled over her corpse muttering under my breath. I noted the location of her body because if I got lost in there, y'know, gotta eat some time. I popped the teacher right in the kisser when she asked where little Emily was because the tour had to go on.

Later on I remember crawling up a steep cave floor, looking up and seeing a kid in my class sitting at the top where it was flat, meeting his apathetic gaze, and then experiencing a stinging blindness as he went out of his way to kick dirt in my eyes in order to entertain the friends who sat with him. To this day I'm still a bit sore about that. I flew into a blind (ha ha) rage and probably tore him limb from limb, bringing the field trip death toll to two.

I was young and foolish. I did not know that the scent of blood would bring on the mole people.

They came from the dark, crouched low to the ground and too fast for their size. Immediately I applied my training from the marines and snapped one's neck, taking his tattered fur cloak for my own and rubbing his musk and oily ichor upon my skin. I knew that if I were to keep alive I would have to act as one of them. Following the mole people's lead, I descended upon my own classmates...and fed.

Once our mole bellies were bloated with apple juice and the grease of small children, we fled into the darkness of the cave back to the Mole City below.

What can I say about Mole City? It had none of the graceful indecisiveness of Jellyfish Palace. Everything was dark, gritty, and not unlike New York (which I have vast amounts of experience with since I've seen all the batman movies). And everywhere it was very busy: the average day for a mole person consists of much shuffling, snuffling, scuffling, and, of course, guffling.

Interspersed in all of this was complaining, the occasional feastings upon the man children of the surface, more complaining, and then keeping the mole economy in mole shambles so the good mole citizens would have mole to complain about. Mole.

Not surprisingly, I integrated myself into mole society pretty well. I had all the basics down already: stooping with a horrible posture, frowning, grunting, scratching, all the things that make life worth livin'. Soon I had a mole wife (Moledred) and two lovely mole children (Molebert and Moledeline). I rose up the ranks until I became a mole senator for Mole city. I had a successful run until scandalous photographs of me arose. Their subject: me stooping with a horrible posture, frowning, grunting, and scratching, but as a man child instead of a respectable mole senator.

I lost everything. My mole status was stripped from me, Moldred took the mole children from me and mole'd to another mole city. The only reason they didn't eat me right there was because I had been in politics and politicians taste HORRIBLE. Outcast, I shuffled out of the city and through countless tunnels of black despair until I saw the unfamiliar light of day. My mole eyes grew charming and blue (green?) again.

And my first encounter with a human in years was just outside a cave entrance near a meadow where a little girl had wandered to pick flowers.

"What happened to you, mister?" she asked upon seeing my pale visage.

"Dear child," I whispered, "what year is this? Is it 2012 yet?"

"No. What does that have to do with any--"

And then I devoured her on the spot and immediately felt bad about it because I just knew it was going straight to my thighs.

Y'know, I learned something today. It's healthy to stoop, guffle, or eat children. But when you're eating children only to fit in, or when you're kicking dirt in other kids' faces just to impress friends, why, those acts lose their initial magic. Guffling under peer pressure isn't guffling at all. I had to learn the hard way--even today I have to fight the urge to go to a playground and just totally pig out. And all because I wanted to fit in! Since then I have learned to treat myself with the occasional skinny orphan.

It's like Mayor Mole once told me, "Well, mah mole, you ain't gotta mole much to know when you've been mole'd. Because once you sell your mole, the only mole you have left is moley mole mole. And that, mah mole, is a very mole thing indeed. Mole."