CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

Lost in the Writing 101 Labyrinth Caves

Prompt:





The WDC 101 Labyrinth to be exact! I think there’s a Minotaur in here, so you’d better hurry and find a way to escape! Luckily, before entering the labyrinth, I gave each of you a cookie (your choice of flavor), a paperclip, and a toy truck for your amusement. There are two ways to free yourself from the labyrinth: 1.) Learn something new and teach us what you learned, or 2.) Dig your way free with the tools provided. Good luck.











I am carrying my Giant Sugar Cookie for luck, scurrying and stumbling through caves. It's 25 inches in diamater, so it will provide good eating for 3 days (or 10 minutes) if like Floyd Collins I should find myself lost never to return (ditto Stephen King's September 2018  novel The Outsider). I am so glad, even though I fear caves, that this is November, not October, and so I am not stuck in a Corn Maze (Maize Maze). At least in these caves there should be no Scarecrow (animate or inanimate) and especially no He Who Walks Behind the Rows (shudders).





Well, needs must when the Devil drives, so press on I do. This passageway in which I find myself does have a high ceiling and the walls are widely separated, so I don't feel too claustrophobic yet (even though I can't see where I entered, and all beyond the archway at my back is pitch black).





To the left, I hear a crumble sound, and I see an archway, dimly lit. I hurry in that direction. Inside is an Elf, typing on a laptop, exposing his Portfolio to potential new WDC members,  and with each click, a chocolate chip cookie drops from the ceiling of the cavern room and falls into a dragon shaped cookie jar! How appealing! Or, appealing until the dragon jar turns its electric green head and bares its teeth at me.





So I cuddle my sugar cookie tighter and move on. Forward, but wait, a wider archway up ahead on my right. So dark, but—off against the far wall, in the distance, another strangely glowing light. As it brightens, I spot an Ogre, playing with an rfrid. With surprisingly keen hearing, he notices me too, raises his head, and bares some really ugly Gargoyle-like teeth. I scatter.





Straight ahead, the passageway yawns to the east, and several feet farther on, it ends in an alcove. A tiny Sidhe sits  cross-legged before another glowing laptop, reading Portfolios marked with white feathers. I have seen enough. I really need to find my way out and back home. But suddenly, a blinding roar, and from seemingly out of nowhere rushes a huge horned beast dressed only in striped knee breeches, with long talons on each hand. His left hand slaps the laptop and knocks the Sidhe from her perch, his right hand strikes  at me.





Now I am a ghost, a wandering ghost, and like Floyd Collins in his caves in Kentucky, I am condemned to wander in these caverns forever. Maybe if I do well, I'll get a laptop to read Writing 101 too.