Chapters

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Kids these days will never get to experience the mind-altering power of a jungle gym. There's something special about climbing up a dome of raw metal then slipping inside to watch a bunch of silhouettes against the sun crawling all around you. They've taken them all off the playgrounds now because too many kids got banged up on them. I'm not a parent so I probably don't understand, but the way I see it kids get banged up. It's just part of the territory. We all get two sets of teeth so we can screw up with the first one. What's it matter if a practice pearly gets knocked out? Anyway, it occurred to me as I woke up some hours or maybe days after the Fort Knox job that a kid who never played on a jungle gym wouldn't have anything to compare the feeling to, were he to wake up where and how I did.

It was all hazy and a little hard to breathe. The place kinda smelled like a steam room, all heavy air, skin, sweat and some kind of minty overtone. I heard shuffling all around me, the occasional click and sigh. I stood up and freaked out a little because I remembered all of a sudden that I'd been shot in the leg. But then, there wasn't any pain. In fact, I couldn't even find the wound. My head wasn't all the way healed, though. There was still a raw spot above my right eye from where I hit it on the rock. All around me I could see these shadows skip along weird rock formations stretching out in arches and beams. I was in a sort of pit with an incline going into it. When I climbed out, I felt like I would've pissed myself if I'd had any water in me. There I was, God knows how far from civilization, trapped in a massive cavern with more naked stoic lesbians than I could count.

A few of them saw me and they started toward me. It'd be a lie to say I thought I was gonna die. I didn't have a clue what they'd do to me and I'd seen enough in the past few months to know better than to assume. I went down the check list in my head about how not to provoke a stoic: Don't make any sudden moves, don't try to look bigger than them, don't point at them, don't shout, don't shine any bright lights on them. And most importantly, if one looks directly at you, do not break eye contact until they do, especially to look at another stoic. I closed my eyes and tried to beat down the part of me that just wanted to run. The two that took an interest in me, they started pawing at my pockets and yanking the fabric of my shirt, all while making those clicking sounds. One of them stole my wallet and when I cracked one eye open I saw that it started eating my money, taking little nibbles out of the bills and sucking on the coins like those little peppermints out front of restaurants.

That's when I heard this extra loud succession of clicks. High up on a ledge I saw Link's pet, then all the others backed away into corners. The pet jumped down and walked toward me on its hind legs, almost like a person only... only a lot sexier. It grabbed hold of my shoulder and started making this humming sound, its eyes glowing orange. I got weak in the knees like I was really hungry and just before I dropped I saw hair start to sprout on the pet's head. When the room stopped spinning, it had a full mane just like before I shaved it off. The pet took me by the wrist and dragged me across the cavern until we came to an opening. When we got outside, it was a clear, quiet night in the Kentucky hills. We weren't far from the road. I only know this because I saw some headlights coming around a bend. I got to my feet just in time to see the stoic leap into the distance faster than I could follow. A few seconds later, the headlights lurched to a stop and a scream almost too distant to hear cut the peace from the moonlight.