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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ravilah" data-source="post: 1580584" data-attributes="member: 19724">But the door did not lead outside.  If anything, Bobby had run into an even darker room.  He could still feel the wetness of the steam on his face, but the new room was much colder than the rest of the factory, making him shiver violently. Instinctively, Bobby checked to see if the comic book still stuck out of his pocket before moving on. The room could not have been large, because Bobby's hands felt another wall after only a few steps, though this wall had the cold, rough feel of stone.  Completely disoriented, Bobby tried to make his way back to the door. "Maybe I can hear if they've gone...or killed each other." The second thought formed a deep pit in his stomach.After his tenth step Bobby knew he was not facing the right direction. "I should have hit the door by now, or at least the other wall."  Just as he considered turning around again, his foot kicked something on the floor, accompanied by the sound of shattering pottery.  "Great. With my luck, I've probably knocked over a  Ming vase or something. Maybe these guys stash their stolen stuff back here. I'm an idiot. I never should have come here."  Bobby bent to the ground, trying to figure out what he had kicked.  His hands fell on several large, curved pieces of what felt like ceramic, though all the pieces seemed to be covered in something wet and slimey. "Oh, gross!" he said aloud, dropping the pieces to the ground with another crash. Standing straight, Bobby suddenly realized that he could see somewhat. A vague, reddish light had been slowly growing, giving a sense of shape and dimension to the room.  The walls of the room were apparently curved, forming a large circle.  A huge, twisted shape dominated the center of the room, and Bobby squinted at it several times before recognition siezed his brain, throwing him back against the wall.  The bared claws and horrible open maw of a scaly monster rose directly in front of him, the red light pouring from the creature's mouth.  New sweat poured instantly from every pore on his body, then went instantly cold. It took a full minute for him to realize that it was a statue.The ever-growing light now clearly revealed the scales, teeth, frills, and tail of what some artist had certainly intended to be a dragon. "I've wandered into China Town," thought Bobby with a sign of relief, "I didn't even know they had a China Town in Anaheim." He could now see that his foot had smashed a wide, but shallow, ceramic bowl, which had been filled with an oily liquid, colored black in the red light.  Several such bowls made a circle around the dragon statue. But Bobby's curiosity was waning quickly as hunger and cold overtook excitement and fear.  Walking around to the other side of the statue, he found the large double doors. Oddly, Bobby did not recall them being double doors when he had entered in the dark, nor quite so hard to push open (and hadn't there been a doorknob rather than a handle?), but the doors opened, at last, into a long, stone hallway.  Statues of many strange creatures, though all much smaller than the dragon,  lined the hall on both sides. "What happened to the factory?" thought Bobby," I'm sure didn't come in from this way. I must have missed the other door."  He turned away from the hall of statues, only to have a sudden wave of heat hit him in the face.  The dragon statue had begun to glow all over, and was radiating heat as if someone had just opened the mouth of an oven. Squinting into the light, Bobby's eye caught the sign of movement.  At first he thought that the statue was melting, for one of its claws was starting to bend.  But a moment later, the huge, horrible claw started to flex, rippling its long, spear-sharp digits.Again, Bobby ran. If this was some sort of sadistic funhouse, he was not amused.  All he wanted was a door that opened up on sunlight; he prayed as he ran down the statue-line hallway, telling God that he would never accept an offer of easy money again, just so long as he could find the way out. The floor unexpectedly lurched under his feet, which sent him sprawling. "This is not the time for an earthquake," he said out loud as he tried to stand. But the ground continued to tremble violently every few seconds, and Bobby had to grab the head of the nearest statue to keep his balance.  Catching his breath,  Bobby took a good look at the statues around him, and saw that aside from being terribly realistic, all of them rested on odd stone mounds rather than pedestals. The one across from him was a large, but strangely thin, cat-like creature, with six pairs of legs.  The one he held was of a skeletal looking man with pointed ears, clasping a sword to his chest.  The sword, Bobby noticed on his second glance, was actually real--glinting metalically in the statues's stone hands. Curiosity returned, and leaning his spectacled face close to the hilts, Bobby could clearly read the name "ROBERT" spelled in gold and red.Another tremor rang through the hall, this time accompanied by a sound so terrible that both curiosity and surprise at finding his name on the sword both fled and vanished.  The sound could be compared to either the opening of mile-high iron doors groaning under a thousand years of rust, or the roar of some pained and angry beast.  In his current surroundings, Bobby's imagination tended toward the latter image.  The tremor once again set Bobby off balance, and he toppled to the floor with a metalic clatter.A metalic clatter? Bobby turned his head, and saw that the sword lay a foot from his side.  Then his eyes fell upon the statue of the skeletal man.  The man's emaciated hands flexed much as the dragon's had done. Panic rising more than ever, Bobby turned to the statue of the cat-beast, and saw three of its six legs were pawing at the mound beneath them.  Glittering bits of metal fell from the mound. Coins. The statues were all resting on piles of coins.Curiosity, however, made no attempts at another visit. Bobby grabbed the sword off the floor, got to his feet, and continued down the hall at a sprint.  The heavy, awkward blade made running more difficult, but Bobby felt the primal, unspeakable need to be holding something pointy and dangerous.  In his peripheral vision, Bobby could see statues beginning to writh and move all around him. The floor still shook, and the horrible roar sounded twice more down the impossibly long hallway.  With a surge of adrenaline, Bobby saw another set of double doors ahead.  Hardly slowing, he slammed into the doors, which unexpectedly swung open effortlessly.  Daylight.  Wonderful, blessed, blinding daylight shone from a cloudless blue sky.  Cold, fresh, mountain air filled his lungs as he hurtled through the doors, only to find that no path or landing lay beyond them.  Slipping on a ledge of loose gravel, Bobby went tumbling and sliding down the steep slope, rocks and dirt roiling around him.  For one moment, Bobby felt himself free falling, then felt the air crushed out of his lungs as he landed, his skull rebounding against a hard surface.  Instinctivley, Bobby tried to feel if his comic book still stuck out of his back pocket.  It was his last thought before everything went black.</blockquote>

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