Love Potion

I Tell Dad Jokes to a Sphinx

As I plodged wearily on through the tunnel, my stomach lamented and my eyes watered from the bleak dryness of the stone and dark. I wasn't sure if I was hungry or just gurgling complaintively from the horrid zam sandwiches. No, I was definitely hungry. You're not hungry, I told myself firmly. Chæzburgr, said my stomach.

Suddenly, my heart jolted in electrical recognition. The tunnel had opened out to a large, round space, which was circled with doors of every taste: a battered, holey wooden door, a tiny little flowered door, a grand archwayed door, a round, green door, a door with a fancy glass window, a metal barred door, a seemingly invisible stone brick door... I knew this room! If I remembered correctly, then each of these doors have a different monster on the other side, for you to get past in some manner. I wasn't supposed to know this, but unfortunately, I did.

All that the wall said was,

'Circle, circle, door, door, door,

Choose a door is all I ask,

But can you be sure of the other side?

Don't think too slow, don't think too fast.'

Well, that made Hwelpum's little hint earlier useless. I blew out my lips with a "prrrrbbbhhhh" (you know the noise), then spun on my heel. There were rather a lot of doors to choose from. Did I just pick my favourite? The one that looked the least dangerous? Was it a test of wit or heart? I didn't know. When Ermis did it, he chose the grand archwayed door, and on the other side was a large, snotty troll. Trolls are very stupid, so he distracted it with the rest of his chockyhuckle and dived through its legs. Unfortunately, I had no chockyhuckle to sacrifice.

I stood there for a long time, thinking too hard about how hard I was thinking. I felt so hollow with nervousness that I decided I would just spin around and whatever door I faced was the door I went through. I did so, but when I opened my eyes the webby, crippled old door gloomed before me.

Oh hell no, I thought, and decided on the next door instead: the tiny flowered door. Safe bet.

It was about a meter high, and opened like a catflap. I had to crawl through in order to fit, but it was still a squeeze. I felt a bit stupid and a bit like a cat.

This thought promptly vanished from my mind when my head poked through the other side and came face to face with a gleamy-eyed sphinx.

The scream that left my mouth then was the most hysterical and bloodcurdling scream I have, and probably will, ever uttered. Hissing, the sphinx cringed from the noise, into the corner of the small stone space the door had opened out to, and eyed me with wicked slits.

It was a beautiful creature, a slinky golden cat the size of a wolf, with big paddy-paws and large pink eyes and white wings that tucked into its sides. I was not to be perturbed by its beauty: I knew those big paws hid talons like kitchen knives that could slice open my stomach with one lazy bat. My mouth felt suddenly very dry. Its furry face, half human half feline, hissed at me, and it bared twinkling rows of fangs. 

The stone space was only about the inside of a van, and the sphinx took up half of it - its large gilt body was always blocking the tunnel out, and I suppose it was my hopeless task to get through it.

The sphinx growled at me in a voice like a gurgling hiss, "Whho are you ugly human?"

I swallowed, and it felt like my throat was cracking. "H-hello," I raspily stuttered, "I'm Cosmo."

"Fresshh meat?!" it purled.

"No!" I yelped. "I - I just-" I had noticed something glittering in the ground beside me. Looking closely, hidden in a small tuck in the stones, was a large, glittering pair of scissors. I realised quickly what these were for. A sphinx's weakness, like all cats, was its whiskers. And its vision wasn't great either, which was probably why it hadn't noticed the scissors.