Strange stories

The corridor

The stench of long deceased treasure hunters, explorers and thrill seekers permeates the dimly lit hallway with its dread instilling tentacles and the footfalls of its latest soon to be victim echo within its walls.

A tall man, with a skinny build adorned in a knee length trench coat with a belt strapped tightly around his left leg just above the knee over his woolen trousers. On his head rests a bicorn hat worn with a tip facing forward and the back end completely torn off. A stern expression concealed beneath a cloth bandana pulled over his nose covering his mouth. A torch is held aloft in his left hand bringing little comfort from its light.

His eyes are locked steady forward, dead set on reaching the end of this tunnel for there is rumor spreading among the hunters league about an inconceivable deity resting somewhere within the hallway. The path to the corridor has been kept utmost secret to prevent further lunatics and poor sods from pursuing the end of the corridor under the lie of treasure. The deity that rests within is said to grant immense and forbidden knowledge upon those who witness it, thus according to the scriptures found near the entrance of the deadly path. The corridor was built to deter and stop any from seeking the deity and wreaking havoc with the knowledge it grants.

The hunters foot falls heavily on a raised stone and his breath catches. A click of an unseen contraption is heard as the hunter tosses his torch behind him and rolls backwards. A deafening volley of fire tipped bolts race from previously unseen holes in the left wall crash into and splinter on the stones of the right, clattering off of a skeleton left there clad only in ragged cloth.

The hunter with racing heart, calms his breathing and scribbles a quick note with fluorescing ink on the tiles of the floor, and waits for the volley to cease.

Once past the first initial trap and several meters farther along the corridor the corpse count increases. Skeletons without arms surround a raised stone in the floor which the hunter notices and easily steps over. A couple more meters along, blood drips from the ceiling onto a string spun across the width of the hallway where a fresher corpse hangs impaled from a stone spike on the ceiling. The hunter takes a weight out of a pouch tied to his waist and tosses it onto the tripwire. The stone spike along with the bleeding corpse blast downwards with incredible force almost gusting the hat off of the hunters head. The spike stops mere millimeters from the stone floor and starts to retract upwards slowly, the force of the descent leaving the corpse on the floor.

The hunter picks up the weight, being careful of the tripwire, scribbles another note in fluorescent ink in front of the tripwire and proceeds forward. Further along the hallway, the hunter comes across a trap most unique.

A similar bicorn hat to the one atop the hunters head lay in the floor. Submerged in the stone tiles as if floating in water with the forward tip of the hat visible. The hunter deftly pulls another weight from a pouch and tosses it onto the hat in the floor.The hat and weight both plunk down into the tiles as if they were both thrown into a lake and disappear beneath the rippling stones. A terrible slashing occurs as something thrashes below the stone water and splashes the stone looking liquid into the air which then rains back down into the floor. Perplexed as to the traps construction, the hunter removes a staff, about an arms length, from a tie on his back. The hunter takes the staff in both hands and pulls the ends of the staff in opposite directions. The staff extends and locks, retaining its new length. The hunter carefully prods the area around where the weight and hat disappeared and draws a rough outline of the traps length and depth in fluorescent ink on the right hand wall. The hunter pulls the staff from the strange water and extends it further. The hunter breathes, calms his nerves and hardens his resolve.

He backs up a few steps and runs full speed at the liquid stone pool.

Right at the edge of where the tiles turn to liquid the hunter leaps forward and jabs the pole deep into the pool, vaulting across the deadly trap. The hunter expertly lands and rolls on the other side of the pool. He hurriedly scribbles another fluorescent note on the floor along with a line to indicate the edge of the pool. The hunter stands up, snaps his staff into its original length and marches onward.

The further the hunter progresses, the stranger the traps get. A ball of stone that hovers above the floor, surrounded by disgusting balls of gore that compresses anything it touches into compact spheres. A wall of knives, each individually tied to the ceiling by threads, sharp enough to cut by simply touching the blade to an object. An unknowably deep hole in the floor that whistles when the gusts from the inside of the cold corridor pass over it. And a mirror that shows only the clothes of the hunter, and not him within them.

Finally, after many incredible traps, notes, corpses and anomalies, the hunter stands before a door with a single skeleton with no discernible cause of death, eons old and clad in ancient robes that have been preserved, at the foot of the door. Innumerable and strange locks surround the entire rim where the door connects to the walls. The hunter ponders the locks and reaches for the simple looking latch. As his gloved hand touches the handle of the lock, a piercing pain happens from within his glove. He jerks his hand back and clutches at his palm. A needle had sprung from the latch lock into his right hand and broken off when he jerked his hand off of the latch.

A very ominous looking purple liquid dribbles from the needle in the hunters palm and drips onto the floor. The hunter, trained to respond to needles and strange liquid being an indicator of poison immediately tries to rip the needle from his palm, but the needle holds fast and the liquid dribbling from the needle increases in pace to a steady flow.

The hunter starts to panic and tries to remove the needle once more. The needle sinks painfully deeper into his palm and the purple liquid starts to gush from the other end of the needle and spill onto the floor. The hunter quickly becomes noticeably dizzy and the glove starts to loosen around his hand. In the blink of an eye the hunter has a general remedy for poisons raised in his hand which he downs with vigor.

Alas, after several minutes of waiting, nothing changed. Trudging back through the corridor in his condition would kill him faster than the needle in his hand. The hunter knows all hope for ever escaping this hell corridor in time to seek a medical professional from the league has now vanished. Vanished along with the purple liquid on the floor. Knowing his minutes are numbered and his time at and end, he sits down on the floor and pulls the note pen from his pouch one last time.

As the needles purple spew worsens and his glove now flaps empty. His hand, if there even is one in his glove anymore, was devoid of all feeling and his arm started to experience a prickling sensation. Barely conscious and writing with his off hand the hunter scribbles in a barely legible script about what is happening to him, why it happened to him and how to possibly avoid it, on the wall next to the door. He finishes yet still feels an extreme impending dread.

The hunter starts to scrawl his life story on the wall. how he came to join the league, how many beasts he has slain, all the anomalies he had taken care of and a record of his adoptive family.

A tear and a sob escape the hunter as his entire right arm, his whole right leg and the right side of his body have departed. The deluge from the needle hanging from the loose glove on the end of his coat arm was starting to let up.

The hunter scoots what little body he has left over to the wall and lays on his side. His left hand writes whatever he can think of, everything, anything had to go on to the wall. He did not want to be forgotten.

A floating and disembodied gloved left hand, attached to an empty hunters outfit, illegibly scrawls a prayer to a god who is not listening on the door before the glove drops to the floor. Empty.