My name is Ben.

On my 21st Birthday something strange happened... I became a dungeon.

In retrospect the copious drinking of that night probably had a large part to do with the decisions that led me to the dingy, back-alley tattoo parlour emblazoned with the rather dubious moniker “Mystic Bindings”, but I was only going to be 21 once and it was unlikely my friends and family were ever going to provide me with as much free drink ever again, if only because I think I drank them into lifelong debt to pay for my inebriation this time round.

Besides, I don’t think I’d ever seen the strange, almost medieval-looking shop before and I generally walked past that alley maybe once, twice a week.

It was probably me being my normal unobservant self though, as it looked like it had been there for centuries. It had these massive dribbled candles in outside lanterns and the faded and crumbling black paint on the door and windows had this layered look that occurs only after a couple of generations of indecisive shop owners, with moments of optimistic pink or homicidal lime green peeking out from the cracks.

I will admit to being slightly uneasy that I can’t remember the tattooist’s face at all, but he seemed like a fairly cool guy and he shared my love for those old dungeon builder strategy games like Dungeon Keeper and my own personal favourite Dungeons of Lilliputia.

We ended up chatting for ages and I remember spending a good 15 minutes haranguing him into tattooing the logo for Dungeons of Lilliputia on the left side of my chest over my heart, those giant ornate metal and wood dungeon doors that used to excite my with possibilities when I was younger.

After that my memories go black, like an ominous void.

Hungover the next day, my head pounding like the fresh undead fighting their way out of the coffin, was when I found out about the other aspects to the tattoo.

To start with I wasn’t expecting it to feel so real though. I could actually feel the woodgrain and I think I actually jabbed myself on the spikes. When the door on my chest began to open inwards with the vast echoing boom however, my worries about a minor cut on my finger vanished instantly. I ran towards my bathroom, to check the only mirror in the apartment. I wasn’t a doctor, but I was pretty sure gaping holes in your chest weren’t a good thing.

“It rises brothers! After It!” were the words that I ignored, coming from the carpet.

I was very hungover.

Arriving at the mirror, surprisingly alive and without any kind of fluid gushing from my chest I look into the darkness in my chest and see a long cavernous hall with an impressively spikey throne at the far wall. Shit. Well, that’s a thing...

And that’s when I felt itching, pulling pains shooting up my left leg. I looked down to see tiny, centimetre tall men with ropes and grappling hooks climbing upward.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Aaaagh!" I screamed, brushing off the tiny intruders climbing up my leg. They tried to hold on, their pickaxes dug into me like pin pricks.

"Get off me!" I cried, my mind reeling at all these unnatural occurrences happening all around me. One of them, a man in a brown tunic, fell off my calf with a wail. His body hit the floor with a -- plink -- and shattered into specs of light.

Easy clean up, I noted, blinking in confusion.

"It's resisting!" yelled one of the tiny men. "Hurry!"

A dozen more of them had reached my upper thigh, and in panic I swept them off. Like swarms of insects, however, some had grappled onto my hand, and were dangling off their tiny ropes, as more of them were crushed into shattering light with more --plinks--.

They were soon crawling all over me, and I rushed to the shower, thinking to wash them all down the drain, when suddenly something small and tiny slipped inside my very being.

-- An Adventurer (Maius - Level 6 Warrior) has entered! --

I screamed at the intrusion. It felt like a pebble in your shoe, small, annoying, intrusive, but a million time worse, since it felt as if it was happening directly inside my soul.

One of the tiny people had made it past the opening and was making his way cautiously down my my chest corridor. "I think it's a Level 1 dungeon! This should be easy!" he shouted to his comrades still trying to climb up my body.

I raised my trembling hand to the dark hole in the middle of my chest, but I couldn't bring myself to actually reach inside.

That was when another one made it.

-- An Adventurer (Cairain - Level 4 Barbarian) has entered! --

 Remembering the spiked walls on the far end of the corridor, a thought occurred to me and I lay down on my back on the bathroom floor. Immediately, the tiny intruders, taken by surprise, started sliding down toward the spikes. I could feel their quiet screams of panic and their desperate attempt to cling onto the smooth vertical wall.

-- Plink! Plink! --

The intruders were gone, snuffed out of existence. I could feel them disappear, just as I felt a rush of something I had never felt before: energy, life, exhilaration. I gasped. It was a tiny drop, but it was... delicious.

"Hhh HHHa HHHoooh my god," I said, my jittery hands clutching my head and searching my hair for intangible answers.

As the euphoria that gripped me faded, I noticed that my hangover was completely gone. I jerked my head and jumped up and down, just to make sure there wasn't any lingering malaise.

Nope, I confirmed to myself, It is completely gone. 8 beers and who knows how many shots. No hangover.

I immediately dropped to my knees and shimmied over to the couch. I brought my eye close so I could see underneath it.

Nope, I thought, frustrated.

Next, I went to my kitchen to check around the trash bin. Ants always tried to congregate around there so I figured it was a good place to look.

"Damnit," I said, realizing there were ONLY ants by the trash bin.

I rushed over to my front door, unsure of what I was expecting to find outside, but in desperate need for more of the tiny men to consume. The sun shown beautifully through a smattering of clouds in such a way that it created rays of light that shot down from the heavens. Birds chirped careless tunes because they didn't have to worry about bills, jobs, or any of the problems humans did. Neighbors waved, happily exchanged tools that they would never return, and in general, just went about their perfect summer lives. The day was objectively beautiful.

It wasn't beautiful to me though. It might as well been shit...

I slammed my front door, fell to my knees, and screamed, "I NEEED MOOOOOOORE!"