When he finally awoke, his head was in pain. It was dark with faint light in the distance. Above him water dropped upon his head, only to have the consistency of blood when he touched his head and quickly retracted his hand. The stone walls of the passageway seemed old, slowly eroding by the passage of time. With the only direction he could go being toward the light he began his crouched over walk. The pathway turned slightly, and the light grew bigger, but it still seemed far off. He could start to see the details in the walls. Stone carvings lined every ten feet with pictures of men at tables with empty plates. In every successive picture the me. At the tables seemed to get more upset until finally they walked off.

He had finally reached the source of the light and at it was a four-way intersection of tunnels. He paused to tend to his wounds, using a few paper napkins to blot his gashes. His headache was subsiding. The sound of footsteps could be heard, and he quickly pushed his heavy body against a wall, trying to squeeze himself out of existence and out of their line of sight. Soon another set of footsteps could be heard, this time coming from the opposite direction. They were coming closer. His sweat mixed with blood. His anxiety about being murdered or indoctrinated into a cult was higher than it regularly was.

When the footsteps stopped and he opened his eyes, there was a man and a woman in front of him. The man dressed as a pizza delivery boy and the woman in casual street ware.

“Who the fuck are y’all?” He asked.

“Well, funny story, that.” Said the girl.

“We’re the characters from the early chapters that the author completely abandoned,” said the pizza man, “I bet you’re his next victim. What’s your name? I’m Jerry Pomade.”

“I’m not sure the fucker has even given me a name yet.” He said, “I think he thinks my name is he.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” said the girl, “he was probably attempting to set up some dramatic reveal and just forgot. This guy doesn’t have the longest attention span. I got fired and was just crossed the threshold and I got dropped. I’m Sara.”

“Bud, what name do you want to be called?” Asked Jerry.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Well, jerry Pomade is a pretty cool name” he said.

“No, that’s my name. You can’t have my name.”

“Well, what’s something that sounds plausible yet cool? How about ‘Cool Jerry’?”

“You can’t be cool Jerry because then that would mean I’m the uncool Jerry by default for whatever remaining time we have together.”

“Okay, how about Flavor Town Jones? That sounds cool, right?”

Sara held back her laughter. “Not at all, but I think it works for the setting,” she said, “anyway, where are we now? What just happened?”

“Oh, I went to a movie night run by a cult and when I went to take a dump I accidentally pulled a secret lever and fell into this tunnel.”

Jerry thought for a moment. “Yeah, that would make sense. I was delivering a pizza to a cult, but I got lost in these tunnels and I ate it. Sara, how’d you get here?”

“Authorial intent.”

“I guess the only way to go now is through the last path with the light,” Jones said, “yeah, I like that, ‘Jones said’. Sick. Hell yeah. Flavor Town Jones said that.” Said Flavor Town Jones.

“I hope they don’t get mad at the pizza thing,” said Jerry as he stained longingly at the carvings of empty tables and upset men. The three began their dissent through the narrow path to the light, now united in a goal to find a way out.

After walking for what seemed like an entire commercial break, the group came to the end of the tunnel marked by a torch and a door. Jerry slowly twisted the handle. They had stumbled upon the balcony second floor of a great dining hall. The walls were stone painted gold. The marble handrails were also painted in gold. There was a running theme that most of the object in the room were forcibly made to look gold, even if their inherent nature was to not be gold. Whomever this cult was, they had no sense of interest decorating aesthetic beyond what they thought wealthy people did, which was paint everything gold.

When the group looked bellow upon the first floor from the bannister, they found a large table surrounded by chairs with small water fountains making a perimeter around them. But the most striking part of the room was the one object not painted gold. A twenty by ten-foot giant stone carving, depicting a man slitting the throat of a bull.

“We’re in some deep shit, me thinks,” whispered Jerry, as doors from below could be heard slamming open along with footsteps and the chatter of men.

“The deepest shit,” whispered Sara.