In a small town in upstate New York just outside of Buffalo a young man was hanging his head in a locker room. The locker room had all the smells of sweat, body odor and wet leather you’d expect in a locker room. The room was quiet except for the hum of the florescent lighting and the young man simply stared at the rubber floor in front of him, tears in his eyes.
He was 18, moderately tall by American standards at 6’, with an athletic build; wide shoulders and big muscular thighs, with a strong middle. He had dark brown hair with a little wave to it, long enough to reach his shoulders, it was tied back in a ponytail. While no woman would ever write sonnets about his face, his eyes, he knew women did find rather attractive, they were green with a little grey in them. Now clouded over with tears, his teammates long gone, he still sat in the locker room, grieving in his heart. This was his last time playing hockey.
He was rather good at the sport, but never was good enough to make a career out of it. A fact he knew quite well. He had played club hockey, high school hockey, but failed every junior hockey tryout he had tried. He remembered the words of one of his goaltender coaches, who once said “everyone has a ceiling, they can get really good at a level, then they stop getting good, only the truly great players can break through those higher levels.” At the time he had dismissed that talk as the talk of a defeatist. Unfortunately, he now knew how true it was. No matter how many camps he went to, no matter how many hours of practice he put in, he hit a ceiling at the age of 17, and never got better. There were players on his team he knew were going on to play Division I hockey for such powerhouses as Cornell and Brown, even Niagara. None of them as important or as comparatively good in their position as he was at Goal. Yet while colleges came and recruited them he was left as an afterthought. It didn’t help one of his best friends was a highly recruited Basketball player. Or his own brother was a highly recruited Lacrosse player. Heck his brother didn’t even LIKE Lacrosse.
Staring at the florescent lights, choking back sobs, he slowly stood up. He took some time in the shower composing himself. Dressing was mechanical. Boxers, Jeans, white tee-shirt, flannel long sleeved shirt, a hat bearing the logo of his favorite hockey team, the Buffalo Sabres. He knew his girlfriend and father were waiting so he couldn’t take much longer. Thinking of Jenn, her bright smile, those nerdy glasses she sometimes wore, her great figure, most of his depression was blown away. She was easily one of the most beautiful girls he had ever met. Way out of his league was what he thought when he first met her. That they quickly started dating still was almost magical to him. Before meeting her he had laughed at all those love songs on the radio. Now he sort of got it. They hadn’t been dating long, but she had become a very important part of his life. With Jenn his father was also waiting, his mouth turned up in a small smile. His father was the only parent left to him, his mother had passed away years ago, he wasn’t even a fan of hockey, yet he never missed a game. He had friends in high school who complained about their parents, he felt nothing but gratitude for his. The immense sadness of the prior half hour, his mournful goodbye to his favorite pastime was not fully washing away, however it was a bit muted after thinking about the two waiting for him. Picking up the now useless equipment he slung the heavy bag and pads over his shoulder, then picked up the wooden stick and walked out of the dressing room, into a blinding white light
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His right foot hit the floor and he staggered, feeling stone under his foot now bare foot, the weight of the equipment was gone and the cold breeze told him he was now fully nude. His eyes cleared after blinking them a few times and took a few moments to adjust to the low torchlight in the stone chamber he was now in. There were short bearded men all around him 8 or 10 of them, all with dark crescent moons on their foreheads. They wore dark brown cloaks and blue light was shining, linking all of them together, yet strangely that light cast no shadows and did not light up the dim room. It was more of an illusionary “fake” light then real. His mouth tried to twitched into a frown. His green eyes looked left to right, as he scanned the faces of the men, they all had their eyes closed and seemed to be straining; just as he was about to try to move he noticed he couldn’t. He was sealed in place and the reality he was seeing faded out back to the hallway, equipment he was carrying again weighing on his shoulders, he was now dressed again and seeing what he should have been seeing all long, the stone well-lit wall of the hockey arena.
Flicker, now he was back in the small stone room surrounded by short men
Flicker, now he was back in the hallway
Flicker, flicker, flicker
Light became blinding, the sensation of crossing back and forth occurred rapidly, too fast to count, then the frozen locked sensation vanished and he moved forward a step, staggering and collapsing nude on a cold filthy stone floor at the feet of the robed men.
“Elude nep er din DAJAH!” One of the robed men shouted out in a strange language, and a clamber arose around him. He tried to stand up, but the ringing in his ears and the blinding light from the “portal?” made it all but impossible to coordinate. The nonsensical words of the others around him, the horrid smell of the pitch torches and the buzzing “fuzzy” feeling in his head mostly rendered him unable to function.
Rough hands seized him under his arms and lifted him to his feet. Not easily, as he was much larger than the other men around him. All of whom seemed to top out at around his mid chest, which put them in the low five-foot range for height.
“Who are you?” the voice was a bit slurred as he still was working through the pins and needle feel to his body.
These words set off another cascade of jabbering in that strange language, before he felt something like icewater splash into his head. His thoughts froze for a long moment, the world stopped, it didn’t go black, just everything “stopped”.