When I was in college, I worked part time at a butcher’s place.

The moment I remember the most from that time was when I locked myself in the meat freezer.

We had a fancy electronic lock on the door, and there were supposed to be a bunch of sensors… a power cut was all it took to make all of that useless.

It was cold, and dark, and I felt so horribly trapped. I thought I was going to die there, surrounded by butchered corpses and with the smell of raw meat being the last thing I ever experienced. It was that raw smell where some of the meat had been in there a little too long and was about to go spoiled… at some point we had meat that went rotten, too. We got rid of it, but the smell always lingered.

I remembered that day felt like a hell that I deserved back then. I was in a rush to get to work that day, I needed to move something in the fridge and quickly close up before working on a paper, things were so hectic.

On the way there, I saw this old man collapse… I can’t even remember what he looked like or if he was in pain. I just… left him, ran right past like I didn’t see, I don’t even know why.

So when I was there, trapped in that metal crypt, slowly freezing, I thought I must have deserved it.

It took nearly thirty minutes for someone to open the door for me… It felt like hours.

I had to be treated for minor hypothermia at the ER after that, a little longer and I might have not survived, or at least I would have gotten permanent damages.

While I was recovering, I remember asking for news about that old man I ignored, but there was no news of any old man dying or being taken to the hospital that day, so I was relieved that he wasn’t hurt because I didn’t do anything. I saw that day as a warning, more than anything, to never forget to be a good person.

However, as I trudged forward, down the slippery stone steps, in the cold and the dark, so horribly trapped, with nothing by the smell of rotten meat, moss, and waste… I felt like this was a hell I deserved. But this time, I knew that this was no warning, there would be no easy forgiveness, I was trapped in this stone crypt.

The only minor grace was that I likely wouldn’t freeze to death, it wasn’t quite that cold. No, it’d probably be starvation or dehydration that would get me down here. Or some lethal trap I didn’t see coming.

Shaking these ‘pleasant thoughts’ from my head, I continued downwards, finally reaching the bottom of the staircase, stepping into water that reached up past my ankles.

It would seem that this part really was flooded a bit…

Looking up, I couldn’t see the end of it through the darkness, but from my guesstimation, I must have descended about 9-ish metres (roughly 30 feet). It was quite a height, considering the ceiling was only a third of that height.

Looking forward, I was met with a wall adorned with a stone shrine of a vaguely human figure carved into what looked like a basalt pillar, covered by what must have once been a beautiful cloth, but was little more than a mould covered rag now.

The figure held water in their hand that had long turned foul, and it was honestly a sad sight.

I didn’t know what god this thing was dedicated to, but I felt a little bad for them… only a little, though, the traps they set up have been fairly merciless so far.

Looking down at the shrine, I noticed some splotches of blood on the side of it. Looking closer, while the blood was dried, it hadn’t turned completely brown yet. I wasn’t a forensic scientist by any means, but I knew a few things about how blood worked, and from my estimates, this blood was a few days old rather than months. I had no way of being more precise than that without any instruments

Thinking about it, the blood around me when I woke up looked quite similar, so the timeframe must have been quite similar… Remembering the blood around me when I woke up, that was the blood from ‘backstory me’ bleeding to death… but was he just a ‘backstory’, a convenient way for me to appear in this place, or was it actually a completely separate person whose body I was taking over?

No! This wasn’t the time! Pushing those thoughts aside, I looked down at the floor, wondering if there were any clues, but it was difficult to see anything other than the dirty cold water that obscured the floor, and made me upset that I was wearing boots a bit too short to stop the water from pouring in and covering my feet in freezing cold dirty water.

Flinching with disgust, I looked to either side. The hallway I stepped into seemed to stretch out in both directions, well beyond the range of my flashlight. Both sides were flooded and so horribly dark, so it was impossible for me to tell which side led deeper into this place and which side might possibly lead outside.

Sight was no good in helping me decide. Everything stunk, so Smell was no help either. I wasn’t planning on touching or tasting, so that just left hearing… and I could indeed hear something. The sounds of something clanking against metal.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from because of the horrid acoustics (of all the things I could complain about in this situation…)

Deciding to trust my gut, I went with the saying that right is always right!

And so, I started mucking through, enduring the cold water and carefully looking for anything that could be a trap… for as much help as that would do.

I wouldn’t be able to see any traps under the water, and I didn’t know if they would even work at this point. If this place was meant to always have water here, then maybe there’d be some nasty traps that I couldn’t see… but the chances were pretty high that this flooded afterwards, so the traps likely wouldn’t work right (or at all, if I was lucky).

I also made sure to look for any useful scribbles on the brick walls, but it was impossible to see here, as the bricks were so eroded or covered with mould or other filth, with what little I could see being the symbols and scribbles that I couldn’t read.

The corridor then broke into a 4-way intersection, and I had three more choices on what turn to make. Pausing for a moment, I listened and heard the clanging sounds again, but followed by what sounded like muttering or something. It was a little louder, so I had likely picked the right direction, but that only makes sense. I did pick right after all.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

This time, there was a visible difference between the three paths.

The path straight ahead had completely collapsed, the tunnel buried under dirt and stone.

The path to the left was covered in wooden panels… now long rotting and peeling apart, with dirt seeping through the many cracks. This one quickly turned to the left and I could see a door set in the rotting wood.

The path to the right was bare brick like the one I had walked, but quickly ended in a wall… a flat wall with a very clear impression of where a door was, though looking at it, I had no idea how to open it.

Approaching the path to the right, I brought out the key I took from the statue, tapping the door as I looked around, trying to find a keyhole. There was none, and the key wasn’t a magic item that just opened the door… or if it was, then it probably wasn’t able to work because I was holding it?

I considered taking a few steps back and throwing the key at the door to see if that would help, but looking at the murky water that flooded the floor, I doubted if I could find the key if it fell in… especially if there was a crack in the stone.

Deciding not to take the risk, I turned and went down the left path, the only one I could take this time.

To my right, there was a door in the rotting wooden panelled wall, and then the path sharply turned to the left like a U turn.

The door… was stuck, but also horribly rotten and decayed.

I remember trying to kick in an old door once back when we were changing my grandparent’s door that was rotted because of flood damage… It didn't end well for my foot. Being wooden doesn’t mean that a door’s weak, especially when it’s got a strong core.

I had no plans on risking injury on a door I didn’t even think was important, so I drew my sword instead and jammed it through the small gap between the door and the door frame, using it like a crowbar to open the damn thing, after placing my flashlight in a crack in the wall to make sure I didn’t have to keep holding it.

I was worried that either the sword would warp or I would somehow hurt myself, and after an attempt or two and a bit of readjustment, I managed to pry the door apart from the frame enough that a chunk of it broke off with a somewhat muffled crack, enough to look inside at least. I did slip once and gave myself a small cut on my forearm, but the bleeding was minor and stopped in less than a minute.

Looking inside, I saw that the door was barred from the inside, and I easily managed to reach in and lift the bar up and drop it on the ground, where it splashed into the water that flooded this room too.

My official review of my sword as a crowbar:

Stronger than expected, not a very helpful shape, but sharp enough to be dangerous. Good crowbar, helped me do a home invasion, but I got cut. 3 stars.

Picking up the flashlight again and making sure it was properly secured on the leather ‘belt’, I kept my sword drawn and shone the light into the room, revealing a once very well decorated hallway.

I say once, because the wooden furniture that was present to either side was all rotten and falling apart, with soggy cloth banners that seemed to have once depicted beautiful fields and peaceful villages… now appearing so desolate because of the years of neglect and harsh conditions. My flashlight flickered, causing me to squint for a bit before I noticed my vision was half obscured by the dust I could see in my eyes.

Pausing for a moment, I put my sword back in its sheath, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand as I tried to look closer at what I first thought were Miodesopsias (those germ-shaped things you see in the float over your vision sometimes?). While seeing one or two every now and then would be normal, it was a far too unusual amount.

At first, I barely saw it and had to question if I was even seeing anything.

But after moving the flashlight behind me, half hiding it behind the broken door, the room dimmed significantly.

I had to squint but I could see it. There were these shadowy little particles of dust that looked like tiny inky squiggles… and there were a lot of them.

A feeling of dread welled up in my gut as I watched it, and I wondered what it could possibly be? A poison? A parasite? But as I raised a hand to my nose to cover it just in case, I noticed that the particles close to my hand simply disappeared.

Uncovering my nose, I raised my hand and held it out, watching as the ‘shadow dust’ simply disappeared as it got close to me… and the range seemed to match that of the flashlight turning off when it got too close to me.

Putting two and two together, this was some kind of magical effect, and I was immune. Perhaps it was a trap specific to this room, or it was everywhere in the temple but I wasn’t able to tell because it needed a specific brightness to be noticeable, but either way I might have been in a world of trouble if I didn’t have the weird ability to just make magic not work.

And considering how many traps this ability had helped me bypass, I was sure that being antimagic wasn’t something common here… wherever ‘here’ was.

Putting that discovery aside, I uncovered the light and observed the hallway more.

Wooden furniture like chairs and collapsed shelves with ruined books and other mundane looking trinkets, faded banners, and the walls were polished, though they were still made of stone bricks. The ceiling was the same painted black sky, though it was especially cracked here and there were drops of dirty water falling from them to the flooded floor constantly… and the floor was still flooded here. I couldn’t see the ground, or if there were any steps anywhere.

I wanted to assess the situation more, look at all of the shelves for anything useful, but I realised something troublesome. For all of the time I spent mucking about trying to notice the shadow dust, I hadn’t heard any of the clanging sounds.

That worried me. I still didn’t know what those sounds were, though it sounded very unlikely to be machinery as it was very inconsistent, but they were my only clue as to where I could find something.

What if it was a person, and something happened to them!? Maybe they were trying to call for help and it was the only thing they could do? Maybe they passed out from starvation? Maybe they were hurt and bleeding out?

Holding back my anxiety as best as I could, I decided to move forward and see if I could find them. Worried about the possibility of tripping over a step I couldn’t see, I stuck by one of the walls and kept a hand on it for support as I walked forward, shifting every now and then to avoid knocking over a shelf or a chair.

I must have walked about fourteen steps or so, glancing over at the broken shelves as I passed them looking for anything useful. I mostly found ruined books, things that looked like little idols and pendants, maybe holy symbols? There were cups, flasks and bottles, as well some kettles (If I could get a fire going that would be very useful to filter some drinkable water), as well as some candles and torches (which I had no way to light as of yet)

I made a note to grab them on the way back… and as I made that mental note, the floor cracked under my foot.

For all my luck so far, there wasn’t much I could do against a mundane pitfall trap.

I immediately started falling as soon as I felt the floor give in. I flailed about, trying to grab anything I could as all the water around me started being pulled into the hole that just opened up.

The flashlight turned off as it got too close to me, leaving me in darkness as the cold water engulfed me as I fought for my life to hold onto something… but it was useless, and I found myself fully submerged in the freezing water.

It was cold, and dark, and I felt so horribly trapped. I thought I was going to die, surrounded by filthy water and with the smell of rot and waste being the last thing I ever experienced.

I was trapped in a flooded crypt… It felt like a hell that I deserved.