Cold, harsh metal at my cheek. I woke with a gasp, still fighting to keep the bar off my neck. There was no bar and my hands were spread out on the door. The fighting instinct only served to push my head away in a an awkward fidget, and I collided with a wall that was apparently behind me.

My head erupted in a headache completely unproportional to the hit. My head was being split in two. I lay back, and slowly the headache subsided to a background ache, letting me notice my surrounding.

The room I was in was small, tiny. It was composed of four triangles, all made of flat and smooth greyblack metal. These panels made a perfect tetrahedron, which I was curled at the bottom of. Each side was only as tall as I am, so it was rather cramped. At the top, a light source was embedded, a glowing stone which spilled uniform light at the room.

At one side, there was a small hole in the wall, just big enough for a person to crawl through, Beyond the hole stretched a tunnel which was pitch black, and was composed of rough stone, the metal abruptly giving way.

On one of the walls there was a series of engravings, the top one golden and reflecting the light. I shifted to get a better look.

The moment I moved, the headache came back, just as nasty as it was before. Focusing my eyes on the engraving got me a sharp sting between the eyes, as if I stayed too late watching computer screens, but for three days straight.

I looked at the engraving slowly, acclaiming to the pain. At the top was the golden symbol, which turned out to be a skull. Underneath were the forms of a man and a skeleton, locked in a battle. The skeleton was holding a scythe, which he was trying to attack the man with, who in turn was holding off the scythe with both his hands.

Below this two figures were three more engravings. The first was of a man standing tall, his arms curled at his sides to show off his bulging biceps. Besides that was a man tied to a noose, hanging. The third and final one was another person, but instead of a head he had a misshapen lump from which some kind of fluid dripped out, like his brain was literally leaking.

I took stock of myself. Beside the excruciating head ache, I was feeling well. I was wearing the same outfit I was training with – that is to say, nothing but gym shorts and underpants, since I trained without a shirt and without shoes. My body looked healthy and fit, and I was with the same three day stubble I had. Exploring my ‘beard’ I discovered I had a scar running across the front of my neck, side to side. It was fully healed and the scar tissue was a fine line, but I could still feel it.

It took me a long time to understand the cause. Remembering was hard, especially with the pounding headache, but I knew that I had no such scar before I arrived here. I vaguely remembered benching, and that I was having a great day. I was going to break my record.

oh.

Did I kill myself with the bar? Am I forever going to be remembered as ‘man constructs makeshift guillotine, commits suicide’?

Well, it certainly doesn’t seem that death is the end. Distinct lack of saint Peter in this afterlife, but better than the void, I suppose. I’ll just have to explore and make the best out of what I got.

I touched the glowing stone on the top of the room and it knocked loose, as if it was meant to be taken out of place. It was a round orb, equally luminescent all over its surface.

I sat and waited till my headache subsided almost completely, only becoming warning twinges when I moved my head, like a bad hangover. When it was bearable, I started crawling down the hole in the wall, holding the glowing rock in front of me. I’ll just call it a glowstone from now on.

After a few minutes of crawling and scratching my chest on the rough floor the tunnel reached another opening. The air grew slightly chiller and fresher as I approached, which was welcome as I was sweating from crawling. Crawling is hard work. I crawled out and took a look around.

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It was a tunnel, high enough for a man to walk easily along. Pebbles littered the floor and the walls were uneven, rough rock. A smooth canal run across the floor, forming the look of a water formed tunnel, now dry. I finally got to my feet, patting dust off my shorts.

Woah. Getting to my feet was ridiculously easy, like I was made of feathers. Or I was far stronger than I previously was. I checked out my quads, but they were looking the exact same as they were before – that is to say, tear shaped and absolutely ravishing. I do a lot of squats, ok?

There was one definite way to check if I was stronger, and I got on to the floor and held a planche, an exercise I never managed to do properly. This time, holding it was easy, though not for any long duration.

I jumped to my feet again and flexed my bicep. They looked exactly the same as before, but I kissed them anyhow for good luck. I was going on an adventure, and I had my trusted guns with me.

If only my headache went away, that would be perfect.

I started to walk down the tunnel, glowstone lighting my way. Not having any shoes was a problem, as I had to carefully place my feet to avoid every last pebble, as my tender feet were not hard enough to ignore them.

Soon enough, I turned a corner and spied a mouse, small and white. His small pink nose twitched as the light spilled on him, and he turned his red beady eyes towards me.

He let out a ferocious squeak and rushed toward me, navigating between pebbles. What a cute mouse. Friendly, too. I bent down and stretched my arm out to him. ‘Here, mickey mickey’ I sang to him in a sweet voice.

The mouse bit me, hard. I yelped and shook my hand, but the damn thing held on to my finger, scratching with his itty bitty claws. He managed to look cute even while chomping on my finger. I had to use my other hand to dislodge him, firmly opening up his jaw.

I placed him down and gave him a poke on the nose. Bad mouse, I told him, but he didn’t seem to care, struggling madly to be released. The moment I let go, he charged at me again, dodging my hand and going for my foot. He started to climb up, sharp claws gripping my leg.

‘Get off!’ I told him, and took a step back, landing on a pebble. I started jumping from the pain, obviously landing on more pebbles. The mouse kept on climbing, reaching my gym shorts and climbing underneath them.

He was getting uncomfortably close to my Unmentionables, and I was hastily trying to get a grasp of him, but the bastard was slippery under my shorts. Soon I was holding him off inches away from the family jewels, the mouse biting away at my inner leg whenever he had the chance.

A rough nibble was the last straw, and I firmly grasped the fiend with the shorts, and took the whole thing down, shorts and all. Hastily I got the squirming mess off my foot and flung it as far as I could.

There I stood, naked but for my underpants, panting and sweating because of a diminutive mouse. What the hell was up with that thing? My whole inner thigh was filled with bite marks and scratches, but somehow none of them was bleeding. It seemed the mouse could not gain any purchase with his teeth, leaving only minor swelling.

The mouse came crawling out of my pants, shaking his head in confusion. A concussion in trade for taking my dignity, not a bad trade. I approached the shorts carefully, wary of the fiend attacking me again. His red eyes didn’t seem so cute now, and his whiskers vibrated maliciously as he sniffed the air.

They smell fear, I thought, and chuckled. I wasn’t afraid of the thing, but bravado or no I still approached it slowly, trying to shoo it with my hands. To my surprise, instead of immediately charging at me again, the mouse distanced himself from me, and started screeching while standing on his back legs.

The noise was irritating and surprisingly loud from such a small creature. My headache flared again as the noise continued, and I hurriedly put my pants on while glaring at the creature. Any time I got closer, the mouse would go farther away and the moment he was at a safe distance, he started screeching again.

I threw pebbles at him, and the mouse ignored me. One pebble even hit him straight on the noise, but he just shook his head for a second then kept right on screeching.

‘Come here you bastard’, I told him, and started to chase after him. Why was he acting like that? I have never seen or heard about an animal acting this way. Rabidly attacking a person is one thing, but this stranger behavior was unheard of.

I had no chance of catching him. First, I had to traverse the rocky ground, full of pebbles, while he was small and could easily navigate his way around. Secondly, he was straight up faster than I was. You ever seen a mouse run to cover? These things pack a surprising amount of speed. I could outrun him, but I couldn’t run, not on this terrain.

As I got closer, he stopped his godawful screeching, run far enough that I had no hope of catching him, then started up like a siren.

After a few minutes of this comical chase, I realized that I was hearing screeches even when the mouse was on the run. Far off, abrupt screeches were answering him, from both sides of the tunnel. The screeches grew louder and louder, as suddenly I saw a host of red eyes appear from the darkness.

An army of mice.