Chapter 6: So Many Booby Traps, So Little Time

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Xander with awe as he stared out at the disgusting lump.

The guy had a weird definition of beautiful.

Approaching for a better look, I discovered the lump was even more grotesque up close than I had first thought. In fact, as I reached the first concentric stone circle step (but before I actually stepped on it - I’m not stupid) I could see that it looked like nothing less than-

“Is that a spleen?”

Xander joined me at the base of the circles and patted my shoulder patronizingly. “It would be unfair to confine it into the label of a single internal organ, but I suppose spleen is as close as anything.”

“Really? We did all this for a spleen?”

“Not just any spleen,” reminded Xander. “That spleen.” He gestured grandly to the lump, as if I should be applauding it for sitting there, quivering.

Wait a minute. Quivering?

“It’s quivering,” I stated. Then, thinking more needed to be said, I added, “Ew.”

“It does that,” said Xander dismissively as he scanned the room, taking in every detail.

“Is that what I’m not supposed to touch?” I asked hopefully. Truth be told, there may not have been an object I had ever been less interested in touching. I watched Xander study the incredibly plain, incredibly empty, incredibly stone room for a bit before asking, “I don’t suppose you just climb up the steps and grab it?”

He shook his head. “Alright. I think I’ve figured this room out,” he began, warming up. “The instant we step on that first step those two faces carved on either side of the room will open their mouths and release a slick oil that will flow through the spiral grooves in the floor towards this central dais. Then spurts of flame will erupt from those cracks in the floor, igniting the oil and turning this room into a blazing inferno. At the same time the step will sink down, releasing a series of circular blades currently under the second step. The blades will spring out and slice cleanly through our ankles, hobbling us. Meanwhile, those four-legged creatures depicted on the walls—-which I believe are supposed to be water buffalo—-will pop out of the rock, unsealing small side chambers that are each packed with venomous scorpions.”

“Those look more like cats to me.”

“Trust me. They’re water buffalo.”

I looked around the room, imagining the carnage he was describing. “So don’t step on the first step?”

“Or the second, which would set off the fail safe and collapse the entire ceiling on top of us.”

“All this to protect a spleen?”

“Just stay here.” He took a few steps back before I could say anything, then let out a noble war cry and charged full speed at the dais. In an impressive display of high jumping, he easily cleared the first two steps and landed cleanly on the third.

I quickly looked around the room to see if he had set off any contraptions of instant death, but the room was silent and immobile. So far, so good. For his part, Xander studied the singular spleen on the pedestal in front of him, remaining on the third step rather than climbing up one more step to the top of the dais.

“Let me guess. The fourth step is booby trapped as well,” I said.

He stretched out his arm to see if he could reach the object of his desire from the third step, but was a good foot and a half short. “Yes. Well, no. Actually, yes. I don’t think the fourth step is really there. It’s merely a clever illusion and if I put my weight on it, the step would crumble and send me falling to my death in a narrow pit lined with sharpened spears of glass.” He reached out again towards the lump but remained short.

“So how do you get your spleen?” I asked.

Instead of answering, Xander opened his fanny pack and began rummaging through it, once again raising my suspicions that this wasn’t some random accessory from R.E.I. or L.L. Bean. After far too long, he pulled out a short, metal rod. “With this.” he said, grinning at his industriousness.

I eyed the rod skeptically. “What is that? Some sort of magical wand or something?”

He grabbed each end of the rod in his hands. “It’s one half of an old pair of TV rabbit ears.” He pulled his hands apart and the rod expanded in a series of sections, each thinner than the one within which it had been nestled. The final result was a thin, slightly flimsy-looking metal bar close to three feet long. “But you probably have no idea what TV rabbit ears are, do you?”

“Something to do with the Discovery Channel?” I guessed. He just grunted his disapproval.

“OK. OK. Zack. You stand there and get ready,” he said as he carefully lined up the extended rabbit ear next to the spleen.

I tensed, confused. “What? Ready?” I blurted. “What are you-?“

He took a swing at the lump.

I have to admit, the guy had a good batting eye. His rabbit ear thingy smacked the spleen good and hard and knocked it flying into the air directly at my head. Years of infield practice caused me to instinctively throw my hands in front of my face to catch the squishy line drive. It oozed a bit through my fingers as I caught it, sort of like if you can imagine trying to catch a raw egg yoke. There was a central bit that was solid enough, but the whole thing was so gelatinous that even as I caught it, enough of it bulged between my fingers to spray my face with slime.

It was pretty disgusting.

“Nice catch!” cheered Xander. “You play baseball?”

I didn’t hear him. My head exploded with flashes of indecipherable geometric images. Lines. Patterns. Numbers. Shapes. Sketches. Diagrams. My mind reeled, unable to fathom or comprehend this massive download of mathematical stimuli that threatened to overload my mental capacity. Then suddenly silence - in my head, at least.

I stared down at the spleen now settling in my cupped hands while my face dripped slime. It was warm to the touch and seemed to radiate with an internal energy. Also, it continued to quiver, which was incredibly unnerving.

“What is this?” I asked again.

“A spleen. I thought we’d gone over that,” said Xander, turning in a circle. “Now... unless I’m mistaken, I'd rather hoped that a sort of gateway would... ah.“

He pointed, I looked. A bright blue haze had appeared in the room on the other side of the dais. “There we are,” he said. “Shall we?”

Without waiting for a reply, he absently stepped down from the third step to the second.

And the whole room started to collapse.

Chunks of stone rained down all around me as I stood there, quivering spleen in hands, acting like a squirrel caught in the headlights of an oncoming 18-wheeler. “What’s happening?” I screamed.

Xander raised his arm over his head to deflect a small piece of ceiling, lost in his thoughts. “Huh. I was right.”

“Moon!”

He snapped to attention and pointed to the blue haze. “Through there! Hurry!”

Then he stepped down onto the first step.

Lucky for him, the instant he stepped on the first step, he remembered what had happened when he stepped on the second step and he immediately jumped backwards as the first step dropped down an inch and wicked-looking blades swept out, slicing the air right where his ankles had been half a second earlier.

I, of course, took no notice of Xander’s acrobatics because my attention was focused on the slick oil jetting from the eyes of the two faces on the wall (eyes, not mouths--so Xander was at least wrong on that point) and the pilot lights flickering to life all around the room, inevitably creating a spiral of flame which raced towards the central dais.

And then, of course, there was the flood of scorpions being dumped into the room from all four corners.

No idea how Xander had figured that one out.

Being closer to the exit than I, Xander was at the blue haze in four steps. Me? I was rooted to the spot, my mind still woozy from the enigmatic information dump I was still getting from the slimy thing in my hands as every now and then a phantom parallelogram flashed before my eyes.

“Zack! Run!” encouraged Xander pointlessly. I mean I heard him, and it was good advice, but really, communing with a spleen? A ring of fire? A flood of poisonous scorpions? Random geometric shapes? My brain was going into shut-down mode and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

With time running out, Xander reached into his pouch, pulled out the first thing he grabbed - a miniature Magic 8-Ball - and tossed it at my head. The ensuing thunk on my skull knocked some sense back into me, and my feet were finally up for obeying my brain. I tucked the spleen under my arm like a football and ran towards the gateway, zigzagging left and right to avoid falling debris while Xander stood in front of the hazy blue gateway thing, frantically waving me on. The flames were closing in. It was going to be close.

I really wouldn’t have had a shot at surviving if the masterminds behind this elaborate death trap hadn’t forgotten one simple fact. Namely, scorpions are not flame retardant. Instead of a wave of horrific monsters overwhelming me and stinging me to death, they just lent a certain comical ambiance to the whole frenzy with the sound of their constant popping echoing through the room as they more or less exploded out of their shells from the heat of the flames, giving off a faint, popcorn-like whiff.

I was just a couple of steps away from the vortex when the wall of fire reared up between the gateway and me, cutting off my escape.

“Help!” I screamed. Because that is what you do when you’re trapped in a collapsing stone chamber surrounded by a wall of fire.

In answer, an arm reached through the flames, grabbed my shirt, and yanked me forward - pulling me through the fire and tossing me through the glowing blue doorway hanging in the air.

And I didn’t die.