Julian Collins 6-7 9/18/12 Cave Story When I entered the old, rustic, ancient looking cave the

strangest thing happens to me. As I get to the mouth of the cave I smell and taste that damp, tainted water. The cool air blows against my face. I hear the dripping of water slowly coming through the cracks in the walls. I inch into the cave slowly and cautiously. The darkness surrounds me, and soon all I can see is the glimmering light of my lamp. After awhile the cave gets very narrow. I keep seeing unusual paintings along the thick walls of the cave. After seeing these strange paintings I start feeling nervous, but I still go deeper into the cave. The narrow tunnel finally comes to an end, and I end up in a gigantic dome-like room that has pillars of stacked stone. The smooth stones look like they were supposed to be sat upon. Once again, I see the strange paintings with markings like handprints, red bulls eyes, bison, bobcats and other sorts of animals. Then I realize something. These paintings are from ancient times! Curiously I look upon the walls of the cave trying to figure out what the paintings mean. Then I come across a handprint and I stroke it. It makes some sort of a shimmering light around the handprint. I put my whole hand against the handprint. It is exactly the same size. The stone starts to crumble like a chocolate chip cookie. I fall forward into a giant void of light.

As I fall in I let go of my lamp. It goes flying up in the air falling into the somewhat endless void. When I hit the ground I am in a strange field with unfamiliar plants. There are shards of glass around me. My lamp is broken into pieces. My clothes are ripped. I am aching, I have a deep gash on my forehead with blood leaking from it like a spilled drink, and a small piece of glass is stuck in to my thy. I feel the heat flooding in my thy. I feel the excruciating throbbing of the wound. After a second I decide to pull out the shard. As I pull it out the heat and pain gets stronger and I start to scream like an animal that is in extreme pain. I look at the shard. Blood is dripping down the ragged piece onto the dusty ground. After awhile, bleeding, I start to feel drowsy and loopy, and I realize I am bleeding to death. I crawl in a panic over to a bush with large leaves and tear one off and wrap it around my leg. Awhile later the bleeding starts to stop and the pain has gone down. I see a light flickering in my eyes and my breath slows. I move slowly to a tree, my back touching the tough bark. After lying under the tree for a few hours, I get up slowly staggering around for a bit. After an hour of doing so, I get up and walk around the strange field. Then I see some small huts. I realize I have come back in time to around 100,000 BC. I start to break down, throwing stones, kicking various things, crying and swearing. After awhile of crying and being upset, I manage to pull myself back together and pace around trying to figure out how to get back to the present. I walk over to the village and see many different objects like tents, spear throwers, fire pits, arrows and carved wooden bowls. The

strange looking, prehistoric villagers are looking at me strangely and whispering in a language I do not speak. I ignore them, sprinting to the other side of the village. I come to a creek and cross it, managing not to get wet, and I get to a cave opening. It looks oddly familiar. Before I go in the cave I return to the village and get a torch. The cave looks exactly the same with the paintings and everything, but the paintings were more colorful and recent. The walls have less cracks and the cave is less damp. A second later I realize I am in the same cave as I was in before. So I go deeper in. A while later, I get to the dome like room, except it is clean and the smooth stones are more rough and are in a circle formation, but there is some one in here with me. He is painting with a stick and some red, thick, substance. He puts the stick down and picks up a thin straw that looks like a hollowed out bone. I see him put something into his mouth, chew it, and spit it through the straw onto the wall. I went closer to him, but then I tripped on a rock and fell, and my right hand landed right in the red goo on the wall. I back away quickly as the man turns around. His whole face is red and I can see he is angry with me. Then he starts yelling and screaming. Soon enough, he picks up a rock mallet and starts chasing me. After a few minutes of him chasing me, he threw the mallet at me. It missed by an inch, hitting the wall and cracking it. Then I slammed both of my hands against the wall, hitting it hard. I launch off the wall as

fast as I can, dodging his second attempt at killing me, not paying much attention to the handprint I left on the wall. One after another the mallets keep flying past me like missiles. Right as a mallet is about to kill me, everything freezes and turns to black and white. I see something el.se. The handprint, it was gone! I walk to the wall where the handprint was, and put my hand in the same spot. I notice that everything was slowly turning into color. I turn around and see the enraged artist slowly picking up another mallet and throwing it at me. It slowly spins faster and faster until it reaches full speed and every thing is back in full color. I duck as the mallet flies over my head, smashing a hole in the wall. I peer in the hole and see it is the same light void I came in. I hear a snorting sound behind me, and turn around to see the raging artist charging at me like a bull. I lunge into the hole with the angry artist right on my tail. Minutes later I am in the middle of the dome shaped room. I realized that I had lost my torch on the way down so everything was inky black. I hear a growling sound behind me. In the corner of my eye I see the livid artist. I feel him breathing on my back. A split second later I see the light of the sun from the mouth of the cave and run for it.