You've been called by a friend, who says that someone abandoned a pet near their house, and could you take it to the shelter while they're at work? You're a nice person, so of course you agree, but when you arrive, the abandoned pet isn't what you expected.
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"What's the problem? Is that really the question you're asking right now?" I look up at the sky as though I'll find the answers there. Nothing but clouds, but at least it's not the box. There's a sigh on the other end of the line and I lower my gaze as Carol's voice crackles in my ear.
"I can't keep it, and I'm at work until 6. The shelter closes at 4:30. Please, Rick, do me this favor?"
"You failed to mention that the pet in question is the size of a small horse!" The box is easily large enough to hold an adult, or maybe a couple kids. "Horse-sized" is an exaggeration, but the snuffling sounds from the other side of the wood planks are making me nervous.
"Oh, come on, Rick. It'll fit in the back of your truck and you can drop it off no problem."
"Right. No problem." She must hear the skepticism in my tone, because I hear her start talking almost before I'm done.
"You'll be fine, Rick. Just gimme a call when you've dropped him off, okay?" The line goes dead, and I'm left alone with a snuffling box. I don't even know if I can pick it up, and I'm certainly not opening it without knowing what's inside. After a lot of struggling and some alarming snarls from inside the box, I manage to get it tipped on one end and lever it into the bed of my pickup. I can feel the animal shifting around inside, and from the ache in my arms I guess it weighs over a hundred pounds.
It isn't until I'm walking around to the driver's door that I notice the side of the crate is stamped with the word "LION" in red ink.
The eerie reality of driving home a lion in the back of my truck was bad enough. But the worse part happened at 6:00. I had unloaded the lion from the back of my truck, as carefully as I could into my backyard. Around 5:00, I found part of a steak and poked some pieces into the box so it wouldn't keep growling. But at 6:00, I heard a noise from inside the box I never expected to hear.
ReplyDelete"The time to solve the riddle has expired. Carol will be taken into the labyrinth."
...
"Wait, what? What labyrinth? Who's there?" The order of my own questions only made sense until I listened to myself asking them. The box was silent and none of the answers I needed were forthcoming. Edging nearer, I nudged the box, and felt it shift easily under pressure. Rapidly, I circled it, trying to find a broken board, a walkie-talkie, a "April Fool" sign - something that would make any of this make sense.
DeleteNothing.
The box was empty. When I opened it, I saw only a large golden collar and a fat beetle.
"Carol's gonna kill me," I muttered, watching the beetle scuttle over the toe of my left shoe.
Just when I thought things couldn't get weirder, my phone rang. It was Carol.
ReplyDelete"Rick? You've got to help me! You're the cleverest person I know. That's why I gave him to you to watch over. You have to solve the riddle before it's too late!"
"Hello? What's going on Carol? What's going on? Where's your pet? What riddle?" Questions bounced off the side of the box as I practically shouted them into the phone receiver.
"Rick!" Her voice sounded strange, like it was coming from a long tunnel. The phone went dead.
((Dude. We need to keep this going.))
DeleteI stared at the phone as the screen registered a dropped call. This was... so unbelievable.
"Alright. Yeah. I'll get right on that. I hope this is a joke."
"Do you accept the challenge?" The voice came from nowhere and everywhere and definitely inside the box.
"Um... if I do, can I save Carol?"
"If you answer the riddles correctly, yes."
I hesitated only a second. My brain told me there was something very wrong with this whole scenario, and that my chances at a normal life were quickly slipping away. My heart... well, my brain would never let my mouth tell Carol how I really felt.
ReplyDeleteGathering my courage, I replied in a quite voice, "Yes, I accept the challenge."
((I cannot tell you how much I'm enjoying this.))
DeleteI was standing on a wide plain, grey-green grass swaying at hip-height for as far as I could see in all directions. There had been no transition. No flash of light, not fading to blackness, no sensation of falling, or anything else that might have indicated a change of any sort. I was just... there. I looked down at myself, just to check that my humanity was still mine. I was still wearing the red polo and khaki slacks that were my work uniform, and my hands and arms seemed the same as they ever had been. My shoes were gone, though. The earth felt dry and warm under my toes.
For a minute, I stood still, waiting for something to happen, or for someone to speak. I saw a herd of gazelle in the distance, bounding along in the sunlight. But nothing happened.
"You know," I mused aloud, "when I agreed to solve riddles, I was expecting something a little more... wordy."
((This is fun!!))
ReplyDeleteI looked out over the gently swaying grass and sighed. Back when we were both younger, Carol and I would often hang out and make up riddles for each other to solve. We has started simply, by hiding an object, then giving arcane clues as to its location. As we grew older, her riddles became more and more complicated, solve one piece to find the next clue, etc. Once I had spent over 3 weeks trying to solve on of her riddles. It had to do with a carrot. She had found a bright orange carrot and left it on the windowsill of my bedroom. On it was a 4 page cypher I had to solve to learn the next step. It wasn't until week 2 when I found the potato that I reasoned she was having me make a stewpot dinner. I added candles for some flair, and invited her to join me.
I had tried to come up with competitively complicated riddles in turn, but somehow she could see right through them, and pick out the answer. The only way I could keep up with her was to present a new kind of puzzle. Lately I had been researching "minimum information problems" where instead of deductive reasoning, you had to think outside the box and work with the little information you are presented with.
Looking out over the plains, I felt sure that I would need to think outside the box to even determine the objective, or intention of the riddle.
((I'm totally stealing this for my next blog post.))
DeleteBecause there was certainly a minimum of information. I took a deep breath and tried to let my mind relax. Being tense wasn't going to help me think. My gaze wandered over the grass and caught on the gazelle again. There was something odd about them. Not the way they moved. Not the color. Not the number of them. I watched them with interest for a while, but couldn't identify what it was that had caught my attention.
Feeling the beginnings of frustration, I scanned the plain again. There was nothing out there but the gazelle. A couple trees shimmered in the distance like a mirage, though I couldn't feel the intensity of the heat. It just felt comfortably warm, even though I knew that if I were actually standing on the African savanna, I would be baking in my shoes. Well... if I was wearing shoes.
I looked back at the gazelle again, and this time, I saw that it was the same animal, with the same curly horns, jumping out of the same exact clump of scrubby bushes. Three more followed it.
"De ja vu," I muttered, and felt a sort of ZING in the air. I was getting closer. I'd found the first puzzle piece.