Day 94 Writing Short Stories

Monkey

I squeezed past the boulder that had fallen from the roof. I had been lucky to see the trap before it went off. Otherwise, the round rock would have flattened me. I hated these kinds of temples with such unimaginative defenses. It felt like they had watched Indiana Jones on repeat when designing their building. But I was here, and by some twisted fate, I was robbing the place. So, you could say it was only poetic justice for me to jump over the spikes, avoid swords slicing me in half, and duck away from the swinging blades dropping from the ceiling.

I heard the tile creak beneath me. It made me grit my teeth and stop myself from stepping off it.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I said aloud. I wasn’t too far from the chamber where the golden monkey statue was. The rumor was that it had divine powers. The scholar in me didn’t believe in divine powers, but then again, the statue was made by the most intelligent, ancient, forgotten alien civilization, and maybe, maybe, they knew something I didn’t.

It was just that the tomb or a temple, however you wanted to look at it, wasn’t that intelligent and wasn’t that divine. It was more like those arcane escape rooms humans thought to be entertaining back in the day when they hadn’t yet invented space travel with more dire consequences.

I examined the tile. It had a trigger plate, and if I stepped off it, it would unleash something. What the temple was missing so far were poisonous darts, so I was pretty sure some would come out of the small holes in the wall. The little holes went all the way to floor level. So my only choice was to replace my foot with something heavy to keep the pressure plate from triggering. I took a book out of my satchel. I smoothed my hand over the leather-bound tome. It was one of a kind, but so was my life, and it was the book or death. The book was what had brought me here in search of the golden monkey. It knew about the ancient alien civilizations, and it proposed they had visited Earth long before there was writing.

I lowered the book onto the tile, sliding it simultaneously as I scooted my feet off the plate. I froze as I got my foot off the tile and waited for the poisonous darts. They didn’t come. I rushed past the holes in the wall and stopped on the other side. I grabbed a fallen stone and threw it to knock the book off the tile. It triggered an explosion of darts that pierced the dusty air.

“Yep, I really hate you guys,” I said.

I continued down the corridor, avoiding every trap I could find, emerging into a chamber where the head-sized golden monkey sat on a pedestal, leering at me.

I treated every tile and crack on the floor as hot lava as I made my way to the monkey.

“There you are,” I said as I examined the monkey, refraining from touching it. “You are the cause of all this trouble.”

The monkey didn’t reply.

It just continued making rude gestures, reminding me of my place.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said.

“Now, how do I get you off your pedestal?”

The pedestal looked like a normal stone column. I couldn’t find anything unusual about it. I dared to touch the monkey. It was warm to the touch. It felt like solid gold. Nothing special. I took it off the pedestal and flinched. Nothing happened. The monkey kept leering at me, and the room swirled with dust and quiet.

I retraced my steps. This time around, it was easier to avoid all the traps. I could even take the book with me. Everything looked good until I got outside. Then the trouble started.

—

Darn, I don’t know what the trouble is. I’ll leave you to guess what it could be, because I need to hurry to work. What I got today was a voice-driven action about rags-to-riches written in the first person.

Thank you for reading! Have an adventurous day, and see you tomorrow ❤