Weekly Writing 4

            A rope plops through a hole in the store’s ceiling.  The store is dark and there are no people around.  A tall, athletically-built girl with orange-blonde hair descends the rope.  She’s strong, so she doesn’t slip, but the rope twists and bounces on the floor enough to betray her lack of spelunking experience.  The girl’s feet, clad in heavy boots, touch down on linoleum.  She’s clad in a simple tunic and brown trousers.  The girl claps her hands together like she’s smacking off dust.  She puts her hands to her mouth.  “Okay,” she whispers as loud as she can, “throw me my shit.”

            “Give me a second to put it in the bag, would ya?” a boy whispers back.  The boy stuffs the girl’s armor, short sword, and buckler into a shapeless canvas sack.

            “Whatever,” the girl whispers.

            The boy is a slight thing, with bright blue eyes the girl can see even in the mall’s darkness.  The boy keeps his sunflower-blonde hair crammed under a brown knit cap.  The boy zips up the bag.  “And stop being so loud…”  He tosses the bag down to his friend, who catches it in both hands.  The bag, heavily padded, only makes a dull shuffle when it hits the girl’s hands.  “…Ya clodhopper.”

            The boy descends the rope.  The girl bends down and unpacks the bag.  “Dweeb.”  The girl puts her red armor on, then the buckler on her right hand.  She pokes around the bag a little.  “You didn’t bring a weapon?”

            The boy gives the rope a practiced ripple-and-tug.  The rope pops off the pipe it was tied to.  The knot unwinds and flops obediently over the boy’s arm as if charmed by its young master.  The boy turns his winning blue yes on his much taller companion and holds up one of the rope’s ends.  “Ta-da and duh-doi?”

            “You are not using that stupid little rope to fight monsters.”

            “It’s not little, and I’m good with it.  Shit, I almost beat you.”

            The girl starts uncinching her buckler from her arm.  “Almost beat me when I had a wooden sword, Warren.”

            Warren eyes the loosening buckler like his friend’s butchering a cat.  “What are you doing?”

            “You’re at least taking my buckler.”

            “No!  No, genius, I can’t use the rope if I’m wearing the buckler!”

            “You’re a sitting duck without something, Warren.  Jesus, you don’t even wear armor!”

            “Cuz I don’t work like you!  Why can’t you get that through your-”  The two friends argue closer and closer, eyes barely having adjusted to the mall’s darkness.  Then, from a stone’s throw away toward the women’s jeans: a rumble.  Not the rumble of an object dragged, but the rumble of a toothy monster.  The teens’ mouths snap shut and they don’t dare move.  Warren’s voice drops to breeze volume.  “Dana?”

            “Yeah twerp?”

            “Sorry.”

            “It’s okay.”

            Warren doesn’t look away from Dana.  His blue rescue-dog eyes jump to the left.  Something there.  Past a few displays of discounted perfume, still hiding among the trousers.  “Do you know what’s supposed to be down here?”

            “No one’s really sure.  That’s why it’s a dungeon.”

            “They ranked this a Level 1 adventure when they literally know nothing about this place.”  Fiberglass creaks against fiberglass far behind Warren.  Dana thinks she sees something.

            “The Sunken Market’s been under a mountain since the Yesteryears.  They just uncovered it like, six months ago.”

            “Doesn’t help me.”  A thump.  Like a peg leg, from the corner of Warren’ right eye.  “Us.”

            “Warren?”

            “Yeah?”  Dana’s hand tightens on her shortsword.  She stares at the first monster, first of seven, encroaching on her and Warren, right in its dead glassy eyes.

            “You think the guilders are punking us… and are you really that good with that rope?”

            The first mannequin’s fiberglass chest is close enough to raise the hairs on the back of Warren’s neck.  “Yup.”