The Hangry games; part five

Only Niamh, Alicia, Anna, Robert and Angphu remain in the world of the living. Are five people enough to take on SufoenO with a desperate plan to wrap themselves in metal and explore the teleporter?

 

                 A canon fired over a deadly game where friends but kill each other one by one.

               Amelia lay dead at the edge of a stadium in an unkown island. A deactivated robot had its fingers wrapped around her neck. Unfortunately without the electricity to run its finger motors it was an embrace destined to last for ever.

                Niamh and Anna looked at her sadly but there was nothing that they could do. They had to get back to their original plan which was to put the metal exoskeletons of the robots on as armour. They had worked out that when teleporting they needed to be surrounded by metal not to get fried, but they needed to move around to try and work out what was going on behind the scenes of the teleporter.

                Nabila the two-year-old was still punching away at a large switch, angrily trying to flick it.

*             

    Dave the ghost was fading away, coming to terms with the unpleasant realisation that a ghost can still die, and quite painfully too.

                “Dave!” Bob had just found a potentially life saving piece of information in the book. I use the phrase "lifesaving" mainly for convenience. It’s not really life saving is it? "Ghost saving" just doesn’t carry the same weight and tension though.

                “What?” Dave gasped. Pain and fear had made his eyes embarrassingly leaky and he was struggling to string together sentences with his usual carefree elegance.

                “Think of everything you love on this earth! It will anchor you to this plane.”

                “Wow.” Dave managed to mutter. “This author really isn’t afraid of clichés, are they?”

                It worked though. Dave filled the hole inside of himself with the love he bore for each and every one of his friends. The sensation was like going from dying of hunger to feasting on cakes and pies.

*

Meanwhile a very befuddled ghost named Oscar was standing knee deep in a field of short grass. He’d sunk in a bit to try and look at some tracks in the earth. He was hoping to follow the path of a badger.

It was very strange. Oscar is very interesting man with a lot of depth and knowledge. However; when he thought of anything other than the badger he felt a sharp pain as if acid was eating up his body. Seemed safer just to think about badgers at this junction.

After about half an hour his phone rang. He took the device out of his pocket and stared at it in shock. The idea of a mobile phone continuing to function into the afterlife was absurd. He tried to work out how it might be happening but that just caused the burning sensation to return.

He put it back in his pocket and forgot about it. It seemed to be really easy to forget about things at the moment. Everything just slipped away in an unimportant untroubling kind of way. Everything except badgers.

*

 

Having passed on from the panic of trying (unsuccessfully) to save Amelia’s life Anna and Niamh transitioned into wondering where Nabila was and what she was up to. Niamh left Anna with the robot body parts they had gathered and went to find the little one.

“Oh no.”

She read the large ON/OFF sign and felt horrible. All the time they had wasted unplugging plugs when the lifesaving switch was right here. It was clearly not her fault but that didn't help the guilty feeling.

She tried to pick up Nabila but the toddler insisted that Niamh flick the switch into the off position first (I’m sure she did it just for the satisfying click but it might interest you to know dear reader that she had once again performed a lifesaving act. At that very moment cameras powered down and SufeonO was unable to communicate with the drones that were to be instructed to plug the robots back in.)

*

 

                “I think we should gather all the ghosts to one place so we can help the living.” Dave was back to his cheerful self, forming strategies.

            “What is it you guys can do to keep us alive?” Angphu asked politely.

            Dave dismissed this objection with a wave of his hand.

            “I just think everything is going to get a lot easier if we’re all together, don’t you?”

            Tan wasn’t listening but there was general agreement.

            “Except Bob obviously.” Dave added. “He could perhaps swim close to the shore and wave at everybody.”

            “Sounds thrilling.” Bob's voice over the phone commented drily.

            “Right, so I’m going to hang up Bob, need to see if we can get hold of anyone else.”

            “What? Hasn’t Tan got a phone you could use?”

            “Yes!” Tan shouted exuberantly. “I’ve got it!”

“See, sounds like she has a phone.”

“Page 449 b*****s! Check that footnote.”

You may recall that while everyone was distracted by Dave’s crisis Tan had been busy checking for loopholes.

Bob and Dave turned to the page and began to read. Angphu tried to read the word over Dave’s shoulder but the words bleed together and twisted into insane songs of death and eternity that howled in strange dark voices at the back of Angphu’s heart. He decided the book was not written for the living.

“They who would seek to walk the path back to the realm of the living must seek the temple of Satan the Evil One and perform the tasks laid before them by the dark gods of his pantheon.”

“You see! There is a way back.”

“Yeah but where are you going to find a temple of Satan?”

“Google maps might still work if our phones still function, right?”

There was a rustle of movement as Bob moved his phone.

“Yeah but even with google maps what what’s the odds that there’s - well bless me, there’s a Temple of Satan twenty minutes away.”

“Handy.”

“Very convenient.”

“It’s got a rating of five out of five stars.”         

“I guess we’re all heading to the church of Satan the Evil One then.”

*

 

Nabila wanted to play with the on and off switch repeatedly but Aunite Niamh (no relation, just a nickname) insisted she went down to join the two of them. Niamh had to carry the squirming protester all the way down to the grass in the centre of the stadium.

Of course, Nabila took the first opportunity available to run on back to the switch.

 This little back and fourth race might have gone a while but Nabila became distracted by a new toy.

Amelia’s dead body was the new toy.

A hobby of hers was waking up sleeping adults and in her tiny little brain Amelia was simply the expert level of the game.

* 

“Hmm. Oscar isn’t answering his phone.” Dave stroked his chin thoughtfully.

                The ghosts of Tan and Dave where in the company of the living Robert and Angphu. Although from the pain in his arm steadily building Robert wasn’t sure he was going to belong in the category of living for long.

                Angphu was trying to activate his google maps but he was still only finding SufoenO as a connection option on his phone. This connection was restricting google maps along with all his favourite sites. All of them. I’m sure I don’t have to spell it out for you. Apparently SufoenO’s grip was tight in the realm of the living and absent in the realm of the dead.

                “I’ll try and call Alicia.” Dave was dialling up on his ghost phone.

                “Hello?” She answered after five rings.

                “Hey Alicia, how’s it going?” 

         “What. Um. What’s going on?” Alicia hadn’t had the night time to acclimatise herself to death like Dave had. Nor had she found another ghost with whom to share the experience.

                “Well, we’re dead.” Dave explained cheerfully.

                “Well, duh.” She answered impatiently. “Obviously we’re dead. I mean really how dumb do you think I am?”

                “Uh oh guys.” Dave looked up from the phone. “Alicia sounds a bit grumpy.”

                “Oh gosh, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

                “It’s fine Alicia, perfectly forgivable.”

                “Of COURSE it’s forgivable. I DIED you BLOODY IDIOT. I’m allowed to be F*****G GRUMPY!”

                “Oh dear.”

                “Did you say you called Alicia?” Bob was trying to follow what was going on between the phone connection and the sound of a wild and glorious sea.

                “Yeah I called her.” Dave confirmed

                “Oh, I just got a bit angry, didn’t I?” Alicia sounded horrified with herself. 

                “Don’t worry Alicia It’s okay” Dave said forgivingly.

                “DON’T TELL ME IT’S OKAY, WE’RE DEAD. HOW THE HELL IS THAT OKAY?”

                “Blimey Alicia, tone it down a bit.”

                “What’s happening?” Bob asked.

                “Alicia’s grumpy.” Tan answered (“ARE YOU GUYS TALKING ABOUT ME BEHIND MY BACK? WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?”)

                “Ah. She might have had a bad reaction. To dying.” (“Oh gosh, I started shouting there, didn’t I?”)

                “What do you mean?”

                “Was her death a bit violent?” Bob inquired.

                “Not sure, Tan and I snuffed it before she did.”

                “She got shredded by shrapnel.” Angphu offered helpfully.                “Yeah, guys. I think she’s a poltergeist” Bob was nodding to himself on the other side of the phonecall(“WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? SPEAK UP!”)

                “What does that mean?” Angphu asked.

                “Well, as far as I can tell I’m just your basic ghost.” Bob explained. “Can’t really touch anything that's not a ship, I can make people feel cold or whatever. Maybe throw a few fancy illusions if the moon is right. Poltergeist is a bit different. It explains it in the book. Some people who die violently just become poltergeists. No one knows why. The good news is she can actually move stuff around. Whip up the winds and hurl objects and all that. Might actually be useful.”

             “What’s the bad news?” Tan asked

                “WILL YOU GUYS STOP F*****G TALKING ABOUT ME WHEN I CAN’T B****Y HEAR YOU? IT’S A PRETTY S****Y THING TO DO!” Alicia screeched down the phone.

                “That. That is the bad news.”

                “Oh, blimey.”

                “She’s cursed with outbursts of uncontrollable rage for the rest of her existence.”

                “Oh no.” Alicia must have picked up on Bob’s voice in the background. “Did someone just say something about uncontrollable rage?”

                “Yeah, Bob’s just explained that you’re probably a poltergeist.”

                “Oh, is Bob there - THAT P***K - Tell him I’m really sorry I accidently knocked him off the cliff - I’M GLAD I KILLED THE B*****D - I hope it didn’t hurt him too much when he fell, I HOPE HE SUFFERED! We’re still friends, right?”

               Dave hung up the call.

                “I think I’m just going correspond with Alicia via text.”

*

Wearing robot bodies as armour is never quite as elegant or as easy you want it to be. The plates are heavy and there are no straps involved. Turning the arms into arm-guards was a simple matter, likewise for the leg pieces. Niamh and Anna just took out the skeleton of the robot and fed the appropriate appendages through the holes. The bodies were a nightmare though. They only had openings at the bottom of the torso and at the neck and armholes.

                This made it quite hard to claw the wiring out, but also a devil of a job trying to get in. They could barely lift them up like shirts, the damn things were just so heavy.

                “Let’s try this.” Niamh placed the body-piece on the floor and tried to wiggle her way in.

                “Looks easy.” Anna noted drily as Niamh managed to force an arm out of one opening, but in so doing pinned an arm to her side where she couldn’t bring it up to put through the armhole.

                “Um.” Niamh squirmed around a little bit. “I think I’m stuck.” Her head was out but she didn’t have a way to push herself out of the armour so she could try again with both arms. She stood up using her one free hand.

"I'm not convinced this is going well"

 *

                Back on the top of the hill the two ghosts had hung up on Bob so they could start dialling out to all their dearly departed friends. Tan called her husband, excited now that they knew that phones worked in the afterlife.

                “Hey.” Tan-the-man answered, nonchalant as ever. He might just has easily have been for a stroll in the park answering the phone.

                “Hey, where are you right now?” She asked her husband.

                “Hang on, you’ve skipped a bit there. How come you can call me?”

                “Oh, phone’s work in the afterlife, how cool is that?”

                “Um. Okay. No wait - does that mean you’re dead too?” Tan-the-man was upset to discover his wife was dead.

                “Yeah. I jumped in front of a rocket that was shooting towards Nabila.”

                “But- she has a forcefield, right? Why did you do that?”

                “Shut up. I don’t wanna talk about it. Where are you right now?”

                “I’m by a tree and big old hill.” Tan-the-man replied unhelpfully.

                “Oh. That doesn’t really help.”

                “I know but you asked. Where are you?”

                “Oh. Well I’m with Angphu, Robert and Dave on the top of a hill.” Tan looked around, trying to see a landmark she could use as a reference ppoint.

                “Oh my God, Robert and Angphu are dead too?”

                “Oh no they’re fine.” She eyed the large purple bruise on Angphu’s head and the horrifying burn on Robert’s arm. “Well. Fine ish.”

                “So where are you all?”

                “We’re at the top of a hill. Close to where you got blown up when you stepped on a landmine, remember? Um. So, we’re right by the sea. The shed is here with us, that’s quite visible, you could use that. Mind you that thing’s been teleported a couple times now so I suppose it could move at any moment. Hmm. Tricky one I guess.”

                “If phone-geists work then does that mean we can use things like Google maps?”

                “Oh yeah, we worked that one out.”

                “Then why don’t we just head for the same place?”

                “Of course, I should have mentioned. We’re all heading of to the temple of Satan the Evil One.” Tan explained cheerfully.

                “I’m sorry, what?”

 *

                Niamh had eventually managed to claw her way out of the armour. Anna had tried to pull it off over her but she wasn’t strong enough so in the end she had had to sit on it while Niamh pushed herself out against the stadium edge. Nabila turned up when they were still struggling (the dead body having bored her). She did try and help, bless her little cotton socks. Unfortunately, she got the idea they were trying to push Niamh back into the armour rather than pull her out so she was of limited use. She was using all of her tiny strength to try and stop Niamh getting out of the armour.

                “Phew.” Niamh emerged red faced and muddy-kneed. “Right, now to try and get back in.”

                It was slightly easier, now that she had a better idea of how she wanted to enter into it. Still incredibly annoying and squirmy though. Eventually triumph ensued and she was able to use both hands to stand and balance with the heavy plate on her torso.

                Anna, having watched both the failed and the successful attempt, was able to slip into the armour relatively easily.

                “Now that’s just showing off.”

                Anna tried to shrug it off in a it’s-nothing-really kind of way but you can’t actually shrug when you’re wearing copper plating.

                They then put metal on their upper arms and lower arms and all over their legs. Robot feet became shoes and robot hands became gauntlets. The heads of the robots became incredibly uncomfortable helmets with some terrible visibility available through the holes where robot eyes had once been housed. They had salvaged different sized robots so Niamh had to wrap a jumper around her head to make the thing fit without rocking back and forth.

                “Right. What now?”

"Eh?" The flat face of the robot's head muffled their speech.

"Right, what now?" In a slightly louder voice.

                “Now, we wait.”

                The two friends stood side by side. They looked a bit like stick figures as they couldn’t keep their arms flat to their sides, being forced to hold them out at odd angles.

“How long?”

“As long as it takes.”

Some number of minutes crawled by.

“Well, this is boring."

*

 

“Right," Dave was enyoying his leader of the ghosts role (unlected leader. I'm sure someone would launch a coup sometime soon). "So I’ve texted Alicia and Tan knows where we’re going. I’m just going to try and reach Oscar one more time,”

                This time the call got through.

                “Uh, hello?”

                “Oscar pal, how’s it going?”

                “Yeah not bad." Oscar responded. "Not bad, not bad, not bad. Listen this might sound like a slightly foolish question… Am I dead?”

                “Yes.”

                “Right.” You could hear the cogs turning as Oscar tried to assimilate this new information. He was a very pragmatic and logically thinking man and the atheistic scientific model of the universe he had subscribed to did not have any space for an afterlife. “Do you know how it works?”

                “Well, there’s the Book of the Dead. Pretty thorough explanations are in there.”

                “Oh. Really? Mine just says “Find that badger.”

                “What? Oh. Huh. Weird.” Dave was confused.

                “All the rest is blank pages.”

                “Hang on a mo.” 

                Dave flicked through to exactly where Bob had read the poltergeist definition (finding the page with surprising ease). “Unvollendetgeist: Sometimes a soul is lost to this world and loses much of itself in its final transition. Naught but a fixed idea remains in its heart, the last true thought of its life inflated beyond natural proportion. All else will slip away, become irrelevant and forgotten. Lovers have been known to remain in remorse, seeking their lost loves. Mothers linger until there child is safe and warm. Poets have trodden the mortal plane until their final line was written.”

                “Huh. That’s kind of beautiful.” Anphu liked the sound of the script.

                “Oscar?”

                “Yeah?”

                “You weren’t by any chance chasing a badger when you died were you?” Tan had a suspicion about Oscar's mental state.

                “Yeah. Now that you mention it, I should probably get back to it.”

                “No, Oscar wait! It says here “once the notion follows through to completion oblivion is the destination of the soul.” You need to leave that badger alone.”

                “I’m sorry you’re not making much sense to me.”

                “Oscar, if you catch that badger then you’ll pass on to the next life.” His friends warned him.

                “So, what you’re saying is I need to catch the badger?”

                “No! Think of something else! Anything else!”

                “Well I’m sure the badger has a set, should I think about whether or not it has a mate? Or cubs?”

                “You’re still very much on the same topic there. Look, just put the Temple of Satan the Evil One into your google maps and head on over there with us.”

                “Gotcha. Catch the badger then head on over to… I’m sorry where did you say you were going?”

                “The Temple of Satan the Evil One.”

                “Right.”

                “It’s where the badger lives Oscar.”

                This was a fib.

                “Oh, right okay. I’ll pop it in Google maps now and jog on over.”

*

 

            Anna and Niamh had managed to awkwardly sit on the floor with their backs propped against the stadium edge. It turns out wrapping yourself up in metal causes some tricky manoeuvrability restrictions.

            “So glad we came up with this plan.” Niamh’s optimism was not to be beaten.

            “Yes.” Anna’s dry sarcasm was also not to trifled with.

            “This is going to give us the best chance at fighting back against SufoenO.”

            “Indeed” Anna Sardonically concurred. Her sense of realism would not go away. “I feel fighting fit and ready to take on those bad guys.”

            Her wounds had closed up again now that they weren’t running anymore, but she felt weak limbed and possessed a splitting headache.

            “Oh no.” Niamh decided to ignore that. “Nabila is running off again.” Somehow the two of them managed to climb up into a standing position. They set off at a weird fast walk that they managed to achieve by sort of falling into the next step and using the weight and momentum of the suits to fall into another fall.

            It was a great system until they realised, they’d forgotten to come up with a plan for coming to a standstill. They did however work an ingenious solution when they caught up with Nabila.

They accidently fell on top of her.

This activated Nabila’s forcefield and blasted them so they went from falling on their fronts to being slammed flat on their backs. It did generate the unexpected bonus in that Nabila went into peels of laughter and was entertained enough remain with them.

“You see.” Niamh gasped while on her back staring at the sky. “Everything’s going our way.”

In a flash of electricity, all three vanished away.

* 

Robert was having a tough old time of it. The pain was spreading further up his arm and he felt dizzy and exhausted. Also ghosts. He had always been afraid of them. The evidence he had been given did not allay his fears.

“Angphu,” He whispered in his theatrically loud voice.

“Yes pal?”

“These ghosts. How do we know they’re the real ting?

“They seem like my old friends to me.” Angphu murmured in reply.

“Yeah but what if they’re evil spirits? Or devils or somet’in’? Mebbe they tink they're our friends and don't even realise they're evil spirits.”

This had not occurred to Angphu. However, it was clear to him from their mannerisms and demeanour that these were his friends. Sure, Alicia seemed to have gone a bit insane. Oscar didn’t seem to possess his usual relentless logic. Everyone else was very much the friend he knew and loved though. He could sense, in his soul, that the were his true friends and that they were to be trusted.

It was quite possible he was going to regret this decision.

“Don’t worry Robert.” He laid a reassuring hand on his tall friend’s arm. “It’s fine. We’re going to be just fine.”

“They want to lead us to the Temple of Satan the Evil One!” Robert protested.

Angphu felt a niggling doubt (which he really should have listened to) but dismissed it.

“Come on Robert, think about it. These are our friends. They wouldn’t lead us anywhere dangerous, now would they?”

Robert was about to point out that the minions of Satan might very well pretend to be friends but Tan had just locked her screen and turned back to the group.

“Tan-the-man doesn’t think it’s a good idea.” She said grumpily. “I told him about the temple and he was all like “isn’t he the enemy of all mankind?” and “Surely it’s honeyed trap.” Lawyers. Always seeing small print where there isn’t any.”

Nobody said anything. Tan-the-man’s points seemed solid.

“Don’t worry guys.” Dave said in a warm and reassuring voice. “I’m sure it will be absolutely fine.”

This led Robert to feel that Dave might well be in league with the evil one, egging them on to attend the temple.

“Come on guys,” Angphu cheerfully broke the tension. “Let’s get going!”

He started making confident strides down the hill.

* 

Anna, Niamh and Nabila were back on the conveyor belt in that mysterious tunnel that had brought them all to the island.

Nabila was lit up like a strobe light as the charged particles of the air cracked and flickered over her shield. She stared at the lights in fascination.

Anna and Niamh were safe inside their armour. Believe you me they exchanged looks of self-congratulatory smugness. They had successfully beaten the system.

“Hi five, buddy!”

Anna obligingly clapped her gauntleted hand into Niamh’s.

“What’s the plan now?”

They glanced about themselves and in the distance, they spotted the melted remains of the bike that Robert and Angphu had spotted earlier. The burnt skeleton on the saddle was a chilling sight.

“Hang on, that bike was there when we came through to the dance arena. Tan mentioned it.”

“So?”

“Well, it’s a conveyor belt, shouldn’t it have gone by now?”

They saw it vanish in the distance and in a flicker of light it appeared behind them on the belt.

“How strange. It appears to be stuck here.”

“I wonder why?”

“Maybe the machine doesn't send stuff out of the tunnel once it's dead?"

They were about to try and work out what this meant and how they could use it to their advantage when they realised, they were approaching the other end of the tunnel. A plan was required and sharpish.

“Look, there’s a pavement on the dege.”

“Jump on.”

They jumped on the pavement, wobbling dangerously as they went from a moving object to a static one.

“Where’s Nabila?”

Nabila was on the pavement waving goodbye as she travelled towards wherever the teleporting device was taking her.

* 

Ghosts were converging on the temple of Satan the Evil one. Oscar Jogged, Alicia had to stop sporadically to swear at her phone’s Google maps. Tan-the-man was walking with purpose, a thoughtful frown upon his face.

Bob was trapped at sea, flicking through his phone to entertain himself.

Amelia had also died but none of the ghost party new that at this point in time. 

Angphu and Robert had to follow their ghost-pals down a river that had cut a cleft into the cliff they had been standing on. It was very inconvenient, with the slightest effort the two shades could choose to sink or float to all the difficult to reach places. 

Dave tried to cross the river to have a look at the other side but found he could not pass over or through moving water.

The pathway was much more difficult for our living friends.

The reward for scrambling all the way down was a cold and dark pathway. It was unclear if ledge they walked upon was a thing of nature or if it had been carved long ago, only to be claimed back by the forces of the wild. Each step was wet and uncertain while death on cold water waited patiently below them.

“This is not a nice corner of the world. I should know, I’ve been on a six-month tour of the world.” Dave commented.

“Blimey, would you stop bringing that up?”

“This is literally the first time I’ve brought it up in the narrative! It’s not my fault the story’s taking so long to tell.”

      *          

                “Nabila!”

                “Nabila, get on the pavement!”

                “Come on sweetie, come and join us.”

                Nabila looked at the two of them in confusion. Then vanished at the end of the end of the tunnel.

                “Oh no, we’re going to have to go after her!”

                “No wait, there she is.”

                She came back through the other end of the conveyor belt.

                “How the hell does this thing work?”

                “Maybe it needs flesh and biological matter?”

                This time they managed to persuade the small one to join them. They made their way to the door halfway down the belt. It was an unassuming thing. A small and a yellow sticker with “SufoenO” written in black letters.

                “It kind of looks like a warning label.” Anna commented nervously.

                “Yeah. Like the ones you get in places with high voltage. Or radiation.”

                “Well, we’ve come this far.”

                With a deep breath the two friends placed their hands upon the door handle.

 *

                The sight of the temple was a truly ominous thing. It leapt from the natural stone and yet clearly did not belong. Where stone smoothly transitioned into wall the surface became a scorched black. Hideous gargoyles leered from the parapet that surrounded a sharp spire. On the corners and edges of the building golden runes were melted into the surface forming nauseating symbols that the eye could not help but stare at while the heart screamed to look away.

                “Oh boy.” Robert was not happy. He had always been taught to steer clear of Lucifer and all his works, yet here he was staring at the fallen angel’s place of worship. He eyed the entrance where two ancient statues were clad in war gear, fearsome looks upon their terrible faces

                “This does not look like the natural habitat of a badger.” Oscar was ahead of them looking at the building thoughtfully.

                 “Oscar. You’ve got to stop thinking about that badger. It’s super dangerous. You''ll pass on to the afterlife if you find it.”

                “Hi guys.” Tan-the-man had joined them.

                A very cross Alicia had also just arrived, muttering angrily to herself and getting frustrated that she could not control her anger. Then she got angry because she could not control her frustration. It was a vicious cycle.

                “We’re not seriously thinking of going in there are we?” Tan-the-man had never thought much of the idea of dabbling with Satan and everything he could see of the dark temple confirmed his reservations.

                “Of course, we are.” Tan put her hands on her hips. “I ain’t letting my baby girl grow up without no mama.”

                Suddenly the great temple spoke, as if the entrance that let to its dark within was an unmoving mouth and no mere archway.

                “Who dares approach the temple of the Lord of darkness?”

                The stone had not moved and yet it now seemed that every statue and gargoyle was staring at them menacingly.

                “Uh.” Angphu responded to the awful glare of lifeless eyes. “My name is Angphu.”

                “Very well, "Angphu"” The deep and powerful spoke again. “To allow entry here you must answer my riddle. Speak the true answer and you may enter. Walk away and you will be followed by a terrible curse. Answer falsely and you shall surely die.”

                Angphu and Robert listened in terrified silence to the riddle that would decide their fate.

“Answer these words in tangled encryption,

Name the unnamed of this brief description,

Describe the object that is brown in hue,

An item that's often called sticky too.”