Everyone (and everything) in this story was over eighteen years old at the time of writing.
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He was new to the town, having moved for work, and he had moved into the apartment six weeks before. His wife would follow in another two long weeks. He was lonely, but he consoled himself with lengthy ambles through the Mid Western town's abundant forested parkland. The man lived on one side and worked on the other side of a particularly large and beautiful park, which stretched nearly to the downtown area, and split right through the most direct routes from work to home, and home to work. Everyday after work he walked home, every few days picking a new route through the intervening wooded park, along well worn trails made by joggers and dog walkers, which left the paved path for the innocent depths of the urban forest.
On this particular day, a fine breezy warm day of the type only seen in early spring, the sun shone hot on his shoulders as he left the office, warming him almost to the point of breaking a sweat, but not quite, so that he had a surge of energy. What a feeling after the cold of winter! He briefly felt an urge to shed his clothes right there in the street and run in his underwear, and jump up and down on some patch of fresh lush winter grass.
In a fit of ennui this morning, when the sky looked like freezing rain, he had driven to work. So he left his car in the employee lot with his jacket tossed into the back seat, right where it sat. And he walked towards the town park, whistling a tune. Spring fever fell on him wet noodle, fresh out of the boiling pot.
The park was humming with insects, the early comers, and a college coed skated by him, as though gracefully swimming in the air which seemed warm and cool at the same time. Her little butt, taught in the black spandex, slipped back and forth in a hypnotic rhythm, and he could see her breasts just peep into view under her white t shirt, on one side, then the other, in the opposite rhythm to her butt. The dark edge of a nipple became briefly visible under the sleeveless shirt, as she swung out her arms to power each stroke of the skates.
He was aware suddenly of a little erection, and at the same time a little gaggle of laughing school girls headed toward him on the paved path, so he jumped off the track, embarrassed, and headed like a shot into the woods.
Very soon he noted that he was lost. He had not taken one of the jogging trails he was accustomed to, and with the snow melting from the branches, the forest looked different, almost strangely different. He followed this trail and that, sticking himself with thorns, even tearing his slacks on a bramble. But the branches arched over each trail seemed to get lower and lower, until he was stooped over after a few yards and stuck again. Game trails, he thought, because the park was full of deer and other critters who had adapted to urban life. The trails were muddy and the forest floor covered with little puddles of melting snow. His shoes were slick and spattered with goo. He could not tell the direction out because he had no landmarks and could not even see the sun. The bugs, mostly flies he now noted, throbbed about him with a hum now verging on maddening. An almost threatening hum, he imagined. A dog barked somewhere, menacing, far away. He almost panicked.
Instead he slipped.
And fell into mud and brambles.
His hands were in the mud, the knees of his trousers caked and wet, his shoes full of cold water, and surrounding him in a net, grabbing stabbing brambles.
He was on a little slope which lead up a little hill. On the top of the hill he fancied he could see a ray of sunlight, and a possible clearing. From there perhaps he could see a landmark, and the way home.
He crept up the hill on his hands and knees, not able to stand and barely able to crawl through the crisscrossed wires of the sticker bush. Again the path he followed seemed to be slowly pushing him into more and more of a crouch, so that eventually his head was below his shoulders close to the soppy ground. Two yards, five yards, seven yards he struggled. Then, carefully looking up to see where he was headed, he had a shock. The clearing he hoped for was not as big as he thought. It was no more than three feet across, but (and he would have rubbed his eyes if he could move his arms freely) from a little chimney, built right out of the ground, issued white smoke. Cooking smoke, by the smell of eggs and onions wafting down the hill. The chimney was only ten inches tall and four inches wide, and made of tiny dirt colored bricks.
He stopped dead in his tracks. The chimney was only three or four feet away. Where did it lead? and what was it doing there? Mud from his forehead dripped in his eye, which clamped shut in a hurry. He reached a hand carefully up to wipe his brow. Except his hand did not move. It was stuck in the mud, about six inches deep. He tried to use his other hand to free himself but that hand was eight inches deep. And he realized he was stuck fast and slowly sinking deeper.
For the second time that day he panicked, and he began to struggle, which only made things worse. His feet to the knees were stuck fast, and his arms were sucked in now to the elbows, now past the elbows, now past the biceps, and now to the chest. He turned his head to the side and lay with his cheek on the mud. How could it get any worse than this?
He rested a moment to think. Then the little chimney rolled out a little more smoke, and he heard some clinking and banging below him, coming from within the hill.
Then he felt something tug on his shoe, hard, and the shoe popped off under the mud. Something was snaked around his ankle, and another behind his bent knee. Then the other shoe was tugged off and the leg grappled like the previous. He began to struggle violently and cry out, but he realized his hands had already been pinioned below, and were being somehow dragged through the mud towards his feet, until he was hogtied underground, with his feet and hands on one side trussed together, shoulder width apart from the other pair. Before he could start to cry like a baby, something grabbed his hair and tugged his face deep into the mud.
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And with a pop, he left the mud (at least his face did), and he was looking dimly around a cozy kitchen, carved out of the dirt of the hill, while a woman repeatedly licked her hands and with them scrubbed the muddy crust from his eyes. She mumbled to herself while she worked. Her hands, about the only thing he could see, were likely once beautiful but had been worn broad and calloused by hard work. The fingers were long and deft, flitting here and there, cajoling the dirt from every crevice with mischievous pokes and caresses. Then one poked him in the eye.
"Hey!" he yelled.
"Hey yourself," cackled the thing