Who ate Carl?

Carl's mother used to say, "Curiosity doesn't kill the cat. Instead, it becomes a superposition of various phases." No doubt she was a theoretical physicist, well versed in the quantum realms and the Holy Book of Principia Mathematica, but Carl only understood its meaning now.

Or did he? Because till the end of the horizon, there was utter, complete darkness. Even the grim reaper would hesitate to merge with this opalescent void of nothingness. Maybe she was highlighting the probabilities of all possible outcomes he would take to navigate out of this event horizon, which equals his current phase now. In other words, the apple is red in colour. Guess having a physicist as a mother when navigating through the blind room is futile. Who knew.

Why did he have to reach out for the latest edition of the Asian Fever? Why did the bookshelf topple on itself as if it were drunk with knowledge on its shelves? With the thousands of promiscuous students at the University of Candela, this black hole should have been populated with its own civilization of incelibates. Or no one reads Asian Fever anymore. Nevertheless, Carl wished he had time to contemplate his pitfall for years beyond yonder, but the chilling breeze heading towards the dingy chambers of nowhere signalled otherwise.

The wind, as per the epic Cast Away, signifies an exit from the island of darkness he is imprisoned on. Arming himself with a confident smile, Carl merrily trudged along the invisible corridors, splatting and clucking seemingly muddy soil. There was a miasma of malodourous odour seeping out from the ground and sudden raspy creaks rattling out from the north, but such trivial matters didn't seem to bother the determined sophomore. He knew wherever the zephyr halted was the paradise of freedom.

Then the breeze stopped. There was absolutely no cold shiver tapping on his shoulders. He looked around again, and it was no different with his eyes blindfolded. Pitch-black stillness again throughout. However, this time it was not the gentle cinches sending shudders down his spine. It was the horrifying uncertainty of losing yourself in a never-ending void in the middle of the universe. Or, as Einstein would say, Springfield. Frozen with terror, Carl huddled himself tightly, waiting for God to throw a twig for him to fetch.

It wasn't a twig, but something dripped from the top. He did fall into a crevice of a cave, so it may be an indication of a stalactite yelling its existence to him. To check if there are other stalactites, Carl thought of an ingenious solution. He decided to hop up and down like a 500-pound kangaroo.

Despite the thumps and rumps on the squiggly ground, there was no sign of other stalactites or rock formations. The only responses he received were the whining thumps he initiated. Or at least, that's what he thought for 10 seconds.

An indescribable force from the depths of hell grappled him downwards as the ground erected itself rapidly, transforming into an impenetrable fortress. The Great Wall of China would feel like a noodle in front of this titanesque structure. As he skidded downward, there were tiny threads of light skipping off the edges of his vision, providing a surreal experience. It was Morse code exemplified visually while a man was falling to his death.

When the tumbling stopped, he eventually found himself in a peculiar hallway with large, ruminating Greco-Roman pillars piercing through the heavens underneath. However, they were clearly past their glory days, moulding like stale bread left in a dark pantry. A faint, eerie voice attempted to reach out to Carl, hiding amongst the rotten pillars.

C A R L. H E L P M E. P L E A S E.

Trying to find the voice was like finding a candy wrapper in the hill of Cadbury . The voice came from everywhere and anywhere as it whistled and echoed unceremoniously around the vicinity. The further Carl ventured around looking for the voice, the more he was struck with pandemonium, as the pillars started to distort and curl like a reflection in the pond affected by ripples of water. From those pillars, a hand instantaneously thrust out vehemently, gripping Carl's neck and pulling him away swiftly from the defunct Greco-Roman verandah. At the very next blink, he saw himself staring at a greasy, warty face with hefty eye bags and puffy blood-red eyes. It only had a tiny cotton rag supporting its dignity, if it knew it had one. Carl promised he would never watch a horror film, but he was so moved by this creature that he had to scream as loud as he could.

"Sh. Shsh. Ima Karloyung. Whassa name?", asked the son of Gollum.

"Carl."

The creature attempted to pronounce his name, grunting C A R L.

"No, it's Car-il. Carl," emphasised the spooked 20-year-old.

"Iknowa Karlo. Youara mees."

Carl scoffed at it. "You're me?"

"If youara doen belie'ee mees, my papa madezeze zweater."

Carl slapped its face with the gentlest of pressure. It must have been a terrible joke, but a dry hiss snapped him out of his psychosis. His father did indeed sew the cotton sweater he was clinging dearly to.

"Listeen caeefullee. Eez placa notta cave. Eez 'elly' of meenotaure. Eez dae'nger. To Azcap. Youra mist eat mees."

Carl could barely decipher his hieroglyphs. But he was pretty confident he meant the following: "Listen carefully. This plaza holds a cave. This belly of 'Minatouri?' This day under. To escape, you must beat me." Carl could not understand what annoyed him more: being trapped in the belly of a Minatouri (whatever that means) or beating up the ghastly recluse of decaying Atlantis.

The latter, however, was so much more fun to process. He grabbed out a scraped bone and hammered the weak beast continually. Despite the stings, Karloyung was laughing throughout, as if those hits were the works of the tickle monster. But he was clearly bruised in all his limbs, with innumerable reddened patches dispersed like the aftermath of a battle in the tomato garden. "Heeeta Harda! Youra mist eat mees!". It then forced its head closer to Carl's mouth. "EATTA MEES." 

Carl stopped.

Eat? Surely it must be beat. Surely offering his skull was to crack his orbitals, not munch on them. Surely he must be insane to beat a weaker version of himself. Did he care? Not one bit. All he wanted was to escape out of this hellhole. He whammed and whacked the remaining knuckles of the troglodyte, persisting until it heaved its last breath.

A sudden silence enveloped the Olympian marshlands. Carl waited for a hint, for the clearance to finally escape. He tapped on his feet impatiently and placed his hands over his hips, hoping Zeus would fall off from the edge of Mount Olympus and destroy this filthy acid pool.

However, nothing ever came. It never came for an hour, for days, or perhaps for years to come. Over the Ron's passed by, Carl found his skin shrivelling and wrinkling, collapsing under its own weight. He felt some spots and pimples spouting on his face as his shoulders weighed an additional 20 pounds more than they had before. Fearing what may come after, he whipped out his phone to check his reflection. The same weary eye bags. The same puffy red eyes. The same warts. It was too good to be true.

"Why didn't you listen to Karloyung, Carl?", exclaimed a husky voice from the shadows. "All you had to do was eat him. Then, I would have rewarded you."

Carl stuttered incoherently. "Wif.. what?"

"Me."

It was a human with the head of a seasoned bull, the eyes of a reticulated python, and the horns of the devil. His biceps were three times the size of Carl's head, and his chest rivalled that of Hercules.

"The Minotaur?", the weak captive huffed in front of its master.

"Yes, and more. Lust, hatred, and greed; The wretched men languish in these parts of the world. Never heard of the enigma?"

"No." 

"What? A simple search in Google Maps will show you!" The minotaur erupted.

"But I have no signal reception here", gasped Carl.

"You are joking, right? I thought you called your friends for help, but I assumed they didn't get back to you. You got yourself caught without even calling someone up? There's 5G reception everywhere, for Minos' sake!".

Carl switched on his phone. There were 0 missed calls, 5 notifications on Instagram, and a post about the Minotaur. Carl didn't have enough saliva to even gulp in embarrassment, so he choked on the moist air of the Enigma.

"I have never captured such an idiot before. Are you the son of Coalemus?" Only if he knew. If he knew Carl was lunging forward at him, cracking his jaded bovine skull. The Minotaur was bellowing with agonising pain but didn't take long to recover as he swung Carl to one of the marble pillars, nearly smashing the student apart. The energised demigod limped towards his paralysed aggressor, snorting out lava as his horns were on the verge of piercing Carl's forehead. "Don't you ever do that to me again. Is that understood?"

Carl nodded his head reluctantly. Or it seemed so in his thoughts. But the Minotaur's attention shifted by then, as something else torpedoed out from the top and crashed into a soggy patch of goo. It was another human, adorned with a minimalist beige t-shirt and baggy khaki pants. He wore an unusual bracelet, clamped permanently to his forehead.

"Uh, greetings, or salutations, or I don't know. I am Kal Young, batch 2055. Do you fathom the nearest exit?", as he adjusted his crown.

The minotaur turned its face to me briefly, grinning wider than a Cheshire cat would ever try. "You will have to eat that recluse over there to leave." The newbie shook his head diligently, as if he were programmed specifically to follow instructions from a beefhead. He marched towards Carl with an uneasy glint in his eyes and the bracelet. The bracelet shone with the fury of a thousand betelgeuses.

Carl scratched at his warts like a flea-smitten dog as he laid eyes on an abandoned tibia.

Here we go again.