The Cheese

I did it. I ate the 3,000-year-old cheese!

What would possess a man like me to do it? Pure curiosity.

What did it taste like? It was about how I expected; moldy, crumbly, and generally not very good. But I felt accomplished.

What I did not expect, however, was the pure darkness to follow my first bite. At first, I thought perhaps the extremely aged dairy product had taken out my eyesight as punishment for daring to challenge fate, until my phone alerted in my hand, casting light throughout the room. With my returned sight, I was able to see that the room around me wasn’t quite the same as moments before.

The table I had sat myself at was nowhere to be seen, the cheese was sitting on top of a… large stone? I attempted to look closer, brushing the solid surface with a hand and feeling how smooth it was. I shone my phone light on the stone and jumped back when I saw a face, nearly dropping my phone in the process. I shakily held the phone back up, hoping whatever face I saw was not coming closer only to find that I had been spooked by a painted face on a casket.

A casket? It looked exactly like the ones I’d seen in storybooks about Egyptian tombs and mummies, with the cheese sitting right on top, looking decidedly less moldy. Shining the light around, the room was filled with many other relics, and the walls were adorned with images, hieroglyphs, everywhere. Telling stories I did not understand and was unable to translate.

My heart started pounding as I realized where I was, or more accurately, when I was. I was inside the tomb where the cheese had originally been found, only somehow it appeared to be before the group ever stumbled into it. I frantically tried to search the room to find a way out, any way out. I searched for what felt like hours, checking every corner, crevice, and even the coffin. Sadly, all I found was more dead things and some gold trinkets that would do me no good.

I sighed and sat down on the ground, trying to gather what happened and make sense of it. Only, it didn’t make any sense. In what world does eating a bad piece of cheese send me back in time? The world I’m living in I guess! Unless I’m actually hallucinating in some hospital after the cheese put me into a coma.

I looked around from the ground sighing again. This hallucination sucks! Couldn’t I have at least been trapped somewhere more… alive?

I walked back up to the casket staring at the cheese that I could still taste on my tongue, and my stomach grumbled. I groaned as I realized that the only food was this almost prehistoric sandwich ingredient in front of me. After some deliberation, I decided that I had nothing to lose but my mind (and what lunch was left in my stomach), and took another piece of the cheese into my mouth.

This time, when my eyes opened they snapped back shut from the bright sunlight .

Sunlight? Sunlight! I’m not trapped any more! I carefully opened my eyes back up and looked around. The cheese was still sitting next to me, and a small piece was in my hand, only now it looked almost freshly made, not a bit of mold on it. I was in some sort of stall or tent, with many of the other relics from before still around me, sans the mummified body in a box and dust.

Before I was able to fully get my bearings on the situation I now found myself in, someone was at the only entrance and exit on their way in. They were talking, but it wasn’t a language I understood. I looked around for anywhere I could hide, but it was too late, they were through the curtained doorway and I was attempting to look like I belonged.

The conversation they were having stopped as soon as they saw me. There was a few moments of awkward silence, neither of us moving as we stared at the other.

I smiled in fear and held out a hand. “Hi?” I barely spoke above a whisper as I panic thought about how to not become a prisoner or worse right now. My hand yanked back moments before a spear jabbed at the spot it had just been.

They began to yell at me and out of the tent, nothing I could understand still but I assumed calling for backup to deal with the thief they found. I held my hands up in front of me and attempted to beg for mercy, telling them I was just a confused man and didn’t know where I was, but they couldn’t understand me either so it was futile. Five men entered through the doorway, surrounding me and making me back my way to the table the cheese was sitting on.

I bumped it, causing the cryptic curd to begin to fall to the ground. I caught it and held it close to my chest. They yelled again, probably something along the lines of ‘The thief has the sacred cheese! Stop him at all costs,’ but I was in no position to ask them to repeat themselves. As the men stepped closer, spears and swords prepped to slice and poke at anything they needed to, I cowered into myself, holding the cheese tighter.

Then, as I thought this was the end of the line for me, I thought to do the unthinkable. I grabbed a large handful of cheese and looked the one that appeared to be the leader in the eyes as I shoved the entire handful in my mouth and swallowed.

The world seemed to swirl together before my eyes as he shouted again and I felt the blades touch my skin only momentarily before I passed out from the overwhelming taste of the cheese.