I was a pharisee, I never saw my need for grace...

So.

Hi.

Another fun weekend gone by.

In the evening of this past friday, a small but indomitable handful of we brave, intrepid explorers ventured into a great Hall filled with eerie, vulgar music. At the door, we formed a line, and one by one watched as children that could be variously designated "tween" and "teenybopper" and "way too small to be here" were funneled through a carpeted door into the dark inner chambers of the Hall, the thumping and wailing of the brutish music wafting through as one by one the children vanished. As we neared the carpet door, we found ourselves before a great glass judgement booth, where admittance was granted or denied.

For those allowed into the Hall, twin stamps of purple and green were applied to the backs of our hands, presumably trackers in order to aid pursuit should we try to escape. Circumstances also demanded that I purchase special footwear, specifically a set of white cotton socks. All were required to wear white cotton socks once past the carpet doors. This is because the land beyond the door was rife with various fungi and bacteria that would obliterate the feet of any foolish enough to risk going without them.

Our initial group consisted of six:

Erica
Chad
Savannah
Sierra
Nathan

Only I would return to tell the story.

Once past the faded blue carpet doors, we entered into the Hall itself, which was populated by various unsuspecting clusters of those I mentioned earlier, children of various ages. The natives. There was a gaming parlor, a restaurant, a dusty, long abandoned general store, and beyond these, there was, as the locals called it, the Floor.

This Floor was filled with dozens of locals with strange wheeled feet. They would move in seemingly endless laps in the near dark, with that loud, crude music in the background, as if it were egging them on. Circle after circle they went, lap after lap. Stepping past the dimly lit gaming parlor, we journeyed all the way to the back of the Hall and came to a booth with another door. This booth, however, dispensed footwear. The use for our hand stamps became clear then as the man behind the counter here would glance at our hands and hand us our wheeled shoes.

And this was the curious part. Apparently we were to strap these wheeled shoes to our feet and enter the Floor with the locals and do laps. This we did without complaint, removing our old footwear and putting on the new. All of us got four wheels, which were aligned on the outer edges of the either shoe as the wheels on a car would be.

All of us got these shoes except for Nathan, who was able to sneak in a pair of special footwear, shoes with all the wheels in a perfect line, which would have been ideal for all, but the rest of were forced to make do with awkwardly placed wheels.

We came seeking the purpose of the laps, the endless spinning, but we could only guess at what the point to it all was. Predictably, moving on wheels was quite difficult. Many, even some of the natives, would fall. There was little to see once on the Floor. It was oval in shape, with high glass walls in order to prevent escape. Movement required not a step but a shuffle, a gliding, if you will. Perhaps one could almost liken it to ice skating, save for the fact that none save Nathan were able to get around on something akin to true skates.

As I have said, we could only guess at the purpose to the endless movement. I have come to the conclusion that we could only have been powering up an alien starship. The aliens must have crash landed, and in an effort to repower their ship, built the "Skating Rink" as it was called, and lure in unsuspecting humans. I also feel strongly about the fact that they wished to use us as slaves. Our ankles were excersized constantly as we did as we were bid, causing the muscles to bulk up to several hundred times their natural size.

Eventually we came to the terror stricken conclusion that if we did not escape soon, we might never. A distraction was devised. A second crew of explorers would aid us. Jon, Jared, Michael and Daniel had joined us before we could warn them. Jon, leader of this crew would hook his foot under mine and trip me up. This would allow Jared to slip out while they sorted out the mess. He could then escape and bring back help.

This plan was flawless save for one problem. I could not tell the rest of my team. Worse, when Jon and I fell, we accidentally took Jared down with us. Sensing disaster, Sierra bravely dove in to save us and tripped over my prone form, and was sent sprawling. This would prove to be our doom. It allowed us to stop moving, but before we could sort out the confusion that followed, the Floormen who pushed all the natives along and kept their circles arrived to beat us until we kept moving. And so lack of communication was our downfall.

The time for escape did not come until much later. At one point in the evening, all lights were put out, and a fog descended, presumably one of the aliens, coming out of their spaceship to devour unsuspecting natives. As the fog weaved through the air, it began to follow me, hungry for blood, perhaps even sensing my desire to escape with both crews.

I knew I had to escape. I ran for the glass walls and began to skate up them, going so fast that I began to skate horizontally rather than vertically. Before the killer fog could reach me, I skated all the way up to the door and out. So adept was I now at skating, and so thick with muscle were my feet, that I was able to slip out the door before anyone could stop me.

I now seek finances and willing men and women for a second journey, to save my brave friends who linger still in the confines of the Skating Rink.

And that is how it all really happened. This is a true account of our disastrous adventures on the sixth of July, in the year of our Lord 2007.