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Description
Terminal Zeus

There’s a town, ‘bout 20 miles from Big Rock, where they sell things. Things like fruits, and vegetables, and radios, but all that’s not coming up this way anytime soon. My name’s Red, and I don’t care much for them things. They make all this havoc, and folks ‘round here don’t really like havoc like them city-folk anyhow.
Anyway, I’m getting’ off ma story. There were these two boys see, and the first one was a little older than the second, so he was always takin’ the second down to Big Rock to play around in the caves. The little one’s name was Billy, and he really fancied his brother Earl. He thought that he was just the bravest kid anybody could meet.
Well, one day the two’s o’ them went down into those caverns, and they were real excited, see, ‘cause them were playing this game, Terminal Zeus, they called it, and in this game both of them would be this Zeus character, and he would do everything from saving the day to landing on the moon. They imagined things in those caves, like, the boy’s were tellin’ me one day that Zeus had heard something in the caves.
Being the active imagination boys they were, I played along, and asked about what Zeus had heard. What they said back to me, I have to admit, was a little disturbin’, but I thought that they must be reading too many books because they claimed that they heard somebody hollerin’ for help down there in a big hole in the ground where a whatsitcalled, Stulegmate had fallen through the bottom.
Well, I went with them down there, and boy darn was it creepy. There were bats with little red eyes flapping their all-encompassin’ wings like canvas, and you could almost feel the short gusts of wind they sent down from up in that huge black ceiling. There was writing on the walls with chalk about space aliens and muskets shooting people out of them across oceans or…lakes…or whatever those little wavy blue lines were, and there was a bucket of chalk. I asked the boys about it but they just said that they wrote down all the adventures of Zeus. The more I looked, the more my mind ate it up. It seemed real, like all that had really happened, down here in this cave.
I realized that we had gone really deep into the cave, because we had been walkin’ for about 20 minutes. It kinda scared me, this dark cave with little shafts of light shining in, but, when I thought about how these boys went in here everyday to play Terminal Zeus – just to play a make believe game!
I started gettin’ scared. My mind was runnin’ all these thoughts about Terminal Zeus I had forgot what we were doin’ in here. So I got to thinkin’ that maybe it was a space monster, some kind of little green men like on the radio, or maybe it was the Yarg, the 10 foot yellow man that Terminal Zeus still hasn’t gotten rid of, he got away into the earth last time, after attackin’ a senior home, says Earl.
And then we’re there. My heart is beating so fast and loud in my chest that I could swear that all those little bats are wakin’ up and Yarg is gettin’ his long, stone-yella tongues ready and lickin’ his lips just thinkin’ o’ me. The hole is maybe twenty feet deep and perfectly narrow, like a well of sorts. The boys tell me to listen. They ask me if I can hear it. But hear what? They tell me that a woman is stuck in there and she’s hollerin’ fer help up at us.
So, I put my head down to the hole and try to listen for a yell, and tryin’ not to listen to the voice in my head tellin’ me that somethin’s gonna take my head down there, and my body doesn’t have much chance of comin’ with it. *Gulp* So I suck it up and look down. The boys help me by shinin’ a flashlight down there and I still don’t see anything. I’m so relieved, but as I get up I see a man, big, with a large coat that looks like the covers of space-adventure books. His muscles are huge and he looks like he has a lot of scars on his face and hands. Battle scars, my mind tells me, but I dismiss it. Then I see it.
On his turned-up helmet he has the letters Z - E - U – S printed across the forehead. I rub my eyes, thinkin’ that this must be a dream, and he’s gone. The kids saw him too, and on the way back we talked about his features and what he looked like he was trying to say and comparin’ him to what he did “last time”.
So I’m telling you this story ‘cause you probably don’t get out much – don’t play any games. But, somethin’ to tell yeh, it’s not a game. If it’s real in your head, it’s real. It’s very real. Otherwise you prolly play these “video games” that have all these arrows and swords and guns in them, and it’s all havoc. And you know something? I’m not too fond of havoc anyhow.

Description
Terminal Zeus

There’s a town, ‘bout 20 miles from Big Rock, where they sell things. Things like fruits, and vegetables, and radios, but all that’s not coming up this way anytime soon. My name’s Red, and I don’t care much for them things. They make all this havoc, and folks ‘round here don’t really like havoc like them city-folk anyhow.
Anyway, I’m getting’ off ma story. There were these two boys see, and the first one was a little older than the second, so he was always takin’ the second down to Big Rock to play around in the caves. The little one’s name was Billy, and he really fancied his brother Earl. He thought that he was just the bravest kid anybody could meet.
Well, one day the two’s o’ them went down into those caverns, and they were real excited, see, ‘cause them were playing this game, Terminal Zeus, they called it, and in this game both of them would be this Zeus character, and he would do everything from saving the day to landing on the moon. They imagined things in those caves, like, the boy’s were tellin’ me one day that Zeus had heard something in the caves.
Being the active imagination boys they were, I played along, and asked about what Zeus had heard. What they said back to me, I have to admit, was a little disturbin’, but I thought that they must be reading too many books because they claimed that they heard somebody hollerin’ for help down there in a big hole in the ground where a whatsitcalled, Stulegmate had fallen through the bottom.
Well, I went with them down there, and boy darn was it creepy. There were bats with little red eyes flapping their all-encompassin’ wings like canvas, and you could almost feel the short gusts of wind they sent down from up in that huge black ceiling. There was writing on the walls with chalk about space aliens and muskets shooting people out of them across oceans or…lakes…or whatever those little wavy blue lines were, and there was a bucket of chalk. I asked the boys about it but they just said that they wrote down all the adventures of Zeus. The more I looked, the more my mind ate it up. It seemed real, like all that had really happened, down here in this cave.
I realized that we had gone really deep into the cave, because we had been walkin’ for about 20 minutes. It kinda scared me, this dark cave with little shafts of light shining in, but, when I thought about how these boys went in here everyday to play Terminal Zeus – just to play a make believe game!
I started gettin’ scared. My mind was runnin’ all these thoughts about Terminal Zeus I had forgot what we were doin’ in here. So I got to thinkin’ that maybe it was a space monster, some kind of little green men like on the radio, or maybe it was the Yarg, the 10 foot yellow man that Terminal Zeus still hasn’t gotten rid of, he got away into the earth last time, after attackin’ a senior home, says Earl.
And then we’re there. My heart is beating so fast and loud in my chest that I could swear that all those little bats are wakin’ up and Yarg is gettin’ his long, stone-yella tongues ready and lickin’ his lips just thinkin’ o’ me. The hole is maybe twenty feet deep and perfectly narrow, like a well of sorts. The boys tell me to listen. They ask me if I can hear it. But hear what? They tell me that a woman is stuck in there and she’s hollerin’ fer help up at us.
So, I put my head down to the hole and try to listen for a yell, and tryin’ not to listen to the voice in my head tellin’ me that somethin’s gonna take my head down there, and my body doesn’t have much chance of comin’ with it. *Gulp* So I suck it up and look down. The boys help me by shinin’ a flashlight down there and I still don’t see anything. I’m so relieved, but as I get up I see a man, big, with a large coat that looks like the covers of space-adventure books. His muscles are huge and he looks like he has a lot of scars on his face and hands. Battle scars, my mind tells me, but I dismiss it. Then I see it.
On his turned-up helmet he has the letters Z - E - U – S printed across the forehead. I rub my eyes, thinkin’ that this must be a dream, and he’s gone. The kids saw him too, and on the way back we talked about his features and what he looked like he was trying to say and comparin’ him to what he did “last time”.
So I’m telling you this story ‘cause you probably don’t get out much – don’t play any games. But, somethin’ to tell yeh, it’s not a game. If it’s real in your head, it’s real. It’s very real. Otherwise you prolly play these “video games” that have all these arrows and swords and guns in them, and it’s all havoc. And you know something? I’m not too fond of havoc anyhow.