A25.
This is part of the #Dungeon23 challenge in which you make one room to a dungeon every day for a year. In an effort to link my memories to the creation, I am also writing a personal journal entry with each room that may or may not be related.
You don’t have to read that part.
A25.
Viewing this room through the window from outside, it appears to be a drab kitchen. It’s an illusion, bro. It’s way different inside.
As you approach this room from inside Kik’ina Kir, you can see what appears to be fog coming out from under the door. The doorknob is cold to the touch and if you lick it, your tongue will stick. It is locked.
If you open the door fog rolls into the hallway, and a terrible chill scales up your spine.
This room is covered in mounds of snow.
At the center of the room is a large pillar of ice encasing a young woman. Her hand is reaching out in terror, as though she is begging for someone to stop.
This woman is Hanalee.
She has a terrible curse that will cause her to combust if she is freed from the ice.
She is the daughter of The Necromancer Zoltux. He encased her in ice to keep her from combusting. She was cursed by a rival wizard. Zoltux is struggling to find a cure.
Also in this room is An Ice Wraith. It will freeze the life force out of anyone who comes in here not named Zoltux.
Can she be used as leverage? Will you free her and accidentally doom her? I can’t say.
What if the Gremlins just became regular citizens Kingston Falls?
1/25/23
Snowy day today. Got my first shovel in of the winter.
Let me tell you a story about shoveling snow.
Who’d want to hear that?
Just hang with me on this one, okay? Pretty please.
Alright here goes:
I moved to Chicago from a warm climate, one that had very mild winters. School would shut down if there was any snow on the roads. They’re just not built for dealing with it.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out the horrors of sidewalks that were left un-shoveled. We had a basement apartment (a garden unit, if you’re being chic), and Gail and I had slipped on the stairs one time each before we decided that shoveling snow was important.
And so I shoveled.
I’d shovel the sidewalk in front of our three flat building and the walk leading to our little apartment.
Not everyone shoveled.
In fact they’d do something worse. Sometimes neighbors would just throw their salt on a pile of snow. If you get several inches of snow like we do, this only creates a mass of slush to slip and slide in, basically making the situation worse.
For those who don’t get much snow: you shovel first, then you salt to keep ice from forming.
Is this a story or a lesson on winter sidewalk maintenance?
Right right.
So one day we were getting a lot of snow. It was the afternoon and I was outside taking care of business.
Across the street I saw a young woman in motorized wheelchair. Unfortunately for her she hit an unavoidable patch of salted snow and her wheels could find no traction.
She was stuck.
I can hear her voice clear as a bell when she called out “Help.”
It wasn’t helplessness, it was the sound of someone confronted with the cruelty of the situation, and no other options. It broke my heart to hear anyone have to call for help like that.
There was no one around but me across the street, so I hustled over and pushed her another block home. It was a terrible stretch, and she had only gotten stuck at the start of it. The worst parts were the corners of the street because that’s where snow plows would deposit what ever they scraped up. And it was all heavy slush.
But we got there okay, and she thanked me. I told her it was no problem, and we parted ways.
Instead of going home, I shoveled the rest of her side of the street so she wouldn’t have to deal with it the next day.
We never ran into each other again, but that moment has stayed with me ever since.
From that day on I started shoveling in front of other people’s houses. I never told anyone I was doing it, I just did it. I did it for years. I did it because I could. I was physically capable of doing it, so I did. And I bet if she was physically able to she would too, because then she’d never have to cry for help like that ever again.
Well that’s sweet.
I’m not done, hang on.
One winter, several years after that day with the young woman in the wheelchair, I was outside shoveling with Nate, my neighbor. We were chatting about something when he said to me with a big grin:
“You know, you really started something special in this neighborhood.”
I had zero idea what he was talking about.
He said, “I saw you shoveling in front of my building. So I shoveled in front of that other building. They saw me, and I said there’s a guy shoveling in front of all these other houses. So I’m just paying it forward. So now we all go out shovel the rest of the block. It’s really nice.”
I didn’t even know they knew I was doing it. Apparently they’d been shoveling the rest of the block every winter alongside me for years. If someone was sick or unwell, it didn’t matter, because someone would come by and take care of their part of the sidewalk. Nate told me it really felt like a community coming together and he thanked me for starting it.
I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t.
I’ve done some cool shit in my life that I’m really proud of. I don’t normally talk about it because it makes me uncomfortable. But this may be the personal achievement that I’m most proud of. More than the podcast or any of the acting work I’ve done - shoveling snow in Chicago, and my actions silently causing others to help their neighbors out - that takes the cake. If it’s bragging then I will 100% brag about that shit all day every day.
I hope that young lady is doing well. And I hope that her and others like her have neighbors who will get out there and keep the sidewalks clean.
That’s the story.
That wasn’t so bad right?
Ehhhhh….
Oh shut up.
See you tomorrow.
-jae
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