The Dark Escalator

The Writer’s Cramp for 4/28/2012 *** WINNER ***
Contest prompt: “Write a story or poem about someone going up the down escalator”
996 words

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The knight in battered armor knocked on the heavy wood gate of the castle tower with the hilt of his long sword. The impact barely made a thud. “Open this gate, dark wizard!” he shouted, echoing his words throughout the canyon. “Your dragons have been slain, your orcs slaughtered, your gargoyles executed. There are no abominations left to defend you. Come forth and face your punishment with honor instead of cowering inside your castle like the frightened rat that you are.”

The dozens of other knights in scarred and dented armor behind him chuckled at their leader’s mockery. He was further supported by hundreds of surviving longbowmen, halberdiers, and infantrymen. The valley behind them were littered with corpses from all sides.

The dark wood of the thick gate was ornately carved with the heads of demons and monsters, enough to strike fear into the hearts of any that approached. When the gate thumped open, the startled knights pointed their swords and polearms and arrows at the gate.

The knight slid his sword into the gap between the gate and the frame and wedged it open. It squealed like the howls of a wounded banshee. He put his gauntleted fingers behind the door and pulled it open.

“Be careful, sire,” a knight warned in whisper.

The king pulled the door open as archers held their bowstrings back, but the only surprise they faced was the brightly lit empty foyer at the base of the tower. He stepped inside and shouted, “What foul magic is this?”

The other knights clumsily stomped into the base of the tower as their armor clinged and clanged. Several gasped when they saw what troubled their king. One of the knights pushed forward a long bearded man in a robe bound by an iron collar and chains.

“What is this...thing?” the king demanded of him.

“Oh that,” the captured wizard groaned. “That’s his escalator.”

“And what is the purpose of this dark magic? Tell me now or I will run you through!”

“You don’t have to be so rude about it,” the apprentice wizard remarked. “It’s a mechanical device where the steps move so one need not walk up and down. The dark wizard has bad knees. Let’s just say he ‘acquired it’ from a mall after he made a portal to another world to take in some shopping.” His chains rattled when he made air quotes.

“Astonishing,” the king muttered.

“And why do the steps move downward?” a knight shouted, shaking the prisoner and rattling his chains some more.

The dark wizard appeared at the top of the escalator and shouted down, “I will answer all your infantile questions once you have your swords to my neck, and not a moment before!”

He quickly launched a fireball down the escalator at the knights. The knight holding the captured wizard swung him around like a shield and leapt in front of the king to protect him. The fireball exploded engulfing both the apprentice wizard and the knight holding him. Their burning corpses stunk miserably. Archers let fly their arrows up at the dark wizard who stepped out of the way as his cackling echoed down the tower.

The king grabbed a polearm out of the hands of one of his knights and jammed its pointed end into the mechanisms where the stairs flattened. The iron blade immediately broke off, slamming the shaft out of the king’s hand and down against the floor, flinging the axe head into the air towards the high ceiling and rows of florescent lights. It spun wildly in the air and as it rose then fell. The knights held up their shields for protection. The axe blade deeply embedded itself with a crunch into one of the wooden shields. The owner of the shield turned it over and looked at the axe head, and tried to pull it out without success.

“This ends now,” the king proclaimed, slamming his faceplate down as he approached the metallic stairs as they rolled down towards him. Another knight shouted for the archers to cover his ascent.

The king held out his sword pointing it up the incline as he stepped onto the first stair, which quickly carried him back down to the bottom of the tower. Annoyed, he ran at the stairs but his heavy clanging armor slowed him down and could only made it up two stairs before being returned back down. He sheathed his sword and ran up the stairs with all his might, grabbing onto the black rubber handrails and pulled himself along. He made some progress and then just stopped and leaned over, resting his hands on his knees as he gently rode down to the bottom of the tower.

“That’s tiring,” the king gasped.

“We shall all go with you,” a knight assured him. “We will help each other up these fowl moving stairs.”

“Thank you my friends,” he said. “But give me a minute to catch my breath.”

“It’s so lonely up here!” the dark wizard mocked. “I’m going to die of old age before you get up here, and we wizards live for thousands of years.”

The dark wizard continued to ridicule them as the king rested, but when he stood up tall and confident, the other knights did as well. They slapped their swords and axes and morning stars into their gauntlets, and when the king nodded, they sheathed their weapons, slammed their faceplates down, and all ran up the escalator in a pack, clanging and rattling something fierce. They only got about a third of the way up before the king slipped and fell to his knee causing the other knights to stumble and slip on the stairs. The escalator pushed them down into a big pile of squirming armored men.

“Curse you, dark wizard! Curse you!” the king shouted, shaking a gauntleted fist in the air as the wizard’s laughs echoed from above. The knights never did make it up that escalator.