The Traveller            .

    "Yes?" An arched eyebrow. "How may I... help you?"

    The traveller reaches out towards the warm light with a falteringly heavy hand. "Lodging for the night, kind sir.... please! I have travelled far- afrgh!" The traveller slammed back suddenly against the thick mud, due to some unknown brutesque force, eyes lolling into the back of his head, his face suddenly glazing over.

    The figure shrugged, and the folds of silk and velvet slithered back into place, as if nothing had happened. "Do not ever, *ever*, attempt to draw a puny weapon like that on me, young one." The door slammed, and everything was smoothed back into place, the rain pounding on the mud,
blurring imprints on the ground swiftly.

    The traveller grinned and stretched out on the damp mushy ground, letting the clammy mud seep between his rags and skin. His mouth contorted horribly, and as he did, the ground seemed to coagulate around him, and he was drawn into the earth, with a terrible sucking sound...

    As he descended deep into the very bowels of the earth, where all the gross, earthy functions of Mother Nature's we always suspected but were never able to prove take place, he caught a glimpse of Alice and the Cheshire Cat peering down at him from high above.  He wondered what they were doing there.  Breathing?  Walking?  Peering?  Or even living, perhaps? Who knows?  Who can fathom the deep, dark, bowelly secrets of life, nature and Mother Nature?

    His life flashed past his eyes.  He tried to stop it because he didn't want to go down forever in the anals of fine literature as a cliché.  But to no avail.  He was, after all, the quintessential traveller in all the novels one buys at the airport, who has appeared through the ages in innumerable guises -- the princess (and the pea), Beauty's father, the Reader (If On A Winter's Night A Traveller)....he was the figment of a very small, limited imagination.  Forever was and forever would be.  So there.

    And now the mud was everywhere.  In his eyes, his nose, his ears, and yes, even up his...pants.  He flailed about.  The terrible sucking sound was beginning to get on his nerves.  He wished the people writing his story would hurry up and get him out of this mess.
 
    The Traveller sat on his deck chair in the sun, sipping a cool iced tea.  At his feet were half a dozen scantily-clad bikini girls, massaging his toes, gossiping, and, most importantly, stroking his ego.  The most prestigious beach resort in the world certainly lived up to its name.  No
expenses had been spared, from the gorgeous escorts to the room which words like "luxurious" would appear plain and humble next to.  From the lobby with its gigantic, ostentatious Italian marble pillars done up with Roman curlicues in the worst of taste money could buy to the swimming pool with its interestingly Gothic-Baroque fine ceramic tile design and gold-plated
lifeguard tower.  Ahhh, yes, this was the life.
 
    For once, the Traveller was in a place as cliched as he was.  And so he was Happy.

    For once, too, he had a Fatal Heart Attack. And so died the Traveller.