She grabbed her leather gloves from the outside pocket of her pack and pushed the pricker bushes aside. The rancid odor slapped her in the face, she gagged, coughed and quickly placed her hand over her nose. There was certainly something dead in there. She glanced into the darkened mouth of the cave. Probably a coyote she thought peering into the blackness. Vic had gone spelunking into Mama’s Milk many times and was familiar with the cave, although there were still areas that had not been explored. She continued to peer in an opening into Mother Earth, wide enough to accommodate most people entering with a pack.

Vic tied the rope securely to an old cedar and dropped it in the opening, donned her helmet and shrugged into the backpack.

Testing the rope with a strong tug, she turned away from the cave and began to rappel into the mouth of the darkened enclosure. She remembered the first time she entered the cave. She was young, stupid and ten-years old. On a dare, she slid into the mouth and quickly realized her mistake when she fell to the floor, breaking her leg. The boys ran away and she was forced to stay the night until Aunt Betty and Mr. Garvey fished her out. After eighteen years, she could still remember the pain of setting her leg.

She took another step and jumped into the room. Switching on the light on the front of her helmet, the tunnel vision of its three foot beam barely cut through a blackness deeper than space. The cave, untouched and cool, maintained a temperature of 59 degrees year round, and the moist coolness was a shock to her body and she felt a brief shiver.

Slowly, Vic surveyed the room, sweeping the small beam of light across the dusty floor which appeared undisturbed. She stepped further into darkness and other than the overpowering smell, she couldn’t find any evidence of the dead animal. Normally, the animal never saw the mouth of the cave and would simply fall in and die. But not this time, she would have to go in further.

She walked to the right and checked the first of six openings, removed the glove from her nose and sniffed. "Not in here," she spoke into the echoing room. Making a sweep with the light every foot or so by turning her head side to side but still, nothing but the undisturbed dirt floor.

"That’s odd, if something fell in and died..." Her sentence halted when she felt something under her feet - popping. She took another step and again felt several pops, but not crunch like stepping on bugs. She moved the light toward her feet and slowly lifted her foot. Squinting, she leaned over to get a closer look. Maggots.

"Well, there’s something definitely dead all right." She moved her head upward scanning the cave floor where the maggots crawled and moved like boiling rice. Vic gagged and swallowed hard. "You can do this, Vic, come on."

She scraped her foot back and forth across the floor trying to clear a path. Moving her light left to right, she followed the maggot trail, continuing as their numbers increased. Her light reached another tunnel to the right, which descended into a huge cavern. Although there were a few maggots on the floor, there weren’t as many as in the center of the one hundred foot wide room. She glanced back to the left, toward the rear cavern wall. A grouping of rocks jutted mid-way up the cave wall formed a lounge chair. It had been nicknamed "Daddy’s Lounge" as long as she could remember. Just below Daddy’s Lounge, the maggots were numerous and writhing in numbers she cringed to imagine. She moved the light up the wall and stiffened. The saying of "Be careful what you wish for." filtered through her mind in eerie echos because lying upon "Daddy’s lounge" was a dead body.