There was a cave. With stalactites. And stalagmites. And little candles flickering and revealing just how far the cave went back.
The cave went back 22.472ft. They knew it, because they had considered installing a home entertainment system, despite the obvious lack of electricity and civilization for miles around. They were not, as anyone would term it, sharp.
Rob had the biggest gold tambourine, and was proud of it. It had been hand crafted by devout religious monks in the mountains, and was designed to bring good luck, happiness, health, and the cure for cancer. The man who sold it to him at the flea market said it was a steal at fifty-eight dollars, and it was. Rob could also bang on his tambourine louder than anyone else, though he didn't do so often, mostly because he found it embarrassing to pick up all the pieces and glue them together afterwards, although he said it was because he didn't want to be overbearing and egotistical, which was clever on his part, and everyone accepted it.
If you expected anything to happen at this point, get disappointed.
Rob, despite having the largest gold tambourine, and being able to bang on it the loudest, was not in charge of things. The honest truth was that people envied his big tambourine, but wouldn't do stuff for him because he had it. He knew, because he had tried.
In any case, the one that really ran things was Chelsea, and she had the very smallest tambourines. But, in her defense, she really did have a lot of them. They were everywhere, dangling from her ears and from her cuffs, jingling in rings around her ankles as she walked along. She had them on her hair and on four different bracelets and even had little cymbals which she would clap together sometimes. While she was not as loud as Rob, she was one of the loudest, and she could do it more often than he because if one of her tambourines fell off, she could just ignore it. Chelsea was able to ignore lots of things, and Rob was one of them.
Maybe you got the impression from this that there was a degree of contestation between Chelsea and Rob. There was not, because Rob was dumb as stone. Chelsea, in fact, was the only one of the group who had any degree of notable intellect. Not that anyone needed any Notable Intellect. The group was comprised mostly of Salesmen and women, managers, supervisors, and others who were a rung in the ladder as their living.
They had a buffet, with croutons, salad, bread, green stuff, brown stuff, tan-ish stuff with vegetables floating in, and KFC. It was the centerpiece of most conversations, and as such, was at the side of the cave.
Having established this background, I think I'm going to add some dialogue.
Rob was at the buffet.
He was looking at the green stuff, and he could just almost imagine it looking back at him. The person to his left, noticing this conflict, chose the brown stuff, a good choice, as it was ground beef.
"Now, really, Rob." Sighed Chelsea, "You're holding up the line. It's not going to eat you."
"But I'm going to eat it." Replied Rob, and it sounded rather deep with the emphasis, so the people around him nodded and went, "ahh…hummmm."
"So?"
"So it's an important philosophical point."
"What is?"
"That I am going to eat it, but it is not going to eat me."
"No, it's not."
"Well, you don't have to take that sort of tone…you need to be open to different views, Chelsea. That's what I've always said. It could be an important philosophical point."
"If it was so important, why hasn't anyone thought about it before?"
"Maybe that's what makes it important, that nobody's thought to think of it before."
"Maybe it's that stupid, that nobody's thought to elevate it to such importance. Things you eat don't eat you. Because you've killed them to eat them."
"It was alive once. You have to take into account the traversability of continuity."
"The what?"
"The traversability of continuity" Rob was rather proud of having thought of this combination of words, and was happy to repeat it.
"…" was all Chelsea could say.
And then, from outside, there was a loud burbling roar, which heightened sharply before subsiding completely. Several big green evolved seaweed plants in silver uniforms strode out, and fired zap-o-guns at her until she was dead.