Teeth

I was going on a tropical vacation with someone who I acknowledged as my boyfriend. I have no idea who it actually was. We were sitting on a paddle boat off of the shore when a boat full of dark skinned tribal looking people pulled up next to us. They were wearing very primitive clothes and had primitive spears as well. They carried us onto their boat where other tourists were seated as well and we were kidnapped.

They didn't speak English. One of the men, who was slightly younger than I am, gestured towards the necklace I had on, suggesting that I give it to him. The necklace was a small mask carved out of wood on a thick black string. After my boyfriend nodded at me, I gave the man my necklace, not wanting to cause trouble. He put it on. My boyfriend had a similar necklace on and offered to trade it for mine. The man agreed and tied my necklace around my boyfriend's wrist. The boat was moving this whole time.

We finally arrived at what looked like an ancient temple or civilization. Something out of Indiana Jones, or Legends of the hidden Temple. It almost looked like a "set" instead of the real thing. They forced the group of 10 or so tourists onto a narrow piece of stone in front of a long hallway. The group of tourists consisted of mostly adults in their mid 30's to 40's in stereotypical tourist attire and a family of four with two younger girls around 8 or 10, one in a wheel chair.

We were all standing there, looking down a long, narrow hallway. The men urged us to start walking down the hallway. The walls were very decrepit stone and covered in moss and weeds. There were small stone ledges jutting out of the walls and on those ledges were clams. There was a wide variety of sizes of clams, the largest probably about 6 inches length wise and 3 inches wide. They were blue with swirls of purple and inside the mouths of the clam, there were teeth and a tongue. The mouths almost resembled horse mouths except the colors were tones of darker blueish purple to match the shell.

The men were getting bitten by the clams and hitting the clams. I felt bad for the clams and I looked at one more closely. It opened it's mouth and I slowly and cautiously put my finger inside the mouth in a very non-threatening way. The teeth were very brown like soap scum. I brushed the teeth of the clam with my finger and it smiled. It made a pucker face and I gave it a kiss. The men said that I shouldn't be friendly with the clams and that they were vermin. The man hit the top of the clam with a spear and then pulled a tiny, baby clam from underneath the big one that I was looking at. I told him to stop and he replaced the baby clam next to the other one.

We continued moving into another hallway. The hallway looked almost exactly the same except there were now vines and instead of stony ledges there were what looked like tarnished metal boxes. The men made us walk through this hallway one by one and they said we had to open one of the boxes from the hallway. One by one people went through the hallway. Three different things happened as the people opened the boxes. The most common outcome was that an ape like creature that resembled a puppet from a labyrinth type movie came out and scampered away on the wall. Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes a swarm of insects came out and if you didn't reach the other end of the hallway fast enough, they would devour you as if you were turning to dust. Everyone made it across safely.

We were lead to another hallway, this one was exactly like the previous one except we all had to go through as a group. We still had to open the boxes. It was fine until one of the boxes had the insect swarm and the entire group panicked to run to the other end of the hallway. We all ran one way only to have the men point spears at us and tell us to run the other way. We started running and running and we all made it. The last two people left were the small girls, one pushing the other in the wheel chair. They hit a snag in the floor and tripped right before the end of the hallway. The swarm caught up with them and devoured them with nothing left. The parents were in hysterics and everyone was crying but we had to move on.

We were out in a more open area of the temple now, light grey stone was complimented by beautiful sunlight and yellow-green vegetation. There was an elevator that we were slowly making our way to. We saw a plump man with white hair get in the elevator and my boyfriend and I stepped into the elevator with him. It was going up and as we reached the second floor, the plump man said "not yet" and vanished as the elevator went down with the two of us inside. The door opened and the rest of the group got in the elevator. We went up to the second floor again, this time it worked.

The room looked like a museum. It was covered in nic nacs and paintings hung all over the walls. As I looked closer I noticed that it was a collection of items with the images of Santa Claus on them from all over the country and from years and years of collecting. Then I realized the man we saw in the elevator and the curator of this place was, infact, Santa Claus.