Teddy's Story Joint

I was in no way involved in this video's creation, but it's bodaciously geekish enough that I felt compelled to share it.  No, "bodaciously" is not a proper conjugation of bodacious, but it makes me feel more like a geek, as does this entire sentence.

Growls in the Darkness

You've played those games: the dungeon crawlers, where you creep through subterranean chambers, peer into old crates, and add items to your inventory.  Perhaps you're just exploring, or maybe engaging in a quest.  You spring a hidden trap or two and combat giant rats and spiders, delving ever deeper into the earth's throat.  The light of your torch casts flirting shadows, and, just as you reach the journey's end and prepare for an ascension from the caverns, a monster bars your path.
I recently had one of these experiences.  But I wasn't playing a video game.  It was real life.
Over the summer, I've worked for an industrial painting company.  The work has taught me new skills, introduced me to a circle of fascinating coworkers, and provided some memorable experiences.  One of these was an adventure I think of as "the growls in the darkness."
"Luke," my boss said as I arrived one morning, "I'm sending you over to that job you worked a few weeks ago.  I want you down in the old apple barn, collecting jars from the basement.  You'll find some boxes in the attic."
The disused basement was filthy and dark, despite my powerful lantern.  Canning jars were strewn in the mounds of rat and raccoon excrement.  The smells were pungent enough that the air tasted rusty through my respirator, and safety apparel - gloves and white overalls - swaddled me from head to heels  My boss called the overalls a "zoot suit," which sounds like apparel for a space-themed 70's disco.  It made me feel like I was wearing haz-mat garb.
A glorious formula: hyperactive imagination, dank, subterranean chambers, and haz-mat reminiscent apparel.  As I shifted through the mounds of crap, I envisioned myself as a paranormal investigator, somewhere between Harry Dresden, MythBusters, Agent Mulder, and the Doctor.  Quite a persona, searching for radioactive relics that'd been stored in a cellar and recently become active.
My hands were salvaging usable jars, but my head watched a wolfish monster burst through the decomposing floorboards, probably a coyote mutated by radiation.  And then, from the darkness, something growled.
There are strange twilights, blurring the lines between reality and imagination.  I hesitated, hand hovering above the cardboard box.  There probably weren't any mutated coyotes, but I might find some ordinary ones.  Or some coons, which can get nasty when threatened.
I retreated up the cracked stairway with a box, wandering over to where my boss was working on a construction project.  He straightened to greet me.
"How's it going, Luke?"
"Hey, Paul, it's going pretty well.  I'm about half done.  Do you have any idea if something could be living in that basement?"
Paul scratched his head.  "Could be.  I didn't really look in the other rooms.  Too spooky."
We chatted for a few moments and I mentioned the noises.  Both of us agreed that his tape measure was probably the culprit, so I wandered away, taking a few more minutes of break.  I waved goodbye to Paul as he drove away.  Before descending again, I circled the structure's overgrown perimeter.  That's when I saw the bones.
Yes, bones.  They were large, yellowed with age, crouching at the bottom of an air-chute leading to the basement.  Deer bones by the look of them, and definitely gnawed.  Probably dragged there by a coon.
Clutching this cheerful image, I entered the depths once again.
The growl came again, twice in rapid succession.  But I had to work till all the boxes were filled or all the jars were collected.
Alongside rotten shelves and rusting farm machinery, a large cage occupied part of the basement.  I'd already scavenged the jars from outside this cage, so now I crawled through the gap into the fetid space, dragging a box after me.
A mouth was trying to swallow the room.  It was a doorway leading to another chamber, or perhaps a series of other chambers.  Whatever the case, I'd been eyeing it since my arrival, and had the unnerving sensation that it was eyeing me, too.
The door was ominous.  Its frame was eroded into a jagged opening, dark enough that I couldn't tell what waited within.  If I was really sharing the basement with something large, then that doorway was a likely entrance for it.  So I faced that direction as I scavenged jars, counting down the boxes till I finished.
Should I see what's in that room?  Probably not.  It's reckless.  Coons carry rabies, not to mention the damage a trapped coyote could do . . . .
But I knew there wasn't another option.  At the end of the day, I scare easily, but I also enjoy adventures, like when I snuck into an "abandoned" government facility.  Probably not a story I should share online.
I knew I'd regret not exploring the other rooms, but I also knew that if I encountered something large, I might lose my nerve to finish the job.  So I waited til the last jar was off the floor and the last box was above ground.  Then, armed with a fresh battery pack and a baseball bat purloined from stacks of junk upstairs, I investigated the growls in the darkness.
It'd be nice if this ended with a climatic encounter between me and a coyote, or even a startled coon.  Nice for our story, but not so much for my health.  The truth is rather tame, unfortunately.  The other chamber was completely barren, although large holes pockmarked the walls.  Large enough for an animal to crawl through.
It's not the most exciting adventure I've ever had, but how often do you get your own dungeon-crawling experience?  And if I hadn't braved the growls in the darkness, then I still wouldn't know what was in there.