Turn On Her Smartphone And Quickly Google Inanna

Lois Lane slipped the smartphone out of her pocket, and to her relief she saw that she had two bars of signal. Walking slowly toward the stairs, the reporter quickly googled Inanna's descent. Whatever the ancient Sumerian goddess had to deal with, Lois wanted a head's up.

"Seven gates...stripping off her clothes...hung on a hook?" Lois swore like a marine. She was beginning to regret this. The reporter scanned ahead as she slowly descended the steps. Apparently, in the original myth, someone had sent someone to rescue Lois.

"Makes sense," Lois was halfway down the stairs and down to one bar of signal. Very quickly, she sent out an emergency text. The screen flickered as the darkness closed in around her. The reporter held her breath as the text went through.

One more step, and the smartphone went dead. Lois stuck it in her pocket.

"Okay," she said. "Seven gates, and I have to take my clothes off. I can do this. I can."

The light from up above cut off suddenly. Lois was left in perfect darkness. Feeling her way down the stone steps. Cold, dry air. She wondered if this is what it felt like to be buried alive. The reporter waited for her eyes to adjust, but they didn't. There was no light at all.

Her heels hit the ground, and Lois stumbled a little. Unseen hands caught her. Forewarned by the quick google search, however, Lois knew not to resist as they stripped off her jacket.

"Heels...shirt...pants...panties...bra...." Lois enumerated her items of clothing. That would be six gates. She walked on, her arms extended to feel the sides of the doorway as she passed through. Stairs started again beneath her feet.

Downward she went, one hand trailing on the wall. She tried to count the steps, but they weren't even. There had been twenty-three for the first flight, then twenty-five for the second. Hands grabbed at the reporter's shoes, and she carried on with bare feet on the cold stone. Twenty-seven steps to the next landing. Hands clutched at her pants, pulling the tight garment off her legs, and Lois could feel that the hands were somehow hairless but scaly, nails like claws...

The corridor was narrowing now. Lois could feel it, able to touch the sides easily. Twenty-nine steps downward, over a hundred from the Black Door. The hands pulled her shirt up over her head, the reporter still offering no resistance, feeling the cool air on her skin. Goosebumps were raised now, and Lois had to duck as the ceiling came down. She descended the next thirty-one steps in a crouch, hair scraping on the stone ceiling.

The workmanship of the stairs was getting cruder. Lois could no longer feel the seams between individual stones, and she wondered if they were carved out of the bedrock. The walls went from smooth to rough, unworked, like the walls of a cave. At the landing hands skillfully undid the clasp of her bra, and Lois Lane felt her girls exposed to the air, nipples hard from the chill. Even though she couldn't see, there were eyes on her.

Thirty-three steps, nearly doubled over in the tight confines of the tunnel. This steps were bowed in the middle, as though worn by the passage of many feet. The doorway was different too. Lois felt carvings on the low lintel as those scaly hands plucked the strings, undoing the black lace panties and making off with them. Naked now, and almost at her goal, Lois dropped to her hands and knees for the final descent.

She bit her lip, knowing what was coming.