Further under the desk

Last week it was all getting too much for me, so I crawled under my desk during a particularly difficult phone call and hid.
As I sat under the desk I looked out at many pairs of female legs, gathering around my chair. I put my hands over my ears so that I couldn't hear them stamping anymore. I turned my head and stared at the wall's edge to the left of the desk and amazedly fixed upon a thick black hole that was torn there.
On the floor, at the edge of hole, were strewn several brown banana skins and, upon reaching inside, I felt that a tunnel or narrow passage of some sort sloped gently downwards below the offices next door.
One hand, then the other, had made a firm enough landing behind the wall that my body decided to clamber in after them.
As the stamping from outside the hole faded I felt around the body of this warm tunnel and realised the heat trapped within it. All areas of the walls felt tolerably warm, just cosy really when limited to travel on hands and knees, and there was a sweet smell of ripe fruit in the air.
Occasionally, on my decent, a hand would encounter a cool squishy substance. At first, thinking it was the ghastly guano of some lower cave-dwelling bat, I recoiled in horror. But on further sniffing I realised it was merely the soft flesh of one beautiful banana.
After ten minutes of travelling thusly, the tunnel flattened out and expanded so that a man my size could rise to a stoop, his back brushing the roof of this new cavern. Remembering the mobile phone in my back pocket I produced a minimal torchlight with which I could inspect my surroundings. I was surprised to see that this magical cave had been decorated - covered from top to toe in banana skins.
The inside of the skins were facing outwards so that the eloquent feel of botanic velvet was yours if you’d only reach towards it.
I immediately dropped to my knees and rolled around in sheer abandon. Such joy did I feel at the touch of this beloved fruit, that I scarcely allowed my brain to consider just what force of will, which amazing mind, had furnished such a cave.
I strove on for another hundred metres or so. From the dim light of my LED display, I understood that a final conquering wall lay just a few feet in front of me, ending my exploration.
Dropping to my knees in frustration that my strange pot-holing experience had proven fruitless, I was amazed to find myself prostrate before a small altar, not two feet high. There, upon the rough stone surface of the altar was the naked flesh of a perfectly ripe banana. Shining my phone around the walls I gasped in horror to see a fresh yellow skin hanging loathsomely from a butcher’s hook. Stickers of every colour covered the back wall, stickers containing only the words of various countries. In a swift scan I noticed the names Brazil, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Panama, Cameroon - these are all I can recall and some of these names were repeated tens of times. What power, what significance these places had I know not, but surely they are at the heart of this twisted cult?
Flicking my weak lantern back to the banana I noticed it had been slit with a sharp implement from head to toe, as if to be opened up maliciously at a later date. The purpose and result of this almost inconceivable ritual I could not fathom, nor did I try to.
I shrieked and left the room as fast as I might travel. As the passage became a tunnel once more I clattered my head and dropped on my face. My phone fell into the darkness behind me – I heard it sliding back into the abyss – but I, my head swimming, crawled on, on towards the narrowest, vaguest promise of light that was locked in my vision high above.
On bursting eventually from that hellish hole, like a baby full grown, I screamed and shook and passed out. I awoke in the first aid room, a cold flannel on my forehead, the stench of bananas now gone, replaced by antiseptic and disinfectant.
What morbid practices unfold beneath this office building, I’m glad I cannot tell for sure, but I’ll never feel safe now for they have a part of me – they have my mobile!
And one thing’s for sure, I’m never going to answer my damn telephone again.