Tomorrow at eight AM as usual, with any luck. Probably poetry, cause I'm gonna be in a car all day, but you never know.
Pitfall I by Mackinley Clevinger, March 11, 2016
“How’s it looking down there?” I shut my eyes, drawing in a deep breath and releasing it, allowing a rude response to pass by before opening my mouth. “It still looks dark, still feels cramped, and it still feels like you’re taking your time on getting me out of here!” I could see a tiny disc of light far above me that was cut through the center by a dark figure, the rest of my vision pitch-black and unknown. I craned my head around, feeling the bones of my neck pop, and felt my cheek press against something moist and cool, trying to move my head far enough to change the light and gauge how far away it was.
“Well, your brother oughta be back here any minute now with something to help you get outta there, you’ll be alright, I reckon.” He’d been reckoning for half an hour now, and I was still stuck at the bottom of this hole with no end in sight to this little adventure of mine. I tried to arch my back; move an arm; do anything to free myself, but I was stuck fast beneath the fallen dirt, my head and part of my neck the only parts of me that could move at all. Objectively, it was lucky that I hadn’t been buried upside down and suffocated, but the situation didn’t feel all that lucky to me.
I could feel something, more strongly in the parts of me that were buried. It began from the neck down, but resonated up to my head, making my vision of that disc of light shake a little. It kind of tickled, my limbs jerking unconsciously and managing to win a few inches with the dirt, the sound of rattling pebbles and loose dirt bouncing around filling the darkness I’d fallen into. As the shaking grew, so too did the sound, more clods of earth striking my head and the vibrating soil around me. I heaved with my body, pressing my chest against the twitching earth to break free as the growing quake ran rampant.
“Get away from the edge!” I was making some small distance with my heaving, heart beating like a rabbit’s as terror-fueled scenarios flashed across my mind of being buried fully or being crushed by the unseen walls around me, spurring me on to free myself and reach for that violently shaking patch of light that would free me from my imprisonment beneath the earth. Twisting my body from side to side, I managed to free an arm and make some room for my chest as I heard the ground all around me smash together and split apart in violence, the sound deafening and absolute. Throwing myself against the soil that yet held me down, weakened by the quake shaking it up for me, I managed to twist and lift myself partially out of the cavity my body left in the soil, working in complete darkness and unaware of my surroundings.
I thought I might have heard my grandfather say something, but I couldn’t make it out from the rumbling of the earth and my own body’s violent shaking. Above, the disc of light widened as a segment of the earth fell in, thin streams of light finding their way towards where I half-sat, still fighting to free myself from the weakened earth. I could see vague outlines of mounds and walls of dirt clashing together and breaking apart, the light revealing that I’d fallen into a subterranean cavern when the earth had shaken for the first time ages ago. Distant and below me, the dirt gave away to stone in a tunnel, the rock shaking as the rest of the world did but not falling to the violence of the dirt that was nearing me.
Readying myself, I ducked down into the hole I was partially trapped into and used my entire body to jerk myself up suddenly, managing to free my legs from the loosening dirt but losing my shoes in the process, ripped off of my feet by the greedy earth. Ignoring the pins and needles as best as I could, I used the light as best I could to guide myself towards the safe-seeming stone tunnel deeper below, the feeling of wrongness at turning away from the light disregarded in the prioritization of my safety above all else. I needed to not be suffocated by literal tons of earth before I’d worry about seeing the sun again, essentially.
Above me the hole widened away from me, casting more light on my journey as I fled away from it. The towering walls of dirt and stone around me were trembling, falling in on themselves behind me as I ran as quickly as I could towards assumed safety down below. I was breathing hoarsely, mouth and throat caked in dust and dirt from my surroundings as I sprinted at full speed to the tune of the underground world around me falling in on itself, trying to trap me within it but always just a step behind catching my back leg and burying me beneath the earth forever.
My bare foot slapped the stone, its coarse surface scraping at the soft bottom of my feet as I kept up my downward pace into the tunnel that quickly narrowed around me. Behind me I could hear the tumbling earth follow me into the stone tunnel, blocking the entrance I’d ran through moments before and sealing me in the underground without the scant light that had been provided before. Blind, I came to a stop, completely unaware of my surroundings beyond the sound of dirt pouring down the tunnel towards me much slower than before, the vibrating of the earth coming to a rest as well.
I raised a hand before my eyes, unable to even see an outline or the color of my skin. I reached an arm out and took a few tentative steps, testing the floor gently to avoid any sudden falls or hurting the soft bottoms of my feet. I found the wall, sinking against it as I breathed harshly from the sprint, the only sound left to echo throughout the tunnel coming from my breathing. I tucked my legs against my chest, hands wrapped around my knees, feeling the coarse leggings that were dirt-smeared and torn. I spat out a wad of spit onto the floor besides me, clearing my mouth and throat of dust, and patted my chest, feeling the familiar metal Chai press against my skin. I relaxed, knowing it was still there, not lost and buried where I’d never find it again.
I was in the dark, but the tunnel had been narrow and heading in only one direction from what I’d seen. With any luck, I’d be able to find a way out if I followed it; there were plenty of caves in the area that I had explored before, and this one was likely connected to one of them. I pushed myself up to stand against the dark, crouching slightly and putting my hands out in front of me to avoid walking into any obstructions, trying not to think that the quake might have blocked any way out like it had my way into the tunnel. Grandfather told me that God was always with us in hard times; surely he’d be here with me now. I set out, away from the blocked entrance, set on finding my way home.