Depth

1

Dark.

That’s the only way I can describe it.

It was dark. So very dark.

The words that I’m using can’t possibly begin to detail how dark it was. How black it was. It was an abyss. An abyss that I knew I couldn’t get away from, no matter how hard I tried.

It was a nice feeling at least. Knowing that from now on, nothing that I did mattered. I had gone down the deep-end. I was swallowed up by the endless and limitless void that encompassed the cavern.

It called me. It beckoned me.

It was, in all senses of the phrase, a calling of the void.

2

Where am I? That’s the first thing I thought when I came to. There was a burning sensation on the side of my head. I slowly raised my fingers and touched that spot with the tips of them. I tried to put my fingers in front of me to see what the warm liquid clinging to them was, but of course, it was too dark to see.

I put the tip of my index finger into my mouth. The taste coming from the liquid was metallic. Blood.

I tried to stand up, but soon enough, my head hit the hard, rock ceiling.

“Jesus, fuck it hurts…” I said to myself.

My voice echoed through the darkness ahead of me, sounding more distorted as it went past the room I was in and into the depths of the unknown.

I was lying down face-first on the cold, slate ground of the cavern.

I spread my arms out to my side and found that I could reach the sides of the tunnel I was in very easily, barely bending my arms to do so.

That alone gave me some information to work from. I was in a tunnel, a rock one at that, with no recollection of how I got there, and this tunnel barely fit me.

Touching the walls of the cavern made me realize how sharp some of the stones were. If I had passed my arm through one of those fast enough, I would’ve cut it.

I searched around in the pockets of my pants, and in them I found a very small, red flashlight.

After dragging it out of my pocket, I fumbled with it until it finally lit up.

But it didn’t help. The light only managed to make the path forward visible for about half a meter, meaning I could see nothing of what was ahead of me.

In spite of that, the light made me realize something else.

Oh god, I thought as I started at the now slightly lit up tunnel, this place is small.

The tunnel must have been about 60 centimeters wide, its height making it impossible for me to stand up or even get on my hands and knees.

Knowing nothing of what was ahead of me didn’t help either.

It was just dark.

It was almost inviting in a way, like it was telling me to come in, beckoning me to travel deeper into its dark abyss, in the search of what lies just beyond what my eyes could see.

I couldn’t turn around either. My head barely managed to turn around to see what was behind me.

It was darkness again. Nothing was behind me, like the world itself had disappeared, leaving only a void behind.

Still feeling the awfully cold surface of the rock beneath me, I slowly started to drag myself through the tunnel.

3

I don’t know much, but I’ll write down what I do know. Not about myself, but about the world.

I know that the sky is blue.

I know that grass is green.

I know that the sun is yellow.

I know that the stars shine in the night sky.

I know that 1 + 1 is 2.

I know that blood is red.

I know that there are seven days in the week.

I know that there are about 4 weeks in a month.

I know that there are 12 months in a year.

I know there are either 365 or 366 days in a year.

I know that a day is 24 hours.

I know that an hour is 60 minutes.

I know that a minute is 60 seconds.

I know that 1 second is 1,000 milliseconds.

I know that 1 millisecond is 1,000,000 nanoseconds.

I know that the abyss is the void.

I know that the void is dark.

I know that hell is dark.

I know that this place is hell.

4

Caves aren’t completely silent. I would go as far as to say that caves aren’t silent at all. They’re noisy.

Small water streams ran parallel to me as I crawled through the claustrophobic space I called a tunnel. I think calling it a mere ‘tunnel’ is selling it too short. It was nightmarish. The water was loud, crashing and roaring as it made its way down, passing me and gliding down at top speed.

I had been crawling for weeks, I think.

No, I hadn’t eaten anything. I hadn’t drank anything either, though my mouth did feel quite dry. But I was not hungry. I wasn’t thirsty, either.

All I could do was take in the sounds of the water.

I could hear a water droplet, falling and hitting the stone from a stalactite. I could hear every single one of them. All falling, some even kilometers away. I don’t have any way of proving that though.

5

At some point in my life, though I don’t remember when, I heard someone talking about caves. As I said, I don’t know who I heard it from. Maybe it was my parents, though I don’t remember if I had any. Maybe it was a friend, though I don’t think I had any. But, nevertheless, I heard it somehow.

It was 1925.

The central area of Kentucky, the 15th state of the United States of America.

A man by the name of Floyd Collins, a cave explorer, born in Auburn, was the central focus of a series of articles that enraptured the people of the country, making headlines across the states.

Floyd Collins was stuck in a cave.

On January 30th of 1925, Floyd managed to squeeze into some incredibly tight passageways, and has apparently found a “grotto cave”, caves close to water that are flooded or can flood, and decided to turn back because his lamp was running out.

As he crawled up the void he had been swallowed by, his left leg was caught under a rock, almost 12 kilograms in weight. It pinned him to the cave, he was well and truly stuck. With no way out.

It wasn’t his first time stuck in a cave. It wasn’t the first time his light had gone out inside a cave. And he thought if he could get down this cave as easily as he did, then they could most likely get him out easily.

They did not.

Men descended into the abyss that was the ‘Sand Cave’ to bring Collins crackers or a drink of water, and came back up shivering and trembling, having not made it even halfway into the cave.

Only a few people made it down. Collins’ brother, a reporter, and a couple of the people on the rescue committee, but no rescue attempts worked.

But after two consecutive cave-ins, the crew decided to try to dig a tunnel next to the cave to try to get Collins out.

By February 17th, two weeks after he got stuck, the tunnel was finished. But by then, Floyd Collins was dead.

6

How many years has it been since I started crawling? Maybe two years, maybe twenty. I’m not sure anymore.

I ran into a small stream of water about two weeks ago. The mind-numbingly dark tunnel I was in split off into two directions. The right, and the left. The flashlight I had had long since burned out.

When you’re in such smothering darkness, you’d at least expect some semblance of light to remain where you were. You’d think that the rock you just passed by and shone your light on would look slightly less alien than the ones you haven’t yet seen.

But no.

You remember the darkness, but the darkness doesn’t remember you.

Where was I? That’s right. The path.

The tunnel split off into the right and to the left. Feeling my way through the openings, I found that the floor of the left tunnel was wet. There was a small stream of muddy water running through it.

I took the left path.

After two days, the tunnel began to feel hot. Not completely hot, but stuffy, humid. The air seemed to stick to my skin, drying it and making it leathery.

It had been five weeks since I had started on that path, when I noticed the stream had gotten larger.

Maybe not by much, it was just slightly stronger. The muddy water was running by faster.

Ten weeks in, I felt the water reach me.

I had been walking a little ways from the stream, but now I felt it touching me. The water was warm, and almost slimy.

Was it snot? It could’ve been, I couldn’t see anyway.

Thirty weeks in. The water was up to halfway, reaching the medium point of my torso. Some even got in my mouth. It tasted vile, like acid. It stung. The liquid tasted like poison had been deeply rooted into my body.

I vomited.

I didn’t have any solids to vomit though, so all that came out was the small quantity of water that had gotten into my mouth, and stomach acid.

Seventy weeks in. The water level had not risen.

Seventy-one weeks in. The water level had not risen.

Seventy-two weeks in. The water level had not risen.

Seventy-three weeks in. The water level had not risen.

Seventy-four weeks in. The water level had not risen.

Seventy-five weeks in. The water level had not risen.

Seventy-nine weeks in. The water level had not risen.

Eighty-two weeks in. The water level had not risen.

Eighty-seven weeks in. The water level-

I heard something. Was it a roar? It sounded like a lion, like a predator rushing towards me, making its way through the narrow tunnel and jagged stone, ringling its way towards me.

I felt a force push me forward. But it wasn’t a solid force. It was strong, no doubt, but it wasn’t solid. It morphed into my shape, taking up all the free space in the tunnel.

It was water.

Slimly, muddy water had filled the tunnel, sending me crashing down the narrow path into the abyss below. I hit my head against the sharp rocks, drawing blood from my noggin and mixing it with the liquid rushing through the embodiment of claustrophobia.

My arm banged against the walls. I heard a bone crack.

I wanted to scream, but stopped myself. If I opened my mouth, the water would flow in, and I would vomit. And more water would flow in, and I would vomit.

My leg ran through the stone as sharp as a knife, making a huge gash through the whole length of it. I was running out of air.

My muscles ached, my bones cracked, and my air was running out.

I screamed.

I couldn’t hear it, seeing as sound doesn’t travel nearly as far in the water, but I felt it. It was like a vibration coming from my torso, to my chest, to my throat, and out my mouth.

It was high-pitched, loud. A frail shrill. A cry of pain. A sound of remorse.

Water flowed into my mouth, filling it with the taste of acid.

No, it wasn’t acid it tasted like.

It tasted like death.

7

Something I never realized is that when you’re in a cave, there always seems to be a way forward, no matter how unlikely it may seem.

Caves eat sound, dim light, take away your five senses, but they always have a path forward.

When you’re walking through one, you begin to wonder. Why is it that this hole fits me? It’s almost the perfect size for a human, like it was made for the purpose of being walked through. What if this hole was a little smaller? Why is it that I can barely fit in here, but I still can? Why?

I don’t know.

8

How long had I been unconscious? I don’t know, and I doubt you know either.

I was no longer in the narrow tunnel. I was on the ground, lying face up. I wasn’t in a tunnel anymore.

There were small, bright vines and moss on the walls of this cavern. They gave off just enough light for me to be able to tell where I was.

But it was dark. It was still so very dark.

The corners of the cavern were so dark. Darker than anything I had seen before. Was it the dim light that made it look even darker?

Dark. Mind-numbing, brain-wrecking, and abyssal dark. The void. Was that what the void looked like? Of course. The void was nothing. It was dark.

All dark, no stars.

All dark, no light.

All dark, no life.

Maybe I was staring at death. Maybe that was what you saw when you’re in your final moments.

How long had I been staring at it until I noticed it was moving?

Years maybe. I’m not sure. I don’t really keep track of time.

I don’t think it’s apt to say it was moving. It was growing. Like a plant, a dark plant, spreading its illness over the rock surface, slowly making its way to the only other life in this place. Me.

To use me as fuel. It needed to spread itself. Was it an illness? Was it death? Maybe it was both.

But it was dark.

And the dark talked.

It beckoned.

It called.

It was, in all senses of the phrase, a calling of the void.

9

I was falling.

What was I falling from? I don’t remember. But I couldn’t be falling. I was underground. How was I falling? Was I even falling?

Yes, I was.

I tumbled.

I was falling from a mountain.

My body picked up momentum as it rolled down the side of the huge mount, making my muscles hurt and my bones creak. By the time I stopped by crashing into a tree, my legs were broken, and my right arm was gone.

I don’t know how long after, but a man found me. He carried me to a town. It was a beautiful little town. The people are nice. Nature is calming. Everything is fine. I am fine.

10

I look up sometimes. At the sky.

Above it, somewhere high above the clouds, I see something. Stones. Like the roof of a cave.

I look up at the skies, and I ask myself a question.

Where am I?