Coffee, baby!

The soft sounds of the pebble scraping against the wall echoes in the tunnel. I've figured out how to hold the pebble between my palms. I am writing my requiem. There are marks here already, I can feel them when I rub my face against the wall. I can't read them. But I try to remember them anyway. Someone has to remember them; the last screams, the last tears. Soon I'll be there too. A thin line in the stone, forgotten but ever present. Because what goes down, never leaves.

It's not so dark anymore. Not like it was when my lantern flickered and died. The darkness ate me up then, but I think it has spit me out again. I can almost make out the walls. Or perhaps that is just a memory of the last thing I saw before I was swallowed. I don't know, I don't know anything anymore. Only the cold and the dark, the silence. Even the faint sounds I heard before have stopped. I wonder if that is because I have gotten off track completely, got so lost in the maze that I am only a vague shape in the back of someone's mind, someone still up there. Or maybe I am truly alone now. I don't know. It doesn't matter.

I'll be here always. Even when my flesh has melted into the stone, I'll be here. A mark on the wall, a sigh in the unmoving air. I know this. I've heard the others still here, felt their marks. The feeble tries to leave at least a little left behind. If nothing more than a scratch and a pile of rotting cloth.

What would it be like to see the sun again? Feel it. My eyes wouldn't work properly if I got out. The sun would sure blind me, like it did with the ones that got out before. They screamed at the sun. Cried at the night. I wonder if they would have stayed down here, if they had known what it would be like. To be out again. I bet even the softest whisper of wind would hurt, the skin goes so brittle here in the cold. Breaks for nothing.

I wonder if the night ever ends, when you're out. If the darkness ever brightens. No. It doesn't. Ever. It's so quiet here, at the bottom. My breaths are rasping, I can almost hear my own heartbeats. Slow, so slow. Like a lizard. Slow and unmoving. Waiting for the sun to come up and make my blood flow again. I've made my mark. I am not to be anymore. Soon.

My last dawn. I remember the sun warming my back. The pink clouds over the mountain. The last time I was warm. Time runs cold down here in the dark. It never begins and it never ends. Spread on the tunnel floor there are little lumps, short moments in time, already gone, forgotten. I will have to remember for them, the ones that come after me. There will be more. One at the time, one day in between. Slowly. Blindly. Crawling along the walls, reading with bleeding hands. But I am here. I will tell them. I will remember. They will remember, know my name. I whisper it into the darkness, leaves it floating just above me, the air holding it in its clammy hands. It doesn't matter if I close my eyes or not. But now I can rest. I can wait. Here, where the night never ends. In the cold, in the dark.


And that's a wrap, people!

It’s cold. Colder than I thought. It’s been days, eons, since I last could move my fingers like I used to. They are numb, like the rest of me. There are marks on the walls down here, I try desperately to trace them but my fingers are too cold. Maybe it’s because I’ve scraped them bloody already, that I can’t feel much.

I hear noises from time to time. Low wails, rustling of I don’t know what. I can’t see. My lantern died some time ago. Not that is was of much use anyway, it wasn’t brighter than a firefly. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Time doesn’t run in the same way as up above. There are no days, only dark. Only endless tunnels, with no light at the end.

Sometimes I think I’ve taken the wrong path, it’s hard to say. The marks on the walls stopped making sense when I lost the fingers on my right hand. My reading hand. I run my left over the walls, trying to find my way, trying to see what they say. I might have lost fingers there too. I don’t know. I can’t feel. Anything. I felt it when my hands began to bleed, the blood trickling down my wrists the only source of heat I had felt for days, eons. It didn’t last. I might not even be bleeding anymore, the cold makes sure of that. Stops it from flowing. Such a shame.

I don’t know when I ate the last time. The hunger has long since passed from being painful to a normal state. The food rations I was allowed to bring lasted me a week and a half. I had counted the bites, the portions. To make it last, to keep track of time. Now even that is gone. I stumble on soft matter sometimes. I touched it once and it made a noise. They said I would find ‘things’ down here, and I have. That I wouldn’t need to be hungry. They said that everything was alright, would be fine. They were lying.

Time runs cold down here in the dark. Cold and slow. Never ending. Never beginning. I take the next turn, what’s left of my hand trailing the marks, trying to see. My foot connects with something, a low thud. A low moan. The map I memorized is useless. Space doesn’t work the same way down here. Walls move, floors shift.

I don’t think I’ll make it out. I’m not even sure I want to anymore. I don’t know if I want to be like them that succeeded, half blind and crazy. Crippled. Maimed. Crying at the darkness. Crying over what they did to get out.

I can cry here. In the cold. In the dark.