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We entered the cave around noon, I think. No, I’m sure it’s noon, but my watch had stopped some time after we got inside. Had it stopped minutes ago? Hours? The light from the entrance was weak, and my eyes hadn’t adjusted fully. I was nearly blind, hunched over, and my knees were scraped from crawling through the narrow space near the opening. The entrance was so narrow that you’d miss it if you blinked, yet he saw it. He didn’t say a word, simply gestured for me to come over before he pushed on. It was always like this with him, gestures instead of words.
The tunnel narrowed into a straight chute. The walls were so close together that the sound of our own breath bounced back at us, we came into a slightly larger space where I could finally crouch. We moved slowly through the gravel, mud, rock, and clay until we finally came to a small passageway.
We came to a small gate-like entrance, a rectangular-shaped opening in the wall, framed by weathered rock. He told me to wait there while he went up to check. I stood there for a while, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. My eyes were so starved of light and company that I thought I saw something move in the shadows above. It was probably just him, though. Probably.
I don't know how long passed until he finally called back. I went through the rectangular opening and went up, I hesitated because the long floor just beyond had a steep drop-off with calcite edges and shallow ridges. Some of the rocks were coated in algae, and there was water. I tested one with my boot and slid a little. The incline was sharper than it looked. I carried on, I placed my boot squarely on it, pressed down slowly, and felt the world tilt.
I woke up with a dry throat and heavy eyelids. The cave felt distant, almost like a bad dream receding. But the sensation lingered with a phantom vertigo. The room looked unfamiliar at first, it was shapeless in the dark. I lay back and tried not to think about anything, but I remembered the dog.. The dog. Not a memory of the cave, but of… before? After?
I remember when I was walking, not crawling, standing upright in a house. But whose house? I was walking toward the back of the house, I didn’t recognize the layout at all. The walls were pale and unpainted with exposed drywall and chipped corners, some of them were wet. I pushed open the door to the back room, though it was already cracked. It led to a small, square room.
The room had three closed doors and smelled like melted wax and fire. The dog was at the back of the room, left to the backdoor, he looked straight at me.
He was pierced clean through with a thick, sharp pole, jammed into the floor at a slant. His body was twisted, but not limp. The legs were caught mid-step. The spine arched a little backward. The stick went in through the rear hip and exited through the chest. His head sat upright and leaned toward me. The eyes hadn’t clouded yet, they were glassy and locked on me. His mouth opened slightly, then pulled tight at the corners.
I heard something, but not a sound: “Help me.”? “End me”? I can’t remember. I took a step back.
I wanted to do something, but I sensed something else in the room. I didn’t want to know what it was, so I left before whoever did it returned. I didn’t open any of the doors, leaving the dog with its terrible, glassy stare.
He passed me smiling, my friend. Without saying anything, he brushed past me and went inside the dog’s room without looking back. I called after him, but he didn’t listen.
He came out and shoved me into a running motion, and a few seconds later the door slammed open behind us. I looked back, though I shouldn’t have, and saw a man looking straight at us, he stood barefoot in denim pants and wore a long-sleeved shirt that hung off his frame. One sleeve was missing from the elbow down, exposing an arm covered in scabs and burns. He didn’t look angry, his mouth was slightly open, almost like a smile.
We ran through the front door of the porch. The man began sprinting faster than anyone should, without making a sound. My friend stumbled on the uneven pavement outside, I grabbed his elbow, hauling him upright. We didn’t stop nor speak. A metal gate tore the skin on my arm as we vaulted over it. We were in an alley now, with cracked concrete and an empty shopping cart tipped sideways. We kept running until we turned a corner.
There was a hallway. When I blinked again, my friend was no longer beside me, he was ahead, gesturing at me. I followed him, but I kept seeing that dog, sometimes just its head on a pole in the back of the room.
As I moved toward him, my shoulder brushed against the tunnel wall. Something rough scratched my skin through my shirt. I stopped and traced the mark with my fingers. Etched into the damp rock were deep, deliberate marks: |||| / Four vertical lines and a diagonal slash. A tally? Fifth what?
The marks stirred a long-buried memory, and the feeling was overwhelming. I thought about a time when we dared to imagine freedom. I recalled a day when the dark corridor briefly gave way to sunlight and laughter, without a care in the world. With every step forward, the present merged with a memory that carried both warmth and loss.
The wall beyond the mark was bare. I pressed forward. The tunnel curved, and the temperature dropped. I think we climbed out once because I remember seeing the sky. I remember how we laughed a little. Now, I’m back inside. I can hear the water dripping.
We entered the cave around noon, I think.
