Deep Beneath the Earth

The steady drip of water off in the distance was the only sound to be heard in the deep penetrating blackness of the cave. The sound was very distant but he could still hear every single drip distinctly. The plopping sound was coming every seven seconds. He was counting. Sometimes it came after eight or nine seconds but most of them came after seven seconds. He was focusing on the dripping. Seven times seven is forty-nine. Seven times twelve is eighty-four. He heard another noise coming from the opposite direction, very faint and far away. He forgot about counting and turned his head to listen in the other direction. The sound didn't come again and he had no clue at all about what it might have been.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, plop, nine, ten, he kept counting because if he stopped counting and thought about where he was right now he knew that he would go absolutely crazy. He still couldn't believe that he was in this position. He closed his eyes and then opened them again, but it did no good. The darkness was absolute. There was no light at all. He couldn't see anything around him and except for the dripping water the silence was also absolute. There was simply nothing to hear. No wind, no cars, no highway noise, no TV, nothing. He thought about the thousand and one different things that he heard on a daily basis and wished that he could hear at least one of them again, especially the sound of another person. He had never felt so alone in all his life.

The darkness was oppressive but at the same time he felt openness, like he was in a big room with a high ceiling. He had no way of knowing how high the ceiling was but he had walked around the whole room several times and it was quite large. He counted his footsteps until he came back around and kicked the pile of rocks he had piled up to mark his place. One hundred and twenty seven steps around. He figured that every three steps were about a yard and after he did the calculations he came up with forty-two yards, give or take. He was never very good at math so he didn't know the way to figure out the width or length of the room by that number but he decided to be more direct. He let go of the wall and walked in what he thought was a straight line with his hand out until it hit the far wall. Forty-seven steps which came out to fifteen or sixteen yards. He let the bleakness get to him a little and marveled that his tomb was only fifteen or sixteen yards wide.

Walking around the cave had warmed him up briefly but soon the slight chill set in again. He had always though that it was supposed to be warm underground but here he was, trapped in a cave deep under the earth, and it was a little chilly. He said that out loud in his best British accent, "A little chilly." He giggled a little at the sound of his own silly voice doing a silly accent and kept going. "Please put on your hat and coat - it's a little chilly. A little chilly, man why didn't you tell me it was a little chilly. Please sir, I would like a little chilly." He broke into song, "A little chilly, it's a little chilly in here, why am I stuck in a cave that's a little chilly?" He stopped singing at the top of his voice and listened to the echoes roll around the room. After a couple of seconds they were gone and he had nothing else to listen to except the steady drip of water.

He felt melancholy. He didn’t want to count the steady drip of water any more. It was just too hard to concentrate on keeping a running count. One time he had actually counted up to one thousand seven hundred seventy nine drips before he got distracted.

He had no idea how long he had been stuck in this dark cave deep below the earth but he figured that it had been at least a couple of days. He had been really hungry for a long time and now it had gone away. He had also been really thirst for a long time but unlike the hunger pains the thirst had only grown and now it was nearly intolerable. He was doing everything he could to concentrate on something else and not think about it. The drip of water was driving him crazy! He had tried to find it but because of the echoes had so far been unable to find it. He had walked around the room probably a hundred times feeling the wall all around and still couldn’t find where it was. No part of the wall felt wet at all. There was just rough dry sandstone all around. The only thing that he could think of was that there was some hole or niche higher up the wall out of his reach where the water was.

He had screamed about if for a while along with the general unfairness of the whole situation, but eventually he realized that it was just making his thirst worse and so he stopped. He had run the gamut of emotions from anger to mild sadness to insane horrible grief at the thought of not seeing his family again or at least getting to say goodbye to them and letting them know what was happening. He was fully aware of how it would affect them to never know what had happened to him. They would always wonder if maybe he was alive somewhere and had just forgotten about them, maybe he had gotten a case of amnesia, or worse deliberately walked away from them. He felt more sorry for them then he did for himself. He had made peace with dying a long time ago and now he wished that it would just hurry and come so he could get away from this darkness. Above all it was the darkness, or the total absence of light that really disturbed him. All his life he had liked being in the dark but now he realized that it hadn’t been dark at all because his eyes always adjusted and he could see a little, but here there was no light to adjust to. It was just black.

Finally he couldn’t stand the sound anymore. He had to have some water. He was literally going crazy. He walked around the room with his hands on the wall. He would walk ahead three steps, stop, face the wall and jump as high as he could to try to feel a hole or an opening. He was so desperately tired from lack of food and water that he soon because exhausted and had to rest for a few minutes between every jump. He was at one hundred and three steps when he jumped and his hands felt a little lip that might be an opening. He jumped again and this time he was sure there was something there. This was also the spot that he could hear the dripping the strongest from. He didn’t want to get too excited yet because he might not have found anything but he couldn’t help it. He reached into his pocked and pulled out the two rocks he had brought with him and carefully laid them down at the foot of the wall so he could find his way back then he walked around the room until he got back to his starting position where he had stacked all his rocks. He picked up as many as he could carry and walked back over and put them with the other two. It was tiring painstaking work because he couldn’t see where he was going. Finally he got a pile over where he felt the lip. He stepped up on them and got about a foot off the ground and jumped again.

He grabbed the lip and this time got a good hold with this hands. He tried to pull himself up to the ledge but just couldn’t do it. He was too tired from carrying the rocks. He was forced to let go and land on the pile of rocks. He immediately lay down on the dirt and rested for a long time. The one good thing that he could say about this cave was that the floor was soft. There was a lot of dirt and it wasn’t hard packed so when he lay down it was so soft that he could actually relax a little.

After a couple of hours resting he got up. He knew that it was a couple of hours because he counted to sixty one hundred and twenty two times keeping track with his fingers, ten minutes at a time. It did help to keep the thirst at bay just a little but it was still torture to hear the steady drip and know that he was so close to it. Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer, like someone who is trying to hold their breath underwater and has gone as long as they can and then suddenly decides to come up, he also suddenly decided to get up. He actually popped up so fast he almost came off of his feet and went back down again. He had to try one more time. He knew if he didn’t do it this time he probably never would.

He stepped up on the pile of rocks again and leaped as high as he could and grabbed the ledge again, but this time he didn’t give himself time to stop and hang there and then pull himself up he tried to make it all one motion and put all of his strength into it. He almost didn’t make it again, but he put all his rage and all is grief and all of his remaining strength and determination into one last pull and was finally able to pull himself up over the ledge. He laid there on the ledge with this heart hammering inside his chest and waited for his strength to come back. Finally he rolled over and with his hands he felt a tunnel that was not very high that he could just crawl through. He couldn’t reach the back so he didn’t know how far it went. He decided that it was either stay in the dark cave or crawl through the skinny hole towards some unknown destination. He would either find a way out or he would end up getting stuck and not be able to get back out again.

He started into the hole on his back in case he did have to come back out it would be easier that way. He went about what he judged was twenty feet and the hole kept getting lower and lower and now it was nearly touching his face. There was about two or three inches for him to go through. He was very nervous because it would be difficult to get back out if this didn’t work. He went a little farther and the rock face was only an inch from the tip of his nose. His back was hurting from laying on the solid rock. He didn’t know whether to go forward or turn back. He said a silent prayer to God asking for help and knew that he had to keep going. He couldn’t turn back. A little more he decided. He scooted forward a little more and instead of coming down more the ceiling went back up a little, a bit farther and it went up more. He kept going and now the steady drip that was seven seconds apart was right behind his head. He now had enough room to turn over on his stomach. He put his hand forward and felt a small pool of water in the path ahead of him. He scooped up a handful and put it in his mouth and realized that he had never tasted water this good in his whole life. All the dried, desiccated, dehydrated parts of his mouth were suddenly wet again and it was the most wonderful feeling ever. He scooted forward and plunged his face in the small pool and drank greedily for a few seconds and then stopped. He knew that if he drank too much too fast he would get sick.

He laid there and just rested for a long time taking occasional drinks trying to get his body rehydrated. He just laughed and laughed and laughed. After a while he didn’t even know what he was laughing about but whatever it was he though it was hilarious.

Ten hours later he rounded a corner in the tunnel he had been walking in and he saw a light for the first time in days. He fell down on his knees and started crying and said another prayer thanking God for his help. He stood up after a while and walked towards the light.