Gravity, and Darkness.

My parents had a chunk of land that was about 3 acres in the mountains a few hours away from home. I loved camping and went to our land a lot. I was walking through the forested part of the property and found a large cavern in the ground, I looked down into the hole trying to see what lay inside. It was too dark to see anything, I ran back to the cabin and told my father. He told me we would look at it tomorrow, but I was eager to explore what was inside. I told him that I would go look by myself if he was busy, he said don’t go too far and don’t get stuck or anything. I laughed and said I would be careful and just look around a bit.

I grabbed my small flashlight and walked back to the cavern. I looked at it one last time before pressing the button on the small metal light, shining it into the hole in the ground. It was almost completely void of life and anything but oxygen. A few beetles scurried around, some roots hung from the edges. It went farther than my flashlight would reach, I decided maybe I would crawl in just a bit to see what else there was deeper underground. I ducked and started to crawl down into the dark cavern, doing my best not to obstruct the beam from my flashlight on the ground that my hands were sinking into. My knees hurt from the sharp rocks stabbing their way through the soft dirt beneath me. I crawled until I came to a fork, left or right? I shone the light into them to get a better idea of what was inside.

On the left, the tunnel continued still narrow and small. On the right, I couldn’t see the walls, meaning that this opened up to a cave. I shone my light around the right side more until something shiny caught my eye, I looked hard but couldn’t tell what it was for the life of me. I looked behind me to the mouth of the tunnel I had entered and it was dark, I assumed that it was night time now. It had been late in the evening when I had entered, so it would be dark outside by now. I turned my attention back to the cave and crawled deeper into the large room. I looked for walls but saw nothing around me, just endless darkness save for the hole in the wall where I came from. I looked at the ground, it had a dull sparkle when I shone the light on it. I stepped further, looking for more. I walked for several minutes, not finding anything. This was the largest, darkest place I had ever been. I eventually turned around and made my way back towards the wall where I had come from. I walked for what seemed like an hour but found nothing, not even a wall.

I started to panic, but kept walking. I had to find a wall or a ceiling somewhere, this place couldn’t literally be endless. Nowhere is. I walked for hours, only stopping when my legs couldn’t hold me up any longer. There was no way to tell how long I had been walking around that place, I could have been there days. My flashlight eventually started to flicker, “ No… NO DON’T DO THIS! PLEASE!” I yelled. It was no use. The light flickered out, and I was left in complete darkness. I cried, I was never getting out of here. I threw my light to the ground in anger. I heard a strange cracking noise somewhere in the cave, I couldn’t tell where it came from, the echoes were in every direction. I stood as still as possible trying to figure out what was happening, silence filled in the space all around me. I took a step and heard another crack… it was the floor. The floor was starting to shatter because I had thrown the light. I tried to tread lightly, moving forward into the darkness. More crackling came with each step, until the silence was broken with the loudest one yet. Loud echoes of the sound surrounded me, then the floor beneath me dropped.

At first I couldn’t tell that I was falling, I just felt my body get as light as a feather. I didn’t have to hold my weight up with my legs anymore. I soon felt the air swiftly blowing upwards around me, and I started to tip backwards. I was flailing my arms grasping for anything, but there was nothing. I just kept falling. The darkness made it seem more endless than it already was. I kept falling forever, never stopping. There was no light, nothing to grab, and no ground to fall on. Just an endless falling sensation that lasted forever.

Days, and weeks passed. Even my sleep was filled with dreams of gravity pulling me downwards towards endless nothingness. Sometimes there would be regular dreams, walking in the park, sitting at home, but they all turned into dreams of me hurtling downwards into emptiness. I was alone in this endless tunnel, darkness my only company, no food, no water, just darkness everywhere. I was starving, and had nothing to eat or drink. I wished for anything to satisfy my hunger or thirst, but there was nothing. I accepted this and waited for something to happen, the ground, a ledge, something had to kill me eventually right? A while later a strange phenomenon came to light, I didn’t quite understand why but I welcomed anything that wasn’t darkness. Water started flying up around me, small droplets hitting my skin.

At first I hesitated before drinking them, afraid they would be poisonous. After a while I got so thirsty that I didn’t care whether they would kill me or not, I just kept falling in the darkness anyways. They tasted putrid, slightly like sulfur and metal. I was so thirsty that I didn’t care. That was the only thing in that cavern with me, other than the darkness that encapsulated everything. I almost didn’t notice the droplets because they were the same temperature as everything else, the wind constantly hitting my skin had numbed it as well. I only felt it when it streamed across my face, I wasn’t crying so they couldn’t be tears. I discovered that they were coming from underneath me, falling at a slower pace than I was making it seem like backwards rain. I don’t know how they got there, but they weren’t there long before I was if I ran into them.

I fell more, I fell forever. I never stopped. There was no food so eventually I could feel my muscles being eaten away by my body, trying to keep me alive for as long as possible. The whole world became darkness and water droplets occasionally pelting my body. I lost all sense of direction, I couldn’t tell how long I had been falling in that cave. I wouldn’t last much longer without any food. I lost my hearing from my eardrums being bombarded by wind for what was probably weeks. My senses dulled and eventually were gone altogether. At last, after an eternity of nothing, I fell asleep for the final time. Never to wake from my sleep again, I kept falling forever. Never found by anyone, lost in this dark void forever.

Original work by P.H.