Sparks from the Fire

We lay there on our backs in a line, I in the lead.  The water in the stream wherein we lay was only an inch and a half deep and had slowed to a trickle beneath us, but it was cold, icy cold.  It was so dark, there being no light whatsoever, that we had given up trying to see anything long ago.  The walls of the passageway in which we lay had narrowed down to a claustrophobic six inches on either side of us.  But it was the ceiling, the ceiling of that cave in which we lay, that was so overwhelmingly awesome in its presence.

That ceiling of dirt and rock had narrowed down to only six inches above my face.  I had had to turn onto my back and push myself forward with my feet, inching myself forward through the ever-narrowing tunnel.  I stopped and grunted, “Hold” to my other four companions, breathing in the dank, stale air of the underground passage.  I thought of the rope tied amateurishly around my ankle running back to the next guy’s ankle and so on to the next.  My buddies could always pull me out.

I did what no professional cave explorer would ever do.  I thought about it.  I thought about the walls, the floor, the ceiling.  I imagined the earth above me slightly shifting and the great expanse of rock above me simply settling to fill this narrow worm-hole, crushing my body beneath its weight.  The waves of claustrophobia began to wash over me.  I suddenly could see, but it was only an imagined redness of fear.

The single word “Pull” burned into my mind, but what came out was a blurt of panic, “Just a sec.”  One of my buddies, sensing my fear, called out, “Are you all right, Pete?”  I couldn’t answer.  The feeling of that ceiling pressing down on me had grown so that the words would no longer form in the tangle of my mind.  My fear began to spread among the other four.

(more…)