TOGETHER, WITHIN
Chapter 40 of my dystopian-utopian novel, The Lost City of Desire
[Read chapters 1-39 here. Only six chapters remaining.]
The dawn cast desperate sunlight into the hole. I knew – I didn’t “feel,” I knew – I was going to die here. There was no other option. Joe’s soul pulled me deeper into oblivion. I couldn’t bear to be trapped with his dead body. The days would pass and I would starve, and while I was starving I would actually die from lack of water. It might rain and slake my thirst but eventually there would be no rain and that was going to kill me, and it wasn’t going to take too long.
Now that Joe was gone, my feelings about him were so clear. Good, I thought, to die alongside your first love. We would die and be buried, here in this hole.
Not so fast. I tried to shake myself out of my death thoughts.
I dug my fingers into Joe’s back pocket for the knife he always kept there, and I stabbed at the hard packed dirt to make footholds. The dirt was unyielding. I carved out an inch or two of dirt before the blade suddenly collapsed back onto the pocket, nearly slicing my hand. The walls had been smoothed so carefully, clearly to keep whatever fell in the hole from finding a way out of the hole.
“What if a bear walks up and falls in – can you imagine?” I’d said to Joe before he died.
“You’ll punch it for us,” I said.
“I bet you will,” I said.
“Seriously --- I’ll fucking kill it.”
I was so desperate to solve this problem, though it didn’t seem seem likely to happen.
I sat on the floor with my feet stretched to the other side. His body lay across from me with his feet nearly touching my side of the wall. The hole was starting to feel pretty small.
“You look miserable,” I said.
Death doesn’t become anybody.
I’m gonna try again. I’m gonna horizontal it up this sucker,” I said, to no one, to a dead kid.
I put two hands on the wall about shoulder height, raised my left leg behind me nearly as high, and jumped up to get my right foot up there too. It worked! I was suspended a few feet off the floor.
I lifted my left hand away from the wall and slapped it back a few inches higher. Did the same with my right hand – I was doing it!
Then I fell. Landed right on my hip, my foot kicking Joe in his dead face.
“Motherfucker…..” I shouted in pain.
“Dammit!” I said.
I curled in the fetal position on the cold floor.
I put our blanket over me and curled up as tight as I could. Joe didn't need it.
”I think we need a miracle,” I said. “I'm going to pray for that.”
And I did. I closed my eyes and said this prayer:
Dear God, please guide Joe to the place he needs to be. I have no idea where that is. Or what that is. Please show me the path that I should follow. If this is what you want, please rescue us from this hole. Thank you, Friend.
It wasn’t a specific prayer from any book. Just a way of prayer I’d learned over the years. I’d heard so many times that prayer was the best, last recourse. Also the best first recourse, although most people don’t think of it until they are in a seriously bad situation. Clearly, that’s where we were right now. So I prayed.
You know, nothing happened.
I saw no light. Certainly no lightning bolts. But still it felt like the right thing to do. I can’t explain it. I just kept praying, saying the same thing over and over. And after a while this sensation came into my chest. My heart felt a little bumpy, like it was filling with something and little bubbles were coming up on the surface. It was a good feeling, I’ll tell you. I thought of my mother. I saw this face I remembered from when I was a kid. I was sure it was her. A big wide grin on her face pushing her cheeks out, a cartoon chipmunk storing acorns for the winter, her chipmunk eyes sparkling and full of life. I knew I was going to see her again. I just knew it. I was going to get out of here. It was clear to me. I felt satisfied. I held onto Joe and kept praying, hoping that some of the feeling would fill him, bring him back to life, or at least help him on his journey. I heard a distinct buzzing in my ears, like bees and cicadas and frogs and dragonflies, a cacophony of buzzing sounds. We just stayed like that for a long time. At one point I smelled fire, roasting meat. I was that hungry.
In the morning, I heard voices -- indistinct, couldn’t be. Too distant. But definitely two women talking. I shouted, but no answer. I was hearing things. No, there they were.
I took the pistol from my bag -- what else was I gonna do with it? -- and pointed at the sky with both hands on the handle and pulled the trigger so it fired, kicking back, oh my God, the butt of the gun nearly hit my face, the concussion of sound in my ears. Somebody’s gonna hear that I thought.
I felt a rush of power. It was good. I fired again, and again, and the fourth time the pistol just clicked -- no more bullets. The powerful feeling drained instantly away.