Have you ever regretted doing something the exact second after the affect kicks in? Well I have, in fact I feel it now, sitting here at the bottom of a mine shaft. If only I had maybe taken the caution sign into consideration I wouldn’t be here alone in this dead zone of space who knows how far underground. I guess before I go too far into my story I should probably explain myself. Its not like I just went running through the woods and slid down a mine shaft to fill a boring weekend, I actually have purpose for being in the middle of nowhere. You see last week sometime a friend of mine asked for my help in a community service project to “clean up” the wooded area a few miles from our town. No, I did not want to help clean a forest, yet reluctantly I said I would, knowing that if I didn’t karma would find a way to get me; however little did I expect to fall down a mine shaft in the process. Any way once the minimal group of volunteers showed, we applied our reflecting orange vests and set off through the forest. Nearly twenty minutes into our day an out of place object caught my attention a few hundred yards from where I was standing. As I made my way closer, I had no idea what this structure could be and kept walking until I finally reached the wooden platform it lay on. It was a triangular shaped cover, probably thirty feet high, hovering over pitch black hole that sunk into the ground. A mine; there everywhere around here, still standing from when people could extract value from the earth. The sudle cracking of the aged wood was carried off by the wind and as I stood there it seemed as if I was the only person with in hundreds of miles. An eerie state of stillness hovered over that moment and I could feel the remains of those who once inhabited this area watched me with carful eyes. With feelings that exceeded way past scared I turned quickly to run back, however my shin snagged on a rusted caution sign. A single second seemed to live a million lives as my attempts to regain my balance only resulted in a long drop to the bottom of the mine.
And yet I am still down here with absolutely no idea what to do. I know there’s a rock to my right, because I tripped over that and to my left is a suffocating dead zone of space. I click on the miniature flash light we were supplied with for the volunteer effort; the single bulb hardly even supplies a gglimmerof light. The mine is filled with a darkness that not even the sun can penetrate. I am over taken by frustration and slouch in the corner with only the thought that I will never escape this hole. I stick my hands in my pockets and find an old pack of dental floss I found while cleaning the woods, and a bag of pretzels now crushed after I tripped over the rock. As if being stuck in the bottom of a mine couldn’t get any worse the only supplies I have could hardly keep a mouse alive for more than a week.
The day is probably up by now and night has taken over. The damp chilled air drops at least ten degrees and the unimaginable darkness of the mine seems to almost get darker. If I didn’t know any better I’d think I was in a three foot by three foot box that holds nothing but air and leads to nowhere. I sit like this for a while, contemplating what I could possibly have done to find myself at the bottom of an at least fifty foot hole. Of what feels like hours and hours of thinking I doze off letting the unknown world of sleep take over my body hoping that once I open my eyes again I will be back in my bed at home just shaken from a terrifying yet unreal dream of today’s events.
I wake to a loud screeching noise, the call of a bird. I look in confusion the black surrounding me. There’s no way anything’s down here, defiantly not a bird. I look more confused and more ferosiously. Where, where is this noise coming from? Deeper into the mine perhaps? But no, the bird is not around me it’s above me, taunting the fact that I am stuck and he is not. Screech, screech, screech, continues the bird. He must be fifty feet or more above and yet I still can hear as if it were right next to me. I look up, through the hole in which I fell. There at the very top is a gglimmerof light and the silouet of the black bird that resembles the heaven of the human world. The annoyance of the bird almost becomes my motivation in an instant, as I am determined to crawl out and run far from this mine and the bird.
I click the somewhat useless light of the flash light on and hold it in my mouth. I take a small hop and clamp onto two lumps of earth that sickout. Step one, I think as the bird continues to “motivate” me. Using every ounce of strength I can obtain I lift myself up and place my feet where my hands once were and reach for another hold. Step two. Once again I pull myself up with much struggle, which makes me think I should start doing more pushups if I ever get out. Barely able to steady my feet onto the new holds I look up, less the thirty feet and on the rim where the bird sits, the bird, in which I will run far from and will always remind me of this wretched mine. There’s no way I can let up now, I’m almost there. I stretch up a little further, the very tip of my middle finger grazing the next hold, and that’s when it began to crumble. The rock under my right foot, first a small flake of dirt falls, shortly after bringing down the whole thing. With my right foot unsupported I begin to tumble down. My back hitting and scraping against the barbed rocks that line the mine. Desperation runs through my body and I extend my hand hopping to get a hold of something, but my hand is only crushed by tumbling debris and knife sharp spokes of rock. I land with a thud that nearly knocks out everything in me. Chunks of earth began to settle around me as dust leaves a film through the air. Nothing absolutely nothing is left in me. I lay on the ground taking short breaths trying to regain an idea of what is going on, and then there is the bird. Squawking, again, yet this time it’s not motivation is as if he is laugh at my failure. I close my eyes and leave them shut.
The distant jingle of a ring of keys and whispered conversations awakens me. I roll on the debris cover ground covered in silt that has settle in my time asleep. I look, the light of another person coming reflects against the entrance to the mine tunnel.
“Hello?” I yell, no answer is returned. “Help, help! Please help me!” but nothing, the light gets closer and closer, brighter and brighter. I try to yell and get their attention. “Help, Help, Help!” As they round the corner, I hear the groups of mine inspectors reassure,
“Looks good to me,” claims one.
“Yep, be back next month to check again.” And away they went continuing their un-comprehendible conversation.
“Wait where are you going. Help, help, help me! Can’t you here me.”
But no they cannot. Neither can anyone else. They can’t see me, hear me, feel me. It’s as if I’m not there, because I’m not. No longer living, breathing, visible, no longer alive.