Jerry

Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash

Jerry knew he was in the wrong on this one - he just didn’t care. Who was right and who was wrong wasn’t important right now. Right now, survival is all that mattered. Jerry half-jogged, half-trudged through the shallow sewage and water in the dark tunnel, his dying flashlight giving him just enough light to not run into the walls.

The air is rank down here, the fumes powerful enough to sting the bloody stump where his right hand used to be. The adrenaline was starting to wear off and a stinging pain crept up his arm.

Jerry pushed the pain away. The pain doesn’t matter. Only survival. Only getting out of this tunnel. But the tunnel wasn’t ending. Jerry thought he saw flickers of light a couple of times ahead of him but his eyes must have been playing tricks on him. The tunnel’s darkness was relentless. But he knew it ended soon. It had taken him an hour to walk it the first time and he had been walking for more than that by now. Or at least it had seemed like it - his brain was cloudy from the pain.

The only sound was splashing water as Jerry trekked, but now as his pace slowed to a walk from fatigue, the sound of his ragged breathing overtook the tunnel. The noise his lungs made echoed eternally off the tunnel walls, the echos layering on top of each other, to the point Jerry didn’t know if he was inhaling or exhaling. It was unbearable. He stopped walking and held his breath.

Ba-Bump.

Ba-BumpBa-Bump.

Bababumpbabumbapbabubabubmpabpumpb

The walls echoed his heartbeat. How was that possible?? How could the walls hear his heart. Jerry tried to cover his ears but his stump failed to keep the sound out. Panic started to set in as the cacophony of his breathing and heartbeat and their echos assailed his ears and bounced off the inside of his skull - a never-ending, haunting loop providing the soundtrack to this damned tunnel. A firestorm of pain from his severed nerve endings assaulted his brain through the adrenaline and a scream unwillingly escaped his lips. The scream seemingly traveled all the way down the tunnel and bounced back to him.

Jerry threw up from the added stimulation and continued tromping forward again, a new purpose to his step as the return echo from the scream sounded close. He must be near the end.

Just survive. Just get to the end of the tunnel. Just keep going. Just put one foot in front of the other. Jerry’s left boot struck something solid in the water and as he stumbled his right foot landed on the unseen object and twisted unnaturally causing him to fall face first towards the shallow water. His good arm reflexively tightened his grip on the flashlight as he fell, but because he was out of useful hands to catch himself he crashed hard onto the object submerged in the water, the flashlight flickering off. The large splash momentarily disrupted the echo loop. But now it was dark.