The Down Below - Part I

The Down Below

Part I

The ordinary practitioners of the city live “down below,” below the thresholds at which visibility begins. – Michel de Certeau

If I had to write a story about love I would prefer that someone else take the reins. They could somehow slip into my mind and type or write and feel through all the things which I cannot make myself remember. Thankfully there is nothing even remotely loving about this story. Thankfully, there are absolutely no mushy feelings, sentimentality, or many emotions here – there is simply me reaching out to an audience that may not listen . I am giving you a disclaimer – there isn't even a tiny bit of anything you could even remotely call legitimate emotions – or at least that's the way I see it.

No, there are not many people who would allow themselves to become homeless, hopeless, or heartless. The three H's – if you lose all three you might as well dig a hole and live underground. Thankfully (as I didn't have a shovel) there are abandoned train stations, the abandoned subway stations, and the various tunnels under the city where one who has lost her last H (humanity) can live in relative peace depending on which section of the down below you live in.

I lived in Tunnel A-34, a rather spacious, city of darkness. It is nothing compared to B-28 but it is big enough for my little community of those who no longer wish to live above the light to be comfortable. It was lit by the light of candles, trash-can fires, and sometimes, if you were lucky enough, battery powered flashlights. The landscape, like most of the other tunnels, consisted of dirt, trash of all kinds (and from all periods of time), and us – the vagrants brave enough to venture down here.

Some of us, we have a choice. There are those who hear about the city under the city and wonder if truly, that is a better place. I've heard stories of men and women and children who have become too humiliated to live in the light, which I have never come to understand, as I was forced down there by circumstances not under my control. I am not going to go as far as to say I was forced, I suppose, but rather pushed or backed into a corner where, in my opinion, I felt as if there were no other options than to give myself to the darkness.

My name is Tina. I am twenty-seven years old and I lived in abandoned Tunnel A-34 – otherwise known as The Down Below. I am writing this story in hopes. Hopes for what I do not yet understand but in due time, maybe, i'll figure it out. Maybe by the end of whatever it is I am writing I will have embraced whatever it is I am feeling. As I said before, I am not going to pollute you with sentimentality for I no longer have any. Empathy went out the door years ago hand in hand with Sympathy. Those bitches, well, good riddance – but I still have a longing for my selfish heart. I feel as if I am a mummy, buried deep within the walls of a pyramid, gutted and wrapped and locked within the darkness until my chamber is revealed by scientists years later when it is much too late to put me back together.

No, understand that I cannot bring myself to care anymore, but maybe simply inform the reader of certain circumstances that may be under their control, but were not under mine.

The day I came to be underground began just like any other. My alarm clock went off – a typical chime, a loud ringing that turned me up and had me smashing my hands against my bedside table trying to kill it. I rolled over, drew my sweaty bed sheets from my naked body (I had a bad dream, I suppose) and almost quite literally hopped out of bed. Shower. Drying self off. Using hair straightener. Putting on makeup. Going downstairs. There is nothing of any importance in any of that, except the fact that I did I did put on make up and that was for the last time (at least in my typical manner – we wore makeup in the Down Below but it was not anything special, not anything new).

I stepped down the steep stairs and wandered into my kitchen. I noticed the counter tops – black marble; the cabinets were all stained a rich brown with little steel handles to open them up. They were new, remodeled when the owner of my apartment building had died. His rather pudgy, fiscally-oriented son took over and decided the resale value, if the market ever came to that, would increase if he pretended like the building didn't belong to such a shitty part of town.

I had a dream the night before.

But this one was strange. I wasn't flying but I was floating; I wasn't something real. I could not look below me, just ahead of me, and I saw the land meet the sky and the people there and the waves gently thrusting into the sand. And suddenly the sand began to change and move and it looked as if the shore had a pulse but suddenly I could see little specs of green between the shifting sands and I knew it was alive because the people ran but the green, it expanded, it grew, and suddenly the shore had become grass and the sand was no longer visible under the long, long strands.

And this was all I could remember as I sifted through the refrigerator looking for the eggs I had bought the day before.

Soon after finding those eggs, scrambling them with a bit of yellow, precut American cheese, and pouring myself a glass of orange juice thick with pulp, the phone rang. I nearly spilled it as I got up from my chair – the telephone always catches me off-guard.

It was my mother. A year ago, she moved from the city to sunny South Carolina to live closer to her sister, Aunt Clarice. In her typical over-bearing fashion she called me three times a week, mostly to check to see if I had a boyfriend yet. The answer was always no – people who work sixty-hour weeks for advertising agencies had little to no time for dating. This time, however, she began criticizing the lady two houses down from her suburban home for letting her dog shit on her yard. “Tina, really, this woman has no common decency,” she began, “She just lets her German shepherd release its bowels wherever it wants! If I have to buy my own poop scoop I am going to…to…I am going to be very upset!”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her, the poor woman. She couldn’t swear if she wanted to – I think God forgot to put original sin in her because she might have possibly been the most angelic woman I have ever encountered. Not that I am religious, mind you, but the analogy seems right.

She sputtered on – “How are you doing darling? Are you eating well?” I will admit that I wasn’t – I think I had ordered Chinese food twice that week. It was all menial, looking back. This woman cared about me, she really did. I cannot imagine why – I was never the easiest child. There were times when I was a teenager where I would rip out entire cabinets in anger, throwing silverware on the floor just so she would have to pick it all up. I don’t know why, really, I had a fury inside of me and I would quite often take it out on her. But I love my mother. I might have caused my fair share of problems (and had my fair share of dramatized teenage angst towards her), but there were nights when I would wail, tears ripping from my eyes, for the sole purpose of calling my mother coming to comfort me. It would soothe me each and every time.

It was my mother’s calming voice that made me comfortable enough to open the door. “Christina, you need to stop smoking those cigarettes, really, you….” and the doorbell rang. In my calmness, I opened it. I didn’t think – I simply reacted to a sound. At the door stood a man. I remember frowning for a second before mouthing some words (still listening to my mom’s concerned ranting); “Can I help you?” The man, in a single movement, entered my apartment pushed me aside, and closed the door with such force that I was sent spinning. I dropped the phone. I could hear my mother’s questions shrieking from the floor; “Tina! Are you there?”

And before I could react the man had grabbed my arm and threw me to the couch. I fell roughly, bouncing slightly as I felt my body hit the leather cushions. I looked to the man – I looked to his face. It was like any other face I had seen on the street, he wore the same black Armani suit every other high-end business man had, except perhaps dirtier than usual – covered in more stains than the usual guy on the street. He had a look on his face, not of terror, horror, malice, deceit, or wrath. This man, this ordinary man, looked at me with pity. I thought, at that moment, he was going to brush my hair, stroke my face, and tell me he was okay. Then, as I think many would assume at that point, he would brush a knife across my neck and watch the blood fall from the wound. I closed my eyes – I didn't want to watch him watch me dying. I knew I wouldn't fight back – what good would it do? He was an averaged built man, and I was a below averaged strength woman. He would force me into death; he would smile while he did it.

But he did not approach me. He instead moved to the coffee table beside the couch and grabbed my cigarette lighter. “Wait here,” he gently told me as he walked towards the door where he grabbed his black, leather briefcase. He turned backwards, coming at me again. Slowly, he strode towards the coffee table and rather elegantly, (I thought it was strange, too, an intruder being elegant) twisted the combination to a lock and flipped open the suitcase. Out, he took a water bottle full of some kind of clear liquid. At first, I thought it was water. “Why wouldn’t it be?” I asked myself, “why would it be anything else?” In fact, the water bottle looked like one of those mineral water containers you could buy out a vending machine.

I was wrong, though.

“I see you looking at my vodka, honey,” the man said eerily. His voice was high pitched – he spoke in a sort of calm-shriek that I have, since I first heard it, been unable to describe further. Alone, his voice scared me, but the fact that he brought vodka to a murder (never mind the fact that he wore a suit), alarmed me. “Vodka for you, vodka for me,” he seemed to sing.

The man in the black suit twisted open the cap to the alcohol and took a quick swig. Smiling as he placed it back on the coffee table, he began chirping. The kind of chirping you hear in the early morning when you do not want to wake from dreaming. The kind of chirping that has you burying your head in a pillow to escape the sounds. I closed my eyes again. I could not bear looking at the creature who was torturing me.

“Oh, I hear the voice of you and I hear the voice of me and we are singing, baby, we are singing – we are sung,” he continued. I laid there, motionless. Did he have a pistol? A serrated knife? How was I going to die? Was I really going to let this happen?

These questions mattered little for what he did next threw my thoughts from inside my head. Suddenly, he picked up the bottle of vodka and approached the couch. Slowly, almost methodically, he began pouring the alcohol over my limbs. He started with my legs, then my arms, then my chest and my waist. He sang as he drenched me in his booze. “Oh my little sweetie, come down here and meet me, I’ll bring you to the river and we’ll sip some wine in winter.” I cringed. I began to feel the salt water slowly fall from my eyes. I was stunned, paralyzed. The only things I felt were fear and, in the depths of me, rage, begin to boil over and consume me.

The man in the black suit came to me and sat beside my head. He looked into my eyes and smiled wide, his teeth showing. They were yellow and gray. His breath smelled of spinach and butter. I could not bear it. I felt my ears grow red and my mind fog. My arms suddenly reached for him, fingers set to grab anything they touched.

I caught ahold of his hair, pulling it downwards as I pulled myself upwards. “You fuck. You FUCK. Who the FUCK are you? You’re a fucking CORPSE.” I pulled my arm backwards and thrust forward, punching him in the mouth. His reaction was laughter – insane, violent laughter.

“Who am I?” he said as he viciously peeled my fingers from his greasy hair. “I am everything you are going to have for the rest of your life.” From there, he punched me in the stomach. I fell backwards back to the couch. Again, I was stunned, paralyzed. My fury had not been enough to scare him from my presence. He rose from the couch and smiled ethereally, reaching into his pocket. From it he pulled a small piece of paper folded into a square. Carefully, he undid it, revealing what seemed to be a letter. I stared at it – I was horrified.

“Let me tell you about our love,” he said tenderly.

“We met a year ago in the elevator. We both worked in the same building and often we would chat on the ride up to our floors – me to the law firm on the eighteenth floor and you to the advertising agency on the twentieth. We would talk about our days. We would flirt. Remember the time I brought you flowers for Valentine’s Day? You told me you loved them as you kissed me gently on the cheek. Remember that time, when we were alone, and you told me that you wanted me more than any man you had ever met. You put your hands on my crotch and pulled me close to you. I felt your kiss envelop me as you stuck your tongue in my mouth. After that, it was like a fairy tale. Until (and here I could feel his distain begin to brush the surface of his insanity), of course, my bosses decided I was too good for the firm and let me go with high, extremely high recommendations. I had not seen you in a while except that time we met for coffee and made love in the restroom as the baristas made our favorite blends…”

There was a ringing in my ears that began soon after he mentioned the coffee date we never had. In fact, I had never spoken to this man except maybe a casual, polite hello – but now I did remember him. He would enter the elevator where I worked, often times when it was completely full, and push himself to the back. He was not a memorable person, in fact, that only real memory of him I had was the time I dropped my lipstick and he picked it up for me. I thanked him and he didn’t even say you’re welcome.

I found out later that one of the lawyers in the office two floors down had had an outburst in which he threatened to drown himself, but I never found out who it was.

And now I knew.

And as he finished his falsified love letter he took the lighter he had taken from my coffee table and lit the paper on fire. And then he took the rest of the vodka and poured it on the set of curtains closest to the door. And then, with a flick, lit the curtains on fire. He smiled as he returned to the table and grabbed his suitcase, “I’ll see you around then, darling. I always see you. Wait for my gaze, baby.”

I was paralyzed – I was broken. I realized quickly that this man had followed me; probably for weeks at a time. He knew where I lived, he knew where I worked. He knew where I spent my days. I began to roar tears. I began to erupt into liquid.

“Hush my darling, don’t be absurd, I’mma gonna tell you what’s the word.” He sang it in the tone of the lullaby “Hush Little Baby.” He sang it as he opened the door and left me.

I was alone. I was alone and I felt as if I was dying. I thought my eyes were going to melt inside my head as I felt the flames grow bright – smelled the smoke grow stronger. I could not break myself from this fear, this fear of his gaze. It was eight o’clock in the morning and my house was catching fire. What happened next was a blur – one would think I did the heroic, or the smart, or the “right” thing and grabbed my phone and called 911. But I did not. I couldn’t – I couldn’t feel myself breathe anymore. I closed my eyes and hoped my tear ducts would produce enough water to put the flames out before they reached my alcohol stained clothing and consumed me.

***

I woke up in the hospital. From my bed I could see the window – it was night time. I smelled the scent of cleaning solution and sterility. I could smell smoke, but only slightly – I think it came from my hair. I recalled nothing after the point my eyes were closed. I could only feel the remnants of terror wash over me. I looked at my surroundings – a room covered in white, covered in shadows. The lights were on but in the corners of the room there were darkness. The door was open. I was hooked up to an intravenous drip. I tried to be relieved that I was alive but I was not.

An elderly nurse walked past my door, looking in as she floated past. I hear her sneakers squeal as she turned and entered the room, “You are one lucky lady, I must say,” she expressed rather genuinely. I didn’t speak for a moment – I simply observed her. She came to the drip and checked the levels, smiling brightly as she did so. “Your mother called the police. She knew something was wrong. They immediately alerted the local police station, who alerted the rescue team. When they found you were not breathing – they had to use CPR to bring you back to life.”

“Dead,” I thought, “I died.” I tried to let it register in my head, but nothing came. It was a passing breeze against the windshield of a car – I brushed it away.

“I’m going to go get the Doctor. She’s going to have to run some further tests on your respiratory system. The amount of smoke in your lungs was alarming – the fire department said you were very lucky you didn’t catch fire, especially because you were covered in alcohol.” At this last sentence, her voice trailed. I sensed judgment but no longer cared. It was not her place to judge me. In fact, as I looked at the machine next to me, I felt like a robot. A construct. My heart had stopped and now they had to power me with medicinal fluids. No one could judge me now based upon human standards. I decided I was a machine and they were injecting oil into my veins.

These revelations seem strange, I am aware, but I believe now that once terror fills you completely, as it had done to me, it leaves you viral. I felt as if my entire mind had been shaken and devoured, changed and broken, by a kind of disease. I looked at this woman, a stranger who was caring for me, and felt nothing. Where had someone caring about me gotten me before? I asked myself. Where had someone caring for me gotten me? In the hospital, broken and bruised.

The nurse left, her sneakers squeaking as she moved. I glanced at my arms and the needles inside of them. I pulled them out – I ripped them off. I could not stay there in that room; I couldn’t stay in any room, ever again. Inside meant danger, I decided. Danger of what, I did not know. Where the man in the black suit was, I was unsure. I got out of the bed and found my clothes draped on a chair near the corner of the room. It was a flowered dress, somewhat stained by the smoke – they certainly smelled of it. “I need to hurry up and leave,” I decided. I quickly undressed and dressed. I had very little time, I knew. The doctor would arrive momentarily and then I would be stuck here longer. And the longer I was here, the better chance of the man in the black suit had to find me again and tell me more about the love he had.

“Love,” I thought, “who could love someone enough to look past what had happened to me.” I was broken, and in my experiences, though few, broken people were cast aside and thrown away. They were left for the underbelly of the world to devour them. I would no longer take chances. I would not let myself be broken further. I quickly exited the room and began walking down the long hospital hallway, avoiding eye contact and keeping a steady pace. I eventually found a stairwell and ran to the bottom floor, huffing slightly from the smoke that had damaged my lungs.

I found an emergency exit and opened the door. As I pulled the handle, an alarm went off.

That was when I ran, forgetting everything in an attempt to flee from myself.

***

I spent the next few nights in a park. It was a wide open location, perfect for someone avoiding someone else. There were trees, and fields, and places where I could hide or spot the man in the black suit if he came to me as he promised. This park was where I began to feel my insides turn to cement. A hardening of sorts occurred as I began seeing the world through the eyes of someone maimed by terror. I could feel nothing except for the need to survive. I had given myself up to death once – I refused to let myself further humiliate myself by dying a second time.

The part of the park I found to suit me the best had a playground. I felt that there, especially in the daytime, I could remain safe in the company of children and their parents. I would often watch them play as I would sit in the field beside the swing set. I would attempt to smile as the kids laughed or the parents scolded them for silly things like running on the jungle gym or jumping off the swings, but my mouth could not produce a sound. I would sit there cross-legged for hours, dead to the world (but not to myself), and try to smile.

The day when things changed was sunny – sunny as I had ever seen it before. It was warm outside, probably close to the eighties, and I saw a woman with her child. The woman was probably in her late thirties with dark brown hair and a floral dress – kind of similar to mine. She had been gently telling her daughter not to climb on the monkey bars – they were far too dangerous and, as the little girl was wearing a bright pink sun dress, the boys might get “naughty.”

The girl was crying, raging at her mother that she wanted to go on the jungle gym and that there was nothing she could do to stop her. She kicked and yelled and tossed her head back and forth, her shiny twin braids whipping in the breeze. In an effort to quell her fears, the mother smiled and gently clasped her hand. From the distance I could hear, “Let’s go home. We have ice cream.” The little girl who had been consumed with anger only moments before smiled and gave her mother a tender nod. Together, they began walking away from the playground.

I sat there remembering the times my own mother’s love had calmed me. It was a memory, and only that. I could not feel the soft words my mother uses to speak to me, only hear them played over in my mind.

I decided to follow them – just watch them for a while. It was daylight and, in the safety of the crowd, I could feel secure – the man in the black suit would not be able to find me amongst the masses.

***

The mother and child led me to the subway. As I paid for a ticket with the last of my cash, I saw them running towards a departing train and enter as the doors slammed shut. I stood there, amongst the crowd, staring at the different faces. They were a blur – they were phantoms. I could no longer look at them as people so much as a single living organism, operating under the same set of circumstances as the other. Some were women with fancy dresses, or jeans and a t-shirt. Some of the men were dressed like punks, some like business men. All of them were foreign.

I sat down on a nearby bench and watched the crowd sway back and forth, following each other like ants in a hive. Where they were going, I could no longer see. I decided that I was no longer part of them – I had concerns other than my job, or my house, or my children. I was looking out for myself – I was looking at myself.

And that was when I noticed a movement by the tracks. A train had just left the station and from my metal bench I could see a head bobbing up and down the platform from beneath. I noticed brown hair hugging the bottom of the platform. What startled my curiosity was this difference – instead of operating with the crowd he was operating (quite dangerously, he could have been flattered by a subway car) independently of them. I rose from my seat and wandered over to the edge. I saw him, a tall, skinny man with a jaw full of stubble. He wore tattered jeans and a blue plaid shirt, ripped at the elbows. His boots looked like the remnants of old designer footwear after much duress had been placed upon them. He looked perfectly happy as he strolled down the track. What got me, though, was that no one noticed him. No one even looked down at this strange man (man? I could hardly say man. He looked more like a boy) risking his life in the space the subway cars would soon occupy.

And suddenly he stopped, turned, and stared at me. I was taken aback a moment as I attempted to figure out how he had noticed me, someone who looked so shabby and faded, among the rest of the crowd. Among all of the beautiful women in the subway station. He threw me a smile and began walking towards me.

In the distance, I could hear the subway car coming. In all my misery, I felt one quick bolt of my old self, and I yelled rather loudly “Watch out for the train!” The brown haired man looked to his left and he, too, saw the lights quickly approaching. Quickly, I ran to the side of the ledge and extended my hand. He grabbed it and together, we pulled upwards. Standing on the concrete on which I stood, this boy looked into my eyes. I felt vunerable for a moment, as if something inside me had again stirred. I ate the feeling.

“Thank you for helping me. I appreciate it, though it might not have been too necessary,” he said.

I took a long look at him. His eyebrows were a thick, dark brown that framed well his jade-colored eyes. I stared into them intently, waiting. They reminded me of the oceans I saw as a child. I would submerge myself and open my eyes under the water. His eyes were the color of the blurry ocean seen through human eyes.

“You're welcome,” I said, “But why were you down there in the first place?”

The man smiled, his eyes following his lips, “Well, because that is the way I get home. I have to be careful though, and I usually am.”

“But maybe not this time?” I asked with no real purpose. My curiousity had been spiked, but there were no emotional attatchments to this strange new wonder I had for this person. I backed up slightly, changing my gaze to the subway tunnel. “What do you mean, home? Why didn't you just take the subway to get home?”

“Because my home isn't a subway stop. At the very least it is a forgotten one. It is a long way home from here. The path there is covered in darkness,” he said, rather willingly. I could not keep my eyes off of his eyes. I could not keep my eyes off of his long, dark eyelashes.

“Where do you live, then?” I wondered out loud.

“I live in The Down Below. The first settlement,” he replied, again quite willingly.

I was confused as to what he meant, “The Down Below.” At first, I thought he was kidding with me. At first I thought he was joking about living in Hell. I shuffled my feet intentionally, feigning awkwardness.

“It is a city under the city. It is in the tunnels. A lot of us live there,” he stopped a moment, pausing as he looked me up and down, “You look like you might belong there.” I glanced at myself, eyeing my dress in particular – it was almost as dirty as my face. I shrugged my shoulders, I didn't know. I didn't know what kind of place it was down there. I didn't know if I could belong anywhere anymore. I knew that in the light, in the city streets above the subway station, I was no longer free. I was confined by the limits of my life. Fear of the man in the black suit stealing my life from me consumed me utterly. I wondered for a moment, possibly, if this “Down Below” was a dream.

“Really,” he continued, “You look lost.”

I didn't think as I responded, “I have never been so lost.”

My words shocked me as I said them. I had not thoguht about this yet – I had not thought about my situation in the world except that it was in danger. I smiled briefly at the boy, trying to convince him otherwise - “No, no. I'm just having a rough time. No need to worry.” I brushed it off and turned my back to him, preparing to leave and return to the park. As I did, he grabbed my hand. I stopped and turned back. “What do you want...kid?”

The man-boy-kid, whatever the hell he was, smiled. All his teeth were shown and to my suprise they were white as ivory. For someone who looked homeless, he was well kept. I could not even smell the stank of the body on him. “No, no. Come with me. You should come. You should see this and then decide how lost you are right now,” he grinned coyly as if he had some secret that would solve my problems, “My name is Lucca. You probably don't think you should trust me but I have never hurt a single soul or done a person wrong. You probably won't believe me, but I haven't.”

I don't exactly know what prompted him to say this. It was as if he had read my mind or called on fate to tell him what to say, which is strange to me because I do not quite believe in fate. I believe in strange coincidences, horoscopes, but not fate. I smiled gently, another feigned action. In my current state, messy, broken, and at a loss for humanity, I felt as if the only thing I could lose was my life – and that was something I could lose anywhere.

As the train arrived and departed I followed Lucca into the path of the subway cars and together we walked on the edge, avoiding the mythical third rail, and into the darkness of the tunnel.

***

I do not know how long we walked – I did not want to look at my watch. I followed him through darkness, not saying much at all. Eventually, we reached a strange door which he opened with a key. “No worries, it's just to keep the bad guys out,” he grinned. The door opened into a room, brightly lit and colored white, with a single door on the opposite wall. Above the door read “Bastion” in black spaypaint. On either side of the door stood a man with his arms folded. The two looked almost identical. I stood there, inquisitively. Lucca had said almost nothing on our journey, and now I wondered if following him was a good idea. He may not have been the man in the black suit himself, but he could have been someone just like him.

“This is the gate to the other tunnels and these are the guards, Rabbit and Hare,” Lucca said calmly. I was confused though, why did they need guards? Why were their names Rabbit and Hare?

Lucca stepped forward and whispered into the one of the left's ears. The man nodded and stood up, smiling slightly. Both Rabbit and Hare were tall, stocky, with black beards and what looked like military-style camoflague helmets on. The one named Hare stepped towards me, inspecting my clothes, my face.

“This is the entrance. Beyond here, about a mile past the fork in the road, you will find The Down Below. Lucca says that is where he is taking you, is it not?”

I nodded, unable to speak. I felt as if I had stepped into Alice's Wonderland for a moment.

“You cannot leave the down below without the supervision of one of the residents. If you are not a resident, you are a guest, and guests can only exit the tunnels once, so if you decide to return home, you can never return to ours. One glance is all you will get from us if you decide not to stay.”

Again, I nodded. There was nothing to say, really. My curiousity lied with Lucca and not the world below, so entering it as his guest was enough for me. Being a guest was enough for me – I had no intention of staying in the tunnels forever.

The man grunted once and then took a step towards me. His eyes looked me up and down, eventually resting upon my lips.

“You cannot keep your old name down here – you need a new one. The person who brings you here names you, so it is up to Lucca to decide. Also, if you decide to leave, you must bring Lucca with you to check you out or we will not permit you to leave.”

I had already been questioning the reality of this situation – it seemed to me that I was about to enter a place where fun and games reigned, and probably not reality. If I had been of right mind, I maybe would have told them to forget it and left Lucca there. But, as I have expressed, I was not. Anything was better than fear, and if there were guards to keep me save, the man in the black suit would never be able to find me. It seemed fair to me.

I looked towards Lucca, eyeing me as he eyed me. He looked me up and down as Hare had, finally resting upon my eyes. “Terra.”

I was unaware what Terra meant, for it was a name I have never heard before. I didn't question – it was Lucca's choice to name me afterall.

“These are little games,” I thought, “Little games for little people who don't feel like they belong.”

I nodded and repeated the name to Hare. “Terra, yes. It doesn't matter much to me.” With that, Rabbit smiled and opened the door to the darkness. Lucca grabbed me by the hand and led me out into the blackest blackness I had ever seen in my life.

Suddenly, Lucca let go of my hand for a moment. I could feel the tunnels breathing – the air stale and overused. “Lucca, don't play games with me,” I said determinately.

I heard a laugh and a click – Lucca had reached to the ground and gotten himself a flashlight from what looked like a bin of them. “We would use torches, but we have a better idea of how long batteries last as opposed to how long a torch would last. Follow me, it's far but not that far.”

And so I did.

***

We arrived at The Down Below after a few hours of walking through the darkness. There is not much to say about the journey – Lucca held my hand throughout most of it and, strangely, I didn't mind. He told me that that he was twenty-one, had lived down in the tunnels his entire life, and that his parents had died during an accident. He wouldn't tell me how they had perished. He was one of the scavengers of the city – a caste indentified by their access to the surface. They would seek out (or steal) things that community needed. He told me that there were around two thousand residence in The Down Below specifically and more in other mini-cities inside the tunnels. Roost was the largest community with a total of ten-thousand people. He even told me that they had running electricity in fifty percent of the houses. I was astonished such a colony existed, nevermind that they had power. The Down Below, Lucca said, was the closest to the surface, so most the trade (characterized almost exclusively by bartering) occured there. He was a trader of sorts – he mostly gathered batteries from the surface.

During the trip, I decided that Lucca was genuine. I decided he was someone I could trust. He had this innocense about him that I could feel through his hands. It was his heart, pumping blood through his chest, that I could feel beating in his hands as I held them. I don't know why I let him. I was in no position to let myself be taken by a man. It may seem presumptuous of me, but a beautiful woman knows when someone longs for her. I could feel it in his gaze, even from the darkness.

He was a beautiful boy. I will not deny that, but affection was something I could no longer think about, never mind the prospect of love. I don't know why I even thought about love at this point in time, as he guided me through the gutted darkness of the tunnels. But I continued on, holding his hand, until we reached his city-home.

The landscape was foreign to me, but the only way I can describe it is this. It was well lit for a town of vagrants. There were occasional lights, mostly floor lamps, scattered around the area. Most of this section of the tunnel had been lit up, so to me, it looked like hundreds of small shanty-buildings next to eachother, bustling with life in the darkness. The denizens looked similar to Lucca – covered in ripped clothes, hand-me-downs. Some wore clothes that, in my opinion, looked as if they had been couture once, but had faded into rags in the darkness.

But there was something about this darkness that held a beautiful light. As I walked through the tattered, junk-infested streets (streets is a relative term, they were closer to clearings in the rubble), I felt almost alive again. It was as if I had discovered a new world where the people enjoyed their lives. Every indivudual I saw seemed to be smiling and every individual I met had a raw quality about them that I could not quite put my finger on – it was as if they lived for the richness of life as opposed to living for the sake of living.

I was tired. As we reached the middle of The Down Below, I looked at Lucca and purposefully yawned. He smiled sweetly, understanding that I was tired. He led my by the hand to a small, make-shift house down what he called an alleyway (and what I called a clearing of the junk). He told me it was ours now, and to feel free to call it mine. I was reluctant at first, but I entered. Lucca got me some blankets and told me to rest, that he would join me soon. I looked around his (our) home. It was full of knick-knacks that looked as if they had been stolen from a junk yard. There was a candle laying on the floor, which, as Lucca left, he told me to light. I did, and I laid down, waiting for him to return.

***

He stared at me with his faint, faded, jade eyes as he held me close - in his gaze but a great sense of loneliness. I could certainly feel nothing myself; I hadn't felt anything except the desire to hold him close. It was not an emotion, it was a need. There was no other solution to our situation; there was nothing else that could be done between the two of us, lying snugly together in my little hovel.

“Terra,” he whispered into my eyes, “you’re the most beautiful woman I have ever laid with.”

I could feel nothingness wrap its tendrils around my mind and I could feel it climbing in from every pore on my body. I wrapped myself closer to him, pulling his chest into my chest, entwining his legs with mine, holding them tight in my vice. It was not about body heat – the dirt sullied blankets he had scavenged for me were enough insulation. In reality, I was sweating – maybe through my clothes, maybe enough for him to feel the stick of my sweat against his own skin.

To his declaration I had no answer – I could have thanked him but I hardly think a thank you could have sufficed. In fact, there was nothing I could do. I could not feel for this man who held me so tight as the darkness enveloped us – as our only light as an already-burned out candle that could have fully extinguished at any moment. I pushed my face towards his and nuzzled his lips with my nose as carefully as I could. “If we talk we might run out of words,” I said, thinking that avoiding conversation was imperative, “and running out of words could make the silences so much worse.”

His response was an attempt at a kiss, to which I simply smiled and said “If we kiss then maybe we'll both get tired of each other too soon.” It was a possibility, I thought, but so was the world ending. No, all I wanted was to be so close to someone I could feel their breaths enter their lungs. I wanted to feel their shaking as I held them tightly – usurping their vulnerability was my first priority. Lucca didn't answer me; in speech or in touch. He simply laid there, holding me tightly, constricting his legs occasionally to remind me that he was still awake, thinking of me, maybe. I wasn't so much thinking of Lucca, though I might have been if the circumstances had been different. Our bodies could have been the same, our brains could have been similar, but together, down here in most unsheltered darkness, we were nothing and had nothing except bodies to hold onto someone else with. Our mouths were dirty and so were our clothes. Between us two I cannot imagine the smells that would have erupted into the already stale air if we had taken our clothes off.

Or maybe it would have been lovely, beautiful. Maybe we would have smelled like violets and the insides of our mouths would have tasted like ambrosia. But now, here, with this boy just a man, I told myself that I could not ruin what could have been something incredible with distastes of the senses. It may seem as if I was dead around the inside, but it was closer to being alive than anything else. It was as if I had opened up my heart only to find that it was only an organ that pumped blood through my tiny vessels. It was nothing but flesh and liquid and cells woven tightly together to help me live.

I felt his legs constrict mine one last time before I closed my eyes. “I am still awake,” he said with his limbs, “I am still awake and I still want to feel something.” But there would be no sun rise in the morning – there was no waking up from this dark cloud of a dream. Tomorrow would only come if the clocks didn't run out of batteries. Tomorrow would only come if my watch said that it did. Time, I thought, time was something I had permanently cast away when I came here. For a moment, in the blackness, I tightened my arms around Lucca and pressed my forehead against his nose. He did not react – I could only feel a very steady heartbeat.

I laid there for hours, wide awake, hearing the crawling of rats outside my makeshift door. I would occasionally rub my nose against his chin, feeling the tiny prickling of his stubble press against and tickle me. I did not want to sleep, because I didn't want to dream, and I didn't want to have to be awake and no longer pressed against someone else.

But as the time dragged on, and what remained of the candle dwindled, I felt my lids grow heavy and my vision blur. My body was trying to fight my mind, and eventually, as I felt the pull of dreaming tug harder and harder, I let myself fade away into my dreams, where they held me in my mind as Lucca did in my flesh.

I felt myself wrapped up, but cold, as if I was being held in a material only strong enough to hold me inside. I could `hear little (what I thought, at least) footsteps below me, brushing against what sounded like glass. There were squeaks and rustling too. I felt the cold rip at my skin and the sounds rip at my brain – flowing inside like some kind of poison sent to drive me insane. I must have been suspended in the air for all I could feel was the pushing and pressing of my own body as it was stuck to this strange, skin-like material, and attempting to escape from it. Suddenly, I could feel fingers press against me through the second-skin. I could feel it trying to rip me from my confines. It struggled, clawing and pushing and pulling to release me. It was futile. The fingers stopped and disappeared from me. And quite suddenly I fell from whatever suspended me and soon, to my revulsion, I felt tiny little bodies scurrying under me, weaving and winding – a moving floor upon a solid, inanimate floor. Rats. And I began to scream.

I woke up and Lucca was beside me still. He had removed his body from mine and, instead, folded his arms against his chest, crossed his legs (entwining them as we had once done together), and had his face to the side, staring at me with eyes closed. I wondered if he had actually fallen asleep before me – or if he was asleep now.

I picked myself up off the ground and slowly removed the blanket from my body, careful not to disturb the little corner that he had kept over his stomach. I didn’t want to wake him and face him yet. My actions the night before, I had decided, were strange – the things I said even stranger. I quickly opened the door to the shack and stepped out into the darkness yet again. I was unsure of the time and I thought that checking my watch would only complicate my feelings – my sense of the sun, my time clock, and the world that depended on time for survival still rang loudly in my ears. I walked towards a lamp – one of the ones that still shone brightly. It looked like a genuine street lamp, almost as if it had been teleported down here from the world above. Beside it stood a tall black man, his rags some of the most decrepit I had seen – even the patches sewn into his jacket seemed to be peeling away from the material.

I walked up to him, lonely and starved for conversation from someone other than Lucca. “Hi,” I said gently, “How are you?”

The man, who had been staring at the bottom of the lamppost, looked up. His gaze was soft and serene. I felt safe beside this man I did know in a way I had not felt since the accident. “I am well,” he said, “Just looking at the wiring.”

For someone who looked as if he had been down in the depths for quite some time, and someone of an indeterminate age, he spoke with a careful grace. Most of the others I had met spoke crassly with an almost terrible distain dripping from their lips. This man was different. I looked down as he had been at the wires located at the base of the lamp. They were thick wires, black but hardly difficult to see. I traced the wires from their point at the base to a wall probably a few hundred feet away. There, I could see them begin to snake up the wall, but as it reached the ceiling, the lack of light shrouded the wires in shadow – they seemed to disappear before my eyes.

“How do they get the lights working?” I asked him, “It must be complicated stealing the power from up there.”

The man smiled slightly, stepping carefully closer to me. “I believe we have deals worked out with some of the electricians in the area. They hook up the power lines to these wires and we get a bit of energy that no one will miss. We don’t need a lot down here – just enough for some light.”

“Really? You don’t think the managers at the power plants will notice that some of the electricity isn’t being paid for?” I questioned.

“No, there are people who steal electricity all of the time,” said the man, “Besides. Just because they gather up the electricity doesn’t mean they own it all. If it were up to me, I would give it away – all they do is harness what is around all of us. We pay for a service, I suppose. We pay someone else to give us the light.”

I thought about this carefully before responding – I had never quite thought of electricity in those terms. At least, I hadn’t since my high school science classes. “But why do we pay for it? Why don’t we make our own?”

“Because we don’t actually own anything and we don’t really want to own anything. And we definitely don’t work to work to make anything ours. Or at least that’s how I see it.” The man’s eyes rose, staring at the bright, shining lamp bulb head on. “If you live down here, I think you at least own yourself to some degree. We might not have everything that everyone up there has, but at least we have the darkness and what we find.”

“Up there, it’s not all like that I don’t think. Sometimes I feel as if all of myself is mine – that I own everything about me.” I said, almost alarmed at a view of his reality.

He took another step forward, this time close enough to touch the lamp itself. He wrapped his left hand around the neck of the lamp, almost choking it. “No, once you are here longer you will understand. It isn’t about what people tell you is real, it is about what you tell yourself is real. There is nothing more real than what you think is real.”

I couldn’t understand why he was saying this to me, or what exactly brought about this philosophy, but I quickly grew tired of it like you grow tired of sitting in a bathwater after it has become lukewarm. I quickly smiled at the man and introduced myself, “My name is Terra.”

“David,” he said, “Nice to meet you Terra.” His eyes, the ones that had been holding all his intensity inside them, softened and retreated back to calmness. “I suppose you will be going now, yes?”

I nodded, smiled again, and gently waved to him as I turned on my heels and headed back towards the hovel.

When I entered, I noticed that it was dark – almost darker than before. “Lucca,” I said, “Lucca, turn on the light.”

There was no answer – I assumed he had left while I had been talking to David. I thought for a moment that I may have hurt him, but then realized it wouldn't matter much anyways – I was only his guest after-all.

I reached downwards and grabbed at the floor, looking for a flashlight. Eventually, I found a cigarette lighter and lit it so I could look around the structure more clearly. What I found, however, was a note. I held the cigarette lighter up to it and lit it once more.

“Dear Baby,

I see you have found your way down here. If you ever want to return home, you are going to have to return to me one last time. I have taken this boy with me in hopes you will come to your senses. I am glad fate has brought us together again. I will not let this boy get in our way – without him you will be lost and I will find you and I will sing you such beautiful music and show you all the beautiful things I have to give to you. You will find me in Roost, and I suggest you do it soon. Little Lucca is going to find himself in lots of trouble, darling, if you don't come see me right away!

With Love.”

And that was all that the note said. Immediately, a sense of complete horror flooded my body. I knew it was him, I don't know how he could have come to be down here and I didn't know where Roost was exactly, but if I intended to go home (or see Lucca again) I knew that I would have to face my fears.

But all I wanted to do was wait and wail for my mother until she came and spoke the softest words to me until I felt whole again.